The whole point of a console is ease, I pop in the disk, I play. If you take away that ease, it becomes just a locked down PC… why would you want that when you could just have a full PC?
I don’t want to make digital seem better, but for this argument it is… you don’t even need the disc, you just turn on the console and select the game. All from the comfort of your sofa. Hell, you don’t even need to go to a store or wait for a delivery in the first place, all those bytes just come to you.
I think something to realize here is that A.) The above is why the majority of people just use digital at this point, and B.) Inserting a brand new game disc into your console still requires downloads, installing and often being online to do so anyway. Modern games rarely even fit on one disc, so the disc is less useful that it was in the XBox OG and PS1 days. It’s more like what Nintendo is doing with the Game Key Carts.
THIS 100%
Modern game discs are literally just Mountain Dew Verification Cans™
I think the point us more tied to the eol for the ps3 when everyone lost all their digital content, whereas the same player on pc would still have all their titles playable on steam or gog.
You are correct. Which is why at this point you might as well go PC. Console games used to be playable without internet, just pop in and enjoy. I am not referencing the terrible experience it has become today (guess I am old). Nostalgia I suppose for an era that did already die.
Sorry, no. My video drivers fucked up while installing somehow and I had to blow them out with DDU and reinstall everything to get normal functioning back on my PC. I’ve had countless random errors, performance hangs, and more due to just random stupid Windows 11 shit that had to be identified and solved by repeated web searches and in a few cases obtaining and running specialized tools to cleanse my system of the filth W11 is full of.
NONE of this is part of the usual console experience. Exceptions exist, yes. And technical support when they occur is dramatically simpler because they’re all the same.
I think you’re forgetting just how fucking stupid the average person is, and how lazy they are. We’re in the era of cognitive surrender to chatGPT. You think these drooling morons want to web search how to fix a driver installation somehow getting corrupted?
You’re conflating the PC experience with the Windows experience.
You think Linux is going to be a better experience? What do you think someone will think the user will think when they encounter a program or game that simply refuses to run on Linux?
You’re too deep in the sauce, man. I have to reiterate that the average gamer is both horribly stupid and extremely lazy. You gotta keep that in mind. People smart enough and dedicated enough to go through the hurdles associated with gaming on a PC are likely already using one as their primary or sole platform.
I’ve never experienced any problems with gaming in Steam on Bazzite. Never a game that fails to run.
As someone who daily drives Linux since '96, I can say that while it’s a much better OS and way less enshitified, driver issues, hardware issues, compatibility issues, and everything else above is just part of PC gaming as a whole. The problems I’ve had to fight with over the years most people would have given up and installed windows.
Console gaming is definitely way less problematic and when problems do arise, much simpler to troubleshoot.
Because a console will still be plug in and play.
Isn’t it easier to turn it on and simply select the thing you want to play?
Yes. This is mixing up console advantages. The “game just works” one will still exist - in fact, it will pretty much be the only advantage left. Not worth the much higher cost of games and playing online.
Even at $100, it’s still cheaper than games of yesteryear. If you take an average PS1 game, most sold for $50 in 1996, so $110 today. Games themselves are cheaper than ever, and consoles still have major advantages of just hooking it into a TV, and it simply works.
Actually, most of them were sold when they dropped the price to $20 or less a few months later. Only the hard-core fomo crowd bought at full price.
That whole “adjusted for inflation” thing is BS because the average wages haven’t kept up.
consoles still have major advantages of just hooking it into a TV, and it simply works.
That’s part of the “game just works” thing. It’s not worth the higher cost of games and playing online to me, but you do usually have to have some tech-savvy to use a PC that way.
Depends on how you take it, but wage growth has matched for core services and grown. Now if you are talking about education or housing costs, then no, they have went beyond wage growth. But electronics and energy? Wages have outpaces their costs and inflation quite a lot.
Okay, general cost of living, then. How much the average person can afford to buy has not kept up.
Depends on what you are talking about again, because in general Americans are able to afford more ‘stuff’ than they ever have.
Umm, I mean you just turn on your console and play the game. Even easier than popping in a CD/DVD and zero worries about scratching and having to rebuy the thing.
They ain’t gonna be working offline though at all.
Console gamers should just try to bully these companies into apologizing and pulling back
Sony and Microsoft say bad luck we are doing it anyway, and we know you will still buy our consoles.
As long as you still have tens of millions of people pre-ordering GTA6, nothing is going to change. People bitch and whine but they keep eating the slop.
Man, I couldn’t give two shits. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. What good is a disc when you’re dead? I’m here for a good time, not for a collection of plastic boxes with shiny round discs in them, uh, time. I mean, who earnestly gives a flying fuck? These days most game discs are as good as a game-key anyway as you can’t play the game before installing a massive day one patch.
It’s only 8:00 where I am so it’s possible I will read a more stupid less informed comment today, but I wouldn’t put money on it.
Have a nice day. Try not to get angry for no reason.
Don’t make more moronic comments and I’ll be happy
Your happiness is very fickle.
Most gamers have steam libraries and not a single disc to show for it. They’re not sad about it…
You should burn your faux outrage to a goddamn disc and add it to your priceless collection. Im sure it will look great beside your Star Craft II box and some cobwebs.
Better than the padded cell you belong in
Lol disagreeing with your perspective is insane? Alrighty…
No just observing your insane behavior
Bad take. They’ll give you an install disc and then make you enter an account locked code to access it anyway.
Demand digital rights instead, before a big player goes bust. Because at some point that will happen, and you’ll lose more than a handful of discs.
old games? https://www.romsgames.net/
used to play these free years ago. ymmv
Steam on pc shows that gamers can be okay with not having physical media - as long as they trust the vendor that the thing they pay for actually means a persistent access to the game.
Unfortunately this move also gives much more power to the vendor. Once he decides to withdraw access to the player, the ownership of the paid-for thing becomes useless (until a lawsuit were to be filed and won).
Physical media without mandatory internet servers (like in pre-internet consoles) means true ownership - after buying a game, the vendor has no longer any control.
The key point to me is not directly the difference between physical disk or cloud download, but between truly offline versus online-required games (or goods in general).
PC gaming all digital is ok because it’s not a closed ecosystem. I can install whatever platform I want, and buy games. And there are huge sales.
Also there are drm free shops like gog, a huge community with emulators, mods, and in the need pirated copies of the games I bought.
Trust is one thing, but monopolized market is another.
PC gaming all digital is ok because it’s not a closed ecosystem
This is the crux of the issue. I have a few games in my library that have been de-listed from the store but my access to those games is unaffected and I can still install and play them, and it’s a problem that Sony’s approach isn’t analogous to this.
Leave PCs out of this console nonsense. On PC you can write whatever you want to whatever media you want by yourself, without kissing some Nintendo-Sony ass.
For now, yes. Microsoft is already well on it’s way to a closed ecosystem where you’ll only be able to run signed software on “your” PC.
PC gamers accepted the inability to sell and loan games and to have extensive DRM on a large number of games. The console players are the last holds against this anti consumer practice. Just because PCs has multiple stores it doesn’t change the fact Steam is a near monopoly and while its relatively consumer friendly we still don’t own games on it, they can not be passed to others in any way legally. People have a weird love for Steam but the basic facts are the same, it uses DRM, you can’t sell or loan games and you have a licence and don’t own them, you can’t pass them to someone else in a will. Steam is pretty anti consumer on the big items here compared to disks on the consoles.
PC gamers haven’t pushed back as hard because the basic facts are NOT the same. The ecosystem is entirely different. I’m not interested in defending Steam or its use of DRM, but the fact that something is illegal doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Piracy is one of the big reasons PC gamers aren’t nearly as affected by the lack of physical media being sold: you just make it yourself. I’ve even pirated games I already own just because it’s the easiest way to have an unmodded install alongside a heavily modded one.
But the lack of options for console gamers doesn’t stop there. Not only are the hardware and software environments completely locked down, but demographically, a much greater number of console buyers are going to be those with bad or no internet. They can’t just download whatever from wherever. If they lose the discs, they may lose access entirely.
People pirate a game they own just to not have the launcher or unskipable opening movie.
Steam voluntarily let you have family sharing, without a monthly fee, so that removed the biggest problem without having actual lending.
Folks like me love Steam because I have a huge backlog, and don’t care if I play the latest thing as soon as it comes out. Combine that with their sales every few months let me pick up older games at a steep discount, without having to deal with a Gamestop.
PC gamers accepted the inability to sell and loan games and to have extensive DRM on a large number of games.
And one of the reasons for that is that the DRM can be removed from a large number of games. 🏴☠️
In practice doesnt everything basically get leaked/mass disseminated anyway regardless of the vendor/developers anti-consumer shit or best legal efforts/public meddling?
People voting with their wallet will decide how this ends.
They already have. Physical media sales are a small minority of game sales.
They will like PC gamers swallow all the DRM and digital downloads as we see everytime there is complaints about Denovo or the latest game has been withdrawn on Steam gamers keep going back and buying more. It will end the same way on Playstation.
I’m not aware of Steam ever having removed a purchased game from a library.
If you have a reliable source that says otherwise please link it.Technically they could do that of course.
But it would be bad for their business and have people do more business with gog.com.
Steam gets chosen over gog.com for convenience.
If purchased games disappear that will be even more inconvenient.external resources (e.g. game servers) outside the responsibility of Steam are different things and I wouldn’t blame Steam for it.
What if the publisher decides they no longer want it to be available? Is that a “good reason”? It’s outside the responsibility and control of Steam.
Steam removes it from the store. It’s still in my library and I can still download it anytime.
That’s been my experience.
Your experience is not reality. Steam has completely removed several games.
If we’re going to transition to digital only, a couple things need to happen.
When we purchase a game, we own it. This is not a long term rental.
If we want to sell it or trade it, we can.
Both Microsoft and Sony had this exact infrastructure built ready to go for Xbox One and PS4 prior to launch.
We were going to get full digital collections with a marketplace that would allow entitlement sales AND the ability to loan entitlements to friends for set periods of time.
When Microsoft announced the plans at E3 2013, a whiny minority of “core gamers” kicked up such a fuss that Microsofts stock tanked and they backpedalled… Sony hadn’t made any announcements yet and presented the EXACT opposite of Microsoft’s plan literally 8 hours later despite the fact that their existing hardware DevKits and system software functioned exactly as Microsoft had described. Sony got to look like the “hero” while both of them then scrambled to completely reengineer their hardware and system software prior to launch…
We lost a bright future that day.
The Corps called they said no and fuck you.
Lol, never going to happen.
I know, but it’s what should happen. People hold the power to make it happen but don’t have any restraint to follow through.
You could have legislation, just make it so that they have to keep a download button for people that already have something purchased. The real issue is that like if Sony doesn’t have the rights to something anymore then the rights holder can go after Sony. You just need a rule that they can keep something and can’t be suedby others for providing downloads to customers even if Sony lost the rights, so that only applies to new sales.
If the next generation is digital only, it will be the first generation in which I do not participate.
Just need to play on a system that allows you play digital games without DRM, whether intentionally or by force (PC).
Console modding is pretty fucking great for exactly this.
I mean, at least on the PC, I haven’t bought a physical game in 10+ years. I don’t even have a CD/DVD player. Digital has always been easier and no worries about damaging physical media.
i don’t think it matters though tbh. they will go ahead with the plan anyway.
The only thing that would make them consider changing course is if a significant portion of gamers refused to buy games unless they come in a physical format. Sony knows that’ll never happen. People will complain to their heart’s content and then happily plonk down $80 for the next big digital only game release. Capitalism largely works the way it does because people don’t want to go without.
people already weren’t buying physical media.
Which is gta. And yes, they will waste our time bitching about this and buy it anyways.
yeah i agree.
A SIGNIFICANT portion of people who buy video games already have already abandoned physical media and done care…
Excluding Nintendo, ~5% of total video game sales are physical media.
wont this just push people to getting steam/valve
Ahh yes, steam renowned for its physical media.
Hopefully it just keeps them using old consoles and punishing them by not buying the digital games.
But we all know everyone will just roll over.
Obviously they mean that in a digital-only world, consoles are not worth it and gamers should just switch to PC.
The problem isn’t digital the problem is digital only.
Yeah the big advantage of disc is Sony can’t randomly take it away. And given the fact that they have literally just done that with a bunch of movies it’s kind of a problem.
It would be trivial to add online only drm with a killswitch to physical media. If that’s the problem, discs aren’t the solution. What we actually need is legal protection for consumers.
I was already planning to abandon Sony even before they shot themselves in the foot (or leg? groin? time will tell I guess)
I bought the PS5 solely to play one specific game, but I still expected to get some other games. And I’ve gotten a few at least: The Finals is amazing, Baldur’s Gate is amazing, Battlefield 6 is great… and that’s about the end of my list.
The one specific game I bought the PS5 for, No Man’s Sky, has tons of stuff you can do with mods and save editing. Same for Baldur’s Gate as far as mods go. The Finals and BF6 are FPS games so no mods, but still… 100% of the games I like could just be played on PC instead, and 50% are significantly better for doing so.
In the last few generations of consoles / handhelds, Sony has:
- Removed the ability to back your data up via USB as of PS5 (ostensibly because scary ol’ North Korea hacked them, but really because they want to force you to buy PS+)
- Removed the ability to use custom themes as of PS4
- Removed the ability to play online for free as of PS4
- Removed the ability to set a background for your console ffs as of PS5, then gave us like 10% of that back by letting you set a background specifically and only for the screen you see after the console starts
- Jacked up PS+ prices repeatedly and offered like 99% games that I never play again (granted I’m a very picky gamer but still. Shoutout to Jurassic World and some Resident Evils tho)
There’s so many reasons to ditch them even separately from the disc drama
Reselling isn’t a thing with any PC game store I know. Which is the only drawback for me. Is it possible to sell my old PS game discs or are they attached to my PS account?
Discs are not attached to any account.
You can sell your old PS* discs. There’s a few used stores around here. That said, you probably won’t get tons for them, but it’s worth a look, I try to buy used games if the new ones hold their value too long.
When I got my PS5, I picked up like 5 PS4 titles I always wanted but went from 3 to 5. Got 5 pretty popular triple A games for like $30-40 at the time when it would have been like $100+ for them all new.
DRM is the issue not physical. No drm means I can just keep replicating my product when physical fails
Removing options is an issue
Yeah that’s my problem with it as well. People keep going “but steam does the same thing” but with steam I actually have the install on my computer, a computer which valve does not control and they cannot take things off me after the fact.
Yesnt. Steam can absolutely remote remove your library.
They never did and probably won’t do it. But they could
How can they do that? I’m curious
You agreed to it in the TOS
They can take a game off sale but they can’t take something from me that I’ve already downloaded.
In most European countries yes. They can’t legally. But they can technically.
They cannot if you back it up to a folder outside of the steam directory. Provided of course the game doesn’t use Steam’s DRM.
