This is yet another nail in the coffin of physical media. Or, in other words games you actually own instead of long term lease.
It's not like physical media makes any difference anyway these days.
Actual disk often gets just a glorified installer, and even if it includes the entire game you're likely to have to activate it online anyway.
The "own your games" ship has sailed long ago, unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups.
unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups
Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer. I try to buy games there instead of Steam, purely for this reason.
Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer.
Note that this is a major selling point for GOG and available on most of their library, but unlike their early days, not everything is DRM-free.
The difference is the price of buying discs vs. buying from a digital store that has no competitors.
I've bought almost exclusively second-hand discs for my PS5, because they're like half the price for the exact same content.
Sadly it'll probably be just a matter of time before those will be phased out as well, one way or another.
Or, in other words games you actually own
Newer games rarely have the entire game on the disc. Usually there's mandatory patches that must be downloaded to play it. I've seen games where there's only a few hundred MB on the disc while the whole game is maybe 15 or 20 GB.
This means you don't really own the game, since if Sony (or Microsoft or whoever) take down the downloads for the game, you won't actually be able to play it any more.
Essentially your choice is between a physical license key (the disc) plus a download of the game, or a digital license key plus a download of the game.
I think the steam deck is genuinely the only console worth buying these days.
I REALLY want Sony to release a handheld that can run PS1, PS2 and PS3 games 🥺
So...steamdeck lol
Vita can Run 99% of PS1 games "natively" and has a bunch of PS2 ports (some through PSP). Not PS3 though.
It would be so funny if the EU decided Sony was a gatekeeper on the consoles without disc drives and forced them to allow 3rd party app store on them.
Hey, a guy can dream.
What the EU actually needs to do is to spearhead and help find everyone a way to actually “own” digital things. I think I’d be fine with not having a disk drive if I could buy my game, not be reliant on servers to download it in the future, trade my games with friends, and choose to sell it when I felt like it.
We need to find a way to get back (most of) the benefits of physical media without actually having to go back to it.
"If a game needs a server and the official servers shut down, the protocols have to be released to the public". I think it would be a good starting point.
One big reason people still play on consoles to this day is because they own a physical copy of their games and can play on their consoles even offline.
Sometimes
I couldn’t play Baldur’s Gate 3, a single-player game, when my internet went out. That pissed me right off.
for that value just get a pc honestly not a locked down freebsd based console
No joke. A decent gaming pc can be built around that price and be used for so much more. Even cheaper if you hunt for used parts.
People who buy consoles do it for the "press a button to game".
Not necessarily because they don't understand pc's, but because they don't want the faff.
At $700 you could build a pretty decent PC that would last a lot longer (3060 12gb, Ryzen 5 5600, 16gb of DDR4), and build a steam library that you'll have 20 years from now. I've had the same monitor, keyboard and mouse for an easy 10; controllers don't last that long. They're reaching a point where there's less and less of an actual argument for owning one.
build a steam library that you'll have 20 years from now
How do you know that Steam will be around in 20 years?
Use GOG instead. The DRM-free game installers will outlive Steam :)
How do you know that Steam will be around in 20 years?
Use GOG instead, since the DRM-free game installers will outlive Steam :)
How do you know Windows will keep compatibility in 20 years? Valve money partially goes into Proton/WINE development and an evolution of that will absolutely be around in 20 years, just WINE was around 20 years ago already. CD Project doesn't put any GOG/Cyberpunk money into breaking the Windows monopoly. (Also plenty of titles on Steam come without DRM because DRM is optional.)
Unfortunately, physical media for gaming died when always-online DRM was normalized. It doesn't matter if you have a game on a disc when you have to phone home every time to use it. The corporation may still block your access.
One more step in ensuring no one owns anything. Lease or rent are your options.
Physical media or full rejection. Fuck you business school zombies squeezing blood from rocks
Pointless if the discs still need to talk to the server before you can use them.
Reminder that you can put in whatever you want in a PC. And that you can get a decent gaming machine for 1k (700+PS plus).
CD Drive? No problem. DVD? Of course. Another SSD? Get some random 50$ thing and throw it in there. Floppy? Harvest some old PC and voila.
The real point is that you can upgrade it incrementally, you don't have to throw it away, and upgrading will allow you to play all your old games from generation to generation without having to rebuy them for the latest Gen.
While this is true, consoles still manage to have a way more convenient experience. Its the only reason why they exist (today)
Sony's problems are twofold:
If they had plenty of the latter, they could weather this. But there are still games releasing for the PS4, and they have had 1, maybe 2 PS5 releases that would qualify as first party this year (that don't bubble down to PC).
Jesus christ, Nintendo is gonna win it all aren't they?
Nintendo is going to continue to eat everybody's lunch with decisions like this one
I stopped buying consoles after they wanted to charge me to use the internet. That's not how this works.
Paystation
Ahhhh, so my ps5 is the most superior PlayStation still, good to know.
799€ here, 920€ with a disc drive. That is stupidly insane for a console. We're almost breaking the 1000€ barrier for an "upgrade", not even the new generation.
I'd bet my money Sony is just testing the grounds to see if they can set PS6 price in a few years over the 1k barrier.
All good points in the comments, but something I haven't seen a anyone talk about yet:
WHY is a DISK DRIVE $80??? All it does is read a disk. Any encryption on the disk would be decrypted on the console. External disk drives are like $20. If you specially brand them maybe you could go up to $40.
But $80? That's like a Gameboy Advance. That's a miyoo mini plus. That's an entire console in itself.
That's actually below market value for an external 4K UHD drive.
You're right! My point no longer stands. Removing the disk drive would then save about $100 from the console, which makes sense to remove if you're cutting costs and most players play digital anyways.
~also if you're pushing digital games.
It's too expensive. $500 is already too much for these things.
But capitalism's gotta capitalism.
I think Sony never wanted a physical media PS5 console. The design made it seem like an after thought. Like a growth on the side of sleek lines.
Nah I'm good with my 2017 jailbroken switch with free games lol
What games are even worth it? Sony has like 5 'must play" exclusive games on their console
Like it or not the majority of game purchases are digital these days. It's a sad development for sure. I buy all my console games as physical discs myself.
Why can't you just plug in a random-ass USB 4KBR-disc drive?
Or sell one that we can use to bring in games from PS1, 2, 3, 4 and 5? And state that the drive will be able to be used going forward, into the next gen and beyond.
They've got a rich gaming history at this point and they don't care because they'd rather sell you an $80 digital copy that they can take away at any time and you can't trade it in or really own it. And it's the same with PC games as well, courtesy of Valve and then everyone else.
If the future is digital, we need laws that allow us to transfer ownership of digital content. It would have to be secure, obviously. Not just "steal somebody's console and trade all their games in".
How much space does it come out of the box? I bought my PS5 a year ago.
It came with 667GB of space. Some games take up 100gb.
And now you want to make it digital only??? Uhhhh, fuck that. You better be giving me like 1000 terabytes.
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