Everyone will now avoid sony, right???
Been enjoying old games and a large backlog for quite a while. No intention to buy the latest and greatest anymore.
But I’m old.
No resale, no buy.
You got nothing to lose, but your subscription fees.
They held out until Linux gaming got good. Now they’re not needed anymore.
I assumed this was memeing the fact that they removed access to movies that people legitimately purchased without a refund, then saw the news that killed physical games…
I know this sucks, but idk how to feel about it. I had a large collection of physical games, much like I’d imagine most gamers do, only to one day come home and find it all stolen. Insurance pulled the rug on me, and I didn’t get much for any of it. Since then I’ve bought everything digital and, while I know it can happen, I haven’t had any taken from me since. Of course, buying all the games physically would have been way more expensive as some of them are rare collectables now. I’m just happy I get to play them. I know I could lose it all again on a whim of some CEO, but I just feel there isn’t any reasonable solution.
Make sure you guys keep receipts, take pictures, secure your games, and pay extra for any collectables insurance. And don’t let insurance dictate the aggregate value lost, itemize everything and get quotes. You’ll still get ripped off, but hopefully you can rebuild what’s important if it happens to you.
I don’t keep my physical games, I buy and sell them regulary, so I keep my cost per game low, even for new titles. My problem with digital is that I cannot resell, it’s just a license I rent for full price
Reselling does nothing for Sony though, so losing the customers who are buying and selling used games isn’t a loss for them.
It’s like how people freaked out about how Netflix would surely collapse when they cracked down on password sharing, but it’s actually brought in a bunch more money for them. Losing viewers who aren’t paying for the service was actually a bonus. Even if there had been a bet zero change in subscribers, they’d save money from the reduction in traffic.
Thing is, if “digital” actually meant “own” we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Is this one of those things where the old “block chain” could be helpful? Like, a mechanism for actual digital ownership where one can have reasonable assurance that the thing one has downloaded actually belongs to them? That, so long as there’s a unique key, one can access that digital item whenever one desires–AND can transfer that to someone else by way of sale or trade?
I’ve said this before it’s indefinite access you’re paying for when you buy a disc not ownership of the game. The only difference is, is that you don’t lose access to those games when you buy physical, when you buy digital your games access can be heavily modified.
At the risk of now upsetting cryptobros (but no, I’m sure they understand all too well): we need laws. not blockchain. Even if the perfect solution was created (looks at physical), there is no incentive for publishers to use it.
And we’ve already seen what amazing things publishers have done with blockchain. /s
So far, it’s been very rare for digital ownership of games not to stay preserved. Ex: You can’t buy games from the Wii U anymore, but can still install owned ones. Some games are delisted from Steam, but you can install them.
Notable exceptions: Online games (not helped by discs) and Sony’s big attack on movie licenses.
In terms of resale ownership, yeah, it’s not so favorable. I’m ambivalent on that, because resale motivated a lot of changes in games - more online, more perpetual GAAS, fewer short singleplayer experience.
I’ve never been one to sell games, but I give, lend, and borrow games frequently with my friends. This (and some locked away exclusives) are the only reason I still even own consoles. Sony et al have decided they don’t want my money anymore.
I think that for now Nintendo Sony and Microsoft are keeping old stores accessible even if it costs them because they calculated the negative PR would cost them more (people wouldn’t hoard digital licenses for titles that don’t have time to play if they knew there’s a potential to be removed from their account before first install)
Ubisoft instead had no problems in removing titles from the Uplay accounts, instead
while I know it can happen, I haven’t had any taken from me since.
I had a couple hundred bucks worth of titles in my Amazon Digital Comics account when they shut all that down.
Now Sony cuts out the middle man and steals it from you directly.
Unironically, I can see physical game theft rising again as the supply is cut off altogether and plastic rot destroys what already exists.
Screwed from both sides.
And as someone else pointed out in a different thread. No reselling disks or giving to friends.
Everyone has to buy their own downloaded copy per account.
And they dont have to soend the money for the reader. And the game company doesnt have to distribute hardware and can take more profit from the retailers.
At that point why not just play it on PC? Are people seriously going to buy a console that doesn’t even read a disk, just to download a game from the internet? (Or worse, play via a launcher?)
Also, are the games gonna be cheaper now that they don’t need to produce the disks and packaging, transport them, store them in warehouses, stock them on shelves, etc.?
If supply and demand were a real science, this would represent infinite supply, right? So, wouldn’t you expect the price to approach 0.00?
People already were, only 15% of PlayStation users are buying physical media.
Are people seriously going to buy a console that doesn’t even read a disk, just to download a game from the internet?
Are you seriously asking? Because I’ve seen time and time again, the answer to those kinds of questions seems to be yes. I think most people just don’t care, and they don’t need to, they’ll only buy a few games in a console’s lifespan to play for multiple years, and they’ll either just pick up what’s popular, or whichever one has a game they want to play.
Do they realize they can get their favorite console’s controller with a USB cable so they can still use it to play on their PC?
Nope. If you ever need a reality check, use your own family as a basline.
I’m sometimes reminded there are two Teslas in our family.
So you want me to use your family as a baseline, you mean? Ain’t no teslas in my family.
Never gonna happen, lol (I’m ironic, that’s a tragedy).
Great chance to lay off thousands of retail workers ❤️
We never had game shops around me that look like the ones we saw online in other countries, those looked like relatively cool places to have around. I also once told a friend coming from the US to buy me a whole bunch of used games from a Gamestop and I was amazed how cheap they were. We only had overpriced originals or super cheap pirated games here, used cheap originals were neat.
I wouldn’t hang out in such a place as an adult (and I’m icked by retail-as-community-space) but maybe as a teenager it would have seemed nice. Just being able to ask the people working there for opinions or recommendations was probably a big part of how games work for people I’d imagine.
It was just bound to happen. The moment Xbox had dropped the ball and PS became the monopolist, it was obvious that they would start doing some extremely predatory shit and that’s just it. There you have it. The enshittification at it’s finest.
Linux on playstation
Reverse that and we’re golden.
Is this what’s happening with the data centers, too? We’ll be expected to access the internet through
the cloudor centralized servers, so it doesn’t matter to big tech that computer parts are unaffordable to consumers? For the record, I am not happy about it.Somebody educate me, please. It’s worse when I don’t know exactly what’s happening.
Edit: strikethrough
Yes. We will priced out or in the long term even forbidden from owning the hardware needed to run games and other demanding sofware natively. All this to grant us the honor to rent back what we used to own through the cloud
I mean… the internet is the cloud and such? Your local computer isn’t generating the internet. The internet is all the accessible things from all the computers plugged in to it.
Theoretically browsing the internet is an extremely low demand thing to do with a PC. It used to be considered one of the lowest, until modern browsers became mostly one browser and every company decided it’s job was to harvest as much of your data as possible.
Not sure what the image is referencing exactly, but recently Sony announced they plan to kill off disks entirely, and so their games and everything will all be digital download… and also they just straight up deleted 551 movies they’d sold for years to tons of people, with no refunds or fucks given, because… I guess they didn’t want to pay to renew their license to sell them? And decided to make it retroactive. Because fuck poor people.
I, for one, have plenty of games to last me a lifetime. If I have to build another PC, even at these prices, I will because at least steam is not as predatory.
GOG is better.
Yeah, I have not gone through my old ps2 games in a while. I just got a new cable and everything
Plus worst case you can always just pirate it.
Or best case, even. ;)
Never had a console, but I’d be glad without the silly slow disks. I own my phone, my PCs, my servers, don’t use US-bigtec, don’t stream, don’t lease cars, don’t rent…but this?
Don’t most games need net for verification or updating anyway? So it’s not yours even with a silly disk in hand. I stand corrected if all games are 100% offline and a console would run forever with no net. I just don’t know.
With a CD you had the option to play on an airgapped ps4
Also, the problem is not digital but not being able to transfer your license, etc
But ps4 is old, yes? Does it still get new games? And can you just give me your disc and then it’s my game? If yes, I can’t imagine that this would be around any longer. You must not own things.
My wife has a switch and this thing is just shit. Expensive crap games bound to your account. Most are just codes anyway.
Dude purple are still checking out ps4 games at the library. Old and good are not mutually exclusive. Usually we only remember the good old stuff. Music, movies, books, you name it
True. Yet when I tried to replay games I have the fondest of memories of, it often is just 99% nostalgia. Seeing all the flaws, the horrible ui, the missing QoL we just expect nowadays l etc. I don’t care much for gfx, but it’s hard to really get into those again. Music, yeah sure. Good music does not age. Movies…depends. Some age horribly 😁 For books I rarely find time, but they’re timeless too.
our imaginations were doing a lot more than we gave them credit for with some of those old ones.
we liked writing lyrics to the mario brothers songs though. Mario Brothers 3 had “I am roy! The sailor boy! My life here is a joy! / I am roy! The sailor boy! My life here is a joy! / I like to eat rice (and cake) [repeated until you get back to I am Roy the sailor boy]” is probably the only one i remember
True that. I even enjoyed pong. 8 pixels, 3 of them moving 😁
As the Atari was my last console, I never played a single Mario or Zelda…I have to admit that 😊
not even emulated? we have some gaming history to catch you up on
PS4 still gets new games, yes. Even physical ones.
Nice. But still. This will end in the next 1-2yrs I assume, as one is urged to upgrade to the ps5?
Then why ask if all games will run offline forever? You clearly don’t care if your games will run offline forever if you think that the next console has any bearing on the matter.
You must be young. I still have my PlayStation 2 from when I was a kid. Works with every game I ever got for it. Same for n64, game boy, etc.
Ps2 is truly a beast. I have a ton of ps1 and ps2 games I still play from time to time
Ooo, you just reminded me I’m in the middle of xenogears on my phone (duckstation ftw also whew caught that typo) Love that game. Might as well start over.
How many lasers you burn through on your ps2?
My first and only console was an Atari 2600 with pong being the first ever played game. Guess the youngster is you 😉 Since then I was PC only. I like the option to own everything forever (pirated if no other means available) and archive it forever. Legally this option died 2 decades ago thanks to steam. So I just wondered why the big consoles still allow this.
Run forever is nice, but it also ends with the end of your ps4 then. So “forever” is kinda bound to that life. My Atari cartridges are still here and might even still work, but no consoles left and why would I even after 4 decades.
Dude I have a working 2600. I think. It worked 5 years ago but I don’t have a good two bolt connector (idk what it’s called. The one with two bolts) to hdmi convertor
Legally this option died 2 decades ago thanks to steam. So I just wondered why the big consoles still allow this.
Huh? I don’t think Valve wrote any laws about this, or even lobbied for them.
I’m a big fan of the switch, since it can be emulated. Best way to play console games… wait a few years and have pretty much all of them.
Can it? That’s cool but I somehow wouldn’t know why? For the exclusives? Are there even some? Isn’t the only benefit of a switch to be super mobile? An emulator would be my 1st choice, but also defeats the whole purpose of a switch.
You’d literally just said the Switch was shit, which makes it sort of weird for you to follow that up with gripes that emulating those games in better quality would be less mobile.
You’re not nerding hard enough. It’s ok, we slow down as we get older sometimes. If you have a nice connection at home and abroad you can use anything as a screen. You can play any PC game or emulated game running on your PC at home and streaming to a phone/tablet/screen connected to a bluetooth controller or one of those cases that snap around and add controls like a switch or steamdeck if you feel like it.
Aside from that, yes, of course Nintendo consoles have a lot of great exclusives. They always have. That’s not something new in the last several decades. The last several Zelda games have been amazing, and I’d much rather be playing them on a massive screen having been rendered at a much better resolution.
To me, personally, the switch is total shit. Even if connected to our 240" screen it’s fucking slow fps-wise and just looking dated. And seeing what she has to pay for games that maybe end with the life of the switch (dunno if the next iteration still could play them?)
Sure, I can stream the emulated switch-game to whichever device, but when I’m already there I wouldn’t know why I would prefer them over the tons of games I have at hand on the streaming-pc. The only exclusive that mildly interests me is breath of the wild. If the emulator could unlock fps and also offered a better resolution and m+k-input instead of controllers, I might even do that at some point.
Honestly you sound insufferable.
Switch is still offline… you can play any game you got on a cartridge for forever with no problems, what are you drinking dude?
Unless we’re talking Switch 2 game key cards. Those are just downloads you can trade. But at least Nintendo puts all of their own properties on full carts rather than game key cards (Pokopia aside; Gamefreak and Pokemon are technically not Nintendo).
I don’t drink. But also don’t use the switch. Also I said most games are codes in a box with no cartridge. She only has one damn thing on a cartridge. Considering how much we paid for that tiny console and how expensive the games are, I wouldn’t touch those with a 10m-pole. Would pay a bit more and get a steamdeck if I absolutely HAD to be mobile.
$780 is not a “bit” more.
It becomes neglectable if factoring in the ability to get vaaastly more games very cheap. I have bought like 15k games there. Can game them on the deck, Linux and windows. Mac too maybe, who cares. So the 780 covers my quarterly spending for games I could already play on it.
Even if one would start fresh, you could get a ton of games free or very dirt-cheap where switch wants 60 moneyz.
You can’t resell or let a friend borrow easily like with a physical disc
And those never check license online? How can they be sure it’s not just a rip or copy? Still the same old mechanisms that didn’t really work on PC 20yrs ago? So I just pull the net-cable and it continues to work forever? (Minus updates and such)
That’s correct. You can play it just fine unless you’re playing a multiplayer game or DLC. You put the disc in, it installs what it needs to install in order to run, and you play the game.
That way, when the servers go down, you can still play it.
That’s nice. A wonder this survived so long. On PC it died 2 decades ago. Except for old games and some rare special ones like witcher3. Legally at least. I boycotted steam for years when it started because I knew this was the end of trading games or owning them. Then I gave up because resistance was futile and now I have like 100k in games I will never own and would loose if steam was gone.
You can still buy lots of DRM-free games today, most notably on GOG, but many offline games on Steam also ship without DRM and can be launched without running Steam.
Yeah, a lot of people don’t know that a decent number of games on Steam have no DRM and you can just archive the installation (make a portable copy so to speak).
In another answer I named gog for that. But…it’s mostly older games, so not really helpful if You also like new games or even AAA.
But you also could “crack” most steam games so easily it’s absurd. So, every installed (or archived) game would still run without. The steam-drm is trivial.
I’d be glad without the silly slow disks.
Games aren’t streamed from the optical disks anymore. 8th gen of consoles (PS4 and Xbox one) required installing to a drive in order to play since HDD/SSD over sata is faster than optical.
Don’t most games need net for verification or updating anyway?
Yes, for updates, but I feel like you also need to do that on PC since we haven’t invented magic quite yet.
So it’s not yours even with a silly disk in hand
This does not follow from your previous statement. “If fish can’t fly then why are tomatoes red.” Games with the full game on disk work as is with whatever version of the game was put on there unless it requires online access.
In PS4 days, it was still common to be able to install & play games only from the disc. You were never forced to go online with your PS4. Even if you bought a game online you could always play offline. Besides pure online games of course.
Pure online games is kinda obvious 😁
Always offline = forever? Not license verification once a month or so?
You only had to put in the disc to play. So you could still trade or share your games with others after you played through.
So like 20yrs ago with PCs. Explains the many downloadable PS4 games. Trading was nice, yes. I’m baffled consoleros can still do this. Would’ve bet you were already brought down to our level.
I just found out even on PS5s with disc drive there are a lot of single player games that don’t need an initial patch or verification and are playable without being online. But Sony no longer makes this a requirement for publishers as it was with PS4, so more and more games need this. I have a PS5 without disc drive, so that’s not an option for me…
So…you have a driveless ps5 and couldn’t buy any ps5 game if it came on disk? You can only buy the license for your account?
But making it an option for devs probably means the end of media. Why would they even do that? As a Dev I want you to rent a license not own your shit.
I don’t think Sony allows PS5 games that are not available online.
“Sony makes it mandatory that you and your friends can share your games” was a major selling point. THIS IS FOR THE PLAYERS was they slogan. And they were really focusing on people’s needs back then.
Until Sony realised they can just milk people as Microsoft did or so …
