- godsammitdam@lemmy.zipEnglish44 minutes
Is there any reason not to be on PC? Larger libraries, open source, better graphics, larger communities, no extra sub on top of your internet to play with friends.
If we can’t have discs, in my opinion, why have consoles? If you want a console-like experience you can even use distros like SteamOS or Bazzite.
But absolutely fuck Sony and Rockstar and everyone trying to remove our physical media and games. If it weren’t against IP laws and such, I’d love to work for a physical production company who re-makes discs, cartridges, etc to preserve games. I know there are some who do limited runs for indie titles, giving them physical releases they otherwise wouldn’t have.
We need a more chill, less capitalist world.
31 minutesPreviously, the reason to not be on PC was a lower upfront cost, being able to sell and trade games, and not having to mess around to get games working. The first one still applies, but much less than in the past, and the second one is being killed outright. Consoles really don’t make much sense over PC any more. If price and not being tech-savvy are big enough issues, just game on a phone.
- NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish37 minutes
I used to buy the games I knew I’d want to play forever on disc for my PS4. Then the disc drive died, and while looking into repairing it I discovered they lock the drive to the mainboard by serial number and only “authorized repair centers” can flash the proper keys.
That’s when I gave up completely on consoles, bought most of those games at heavy discount on Steam, and walked from anything Sony bothers to fart out into the market.
- nao@sh.itjust.worksEnglish19 minutes
natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends
yet all of the comments below their post prefer physical
- enkonju@lemmy.worldEnglish3 hours
Consoles now cost nearly as much as a PCs, digital purchases are being revoked, and now discs are going away and you’re being locked into one storefront where Sony can charge whatever they want. I’ve enjoyed owning consoles for my entire life but they don’t make sense anymore. Somehow, Sony just made the the Steam Machine look like a smart purchase.
Maybe not the Steam Machine itself, but a dedicated PC plugged into the TV using SteamOS, certainly. That’s going to be my “console” going forward after this gen.
- 2 hours
To be fair, i’d say the Steam Machine is relatively cost competitive with other PC pre-builds. DIY will save you money but you’ll never end up with a system that’s as small or quiet, and you have to really know what you’re doing.
The Steam Machine is not such a bad deal really, aside from the fact that every PC is a bad deal in 2026.
Right now it’s way too expensive for me, but that’s because I currently have a PS5, Steam Deck, Switch 2, and PC that was mid-range in late 2021 that were bought when prices were reasonable. Once games I want to play come out that I can’t play on my current hardware, we’ll see where the market’s at and what makes sense, price-wise. I might have to go without high-end games for a while or even for good if prices never become sane again. Hoping I can squeeze several more years out of what I have now.
If someone had no way to play games and wanted to start gaming on the TV now without having to build something, a Steam Machine still would be a hard recommendation when the Switch 2 exists at a decent price, with the added benefit of being portable. The Steam Machine’s only worth it at its current price for people who like to tinker.
- TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish46 minutes
Ok, I guess I’ll be switching to Xbox for Next Gen then. As long as they keep optical media, that is.
I’ll just opt out of gaming altogether if it has to come with it. Say what you will about Nintendo but at least they are smart enough to keep their games on removable media (for the games worth playing at least)
You remember the Xbox One launch, right? 0% chance that Microsoft isn’t doing the same thing.
It was one of the only advantages left over PC, at least.
- ZILtoid1991@lemmy.worldEnglish1 hour
Physical media bad, drive obstructs airflow from ULTRAGAMING WATERCOOLER 42069 and you can’t overclock to gain 0.00001fps in CALL OF ARMY 853048646 - WAR IS PAIN, also drive would make laptop not ultrathin and elegant. /j just in case (I still have one in my desktop, and looking for one for my ThinkPad L440)
- TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish44 minutes
A prerequisite to playing games is having media to play them from, there are plenty of digital downloads that have been lost for good because of delisting. If a game can be taken away, it’s not my game
- atomicbocks@sh.itjust.worksEnglish2 hours
I wonder how much longer we’ll be able to buy 4K Blu-rays then…
There is no GOG or Steam for movies. “Digital copies” are just extended rentals for TV and movies, so anyone revolting against streaming price increases are either pirating or moving to physical, because it’s all that’s left. It pushed me back to physical, for sure, so there’s still money to be made there.
- 24 minutes
Maybe if they got rid of DRM. It sounds like Blu-Ray, especially UHD would be too much pain on Linux. And anyway, all the solutions are just based around usage of leaked keys (which will keep getting revoked).
How come CDs don’t need DRM? Perhaps they didn’t think of it in the past (before CD-R), but I’d say it keeps proving itself useless over the years.
CDs just work, and will just work.
Leaked Blu-Ray player keys can and will eventually get revoked. So the best bet is to just rip it to a HDD/NAS ASAP.
But at that point it’s just unnecessary steps to obtain same result as torrenting what someone else already ripped.Blu Rays are a pain on Linux, but MakeMKV rips these discs pretty universally. It sucks that it has to be done this way, but I still get my videos in full quality, well above what streaming services send me, and they can’t take it from me. In my experience, though I don’t pirate much anymore, seeders don’t have much desire to seed the full uncompressed video, let alone the special features. And you’re correct; CDs didn’t have DRM, because the invention of the format predated their desire to make DRM. DVDs had very basic DRM, but it’s now been thoroughly broken wide open.
They won’t. Latency is a bitch. There is a reason why geforce now is still a niche thing, despite offering a free tier.
Yeah, the tech won’t be there yet for enough people. If civilization (or the PS brand) doesn’t collapse, who knows for the PS7 and beyond?
- 5 hours
Remember when XB1 was going to be digital-only and Sony roasted it so badly Microsoft had to walk it back?
Sad thing is, I always figured this was going to be inevitable. I just didn’t think it would happen this soon.
- BenReilly97@lemmy.worldEnglish1 hour
Microsoft has the chance to do the funniest thing.
They won’t, of course. They’d rather shoot themselves in the foot than do something smart.
I just didn’t think it would happen this soon.
I hate to be the one to tell you this but…
That was 13 years ago. That announcement is almost high school aged.
And 13 years before that announcement was the start of the PS2 era.
That is why you need a strong competition. Unfortunately Sony doesn’t have one, so they can do whatever they want.
Someone at Sony is feeling very smart and modern right now, totally unaware that PlayStation is now a dead brand walking.
They are a strong brand, but that’s not going to be enough to justify a definitely-$1k+ PS6 compared to increasing handheld and console-like gaming options that are not locked down ecosystems. Their exclusives likely can’t save them, they have been dying out already.
Physical media was one of the few remaining differentiators for hardcore collectors and loyalists. Even if I’m sure it’s a greatly diminished part of their bottom line, it’s a psychological anchor that justifies the existence of a console. Now their console will be just another extremely handicapped and uncompetitive digital box, even if (as recently reported) they copy the Switch dockable format.
For me, the locked ecosystem of consoles was justified by a lower price for the hardware and the option to sell or trade the software. Now that neither is going to be a thing any more, my 40+ years of console gaming will be ending after this gen. It’s gonna be dedicated PCs plugged into the TV from here on out.
- 4 hours
Imagine if you will, they released a new ps2 with ps1 backward compatibility and optional discs.
I’d pay $500 right now.
- TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish42 minutes
You can buy a used PS2 right now that has that for way less? Even if you demand an hdmi mod, it’s way less than that
Pretty much all 3D PS2 games can be played in widescreen via emulation. They’re better than the original.
Realistically, with half-finished games on launch and mandatory day one patches, this won’t be a meaningful shift in how much you actually “own” your games, but dropping this 2 days after they deleted 550 movies that folks had bought and paid for and ostensibly “owned” from the ecosystem is a real bad look.
- mrfriki@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
The problem with discs vs. digital never was how much of the game you own or the fact that you can play the same disc 20 years down the road. It boils down to the fact that you can no longer sell the game you own after finishing it.
- Feyd@programming.devEnglish4 hours
Or even just lend it to a friend. When I was a kid everyone in my group would get a different game and share them. We barely would have been able to play anything if we didn’t share
- atomicbocks@sh.itjust.worksEnglish2 hours
See, this is the real problem. Anybody with an MBA is going to look at your statement and think about all the money they didn’t get because they’re too fucking stupid to realize that you would not have bought more games if you had to buy multiple copies. It’s the same thing with like pirating music they used to talk about how much money they’ve lost, and I used to think no I just wouldn’t have bought that album. So they’ve spent all this time trying to figure out how to chase down dollars they never would’ve gotten to begin with.
- Feyd@programming.devEnglish2 hours
Yeah the reality is I would have just read (more) books from the library and played fewer video games
- Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
I don’t think reselling is the big issue to me; just ownership. Some high-guarantee method of both retaining and controlling the product in question, which is often failed by our technical measures and server checks.
I’m fine with digital, even when it prevents reselling. I’m just less fine with it when license holders have the right to say “No, I’m done!” and pull their side of the contract.
- flandish@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
yeah but the way they “release” games the disc is just a series of wget requests for patch files and if they take that endpoint down the disc is worthless.
Yes, it’s less than ideal, but still preferable to having NO way to sell or trade a license while the servers are still up. Games are becoming too big to fit on a single Bluray anyway.
- 4 hours
We used to finish games. No update bullshit. A game was done when it was done. Humans can do this shit. Capitalism erodes our skills and our brains.
Just look at crash on ps1. Amazing.
- atomicbocks@sh.itjust.worksEnglish2 hours
Yes, but also no… For instance there were definitely bugs in Mario 64 that were corrected in later editions of Mario 64 like Mario 64DD and the one that came out on the DS. One very famous bug that’s been corrected is the ability to backwards long jump up the stairs in the upper section of the castle before having enough stars to climb the stairs.
Obviously these weren’t game breaking bugs in the same way that day one patches are fixing things, but it’s also not exactly correct to say it didn’t happen in the before time.
- 1 hour
Right, it happened, but Usually they were small bugs.
I’m referring more to unnessecary updating every week . i hate that shit
- popcar2@piefed.caEnglish5 hours
I’m with you, this is an insanely ballsy move. One of the biggest pros of a console is that you could still buy physical games and trade it with friends or sell it used to someone else. If everything is going digital, what’s the point?
Here we even have a local chain that rents you physical games for a week at a time…
- Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
For me it’s called a library.
On a side note, while I very much understand people’s general hate of DRM, I am curious if there’d be interest in a digital library service that lets people borrow video games to download with lite-DRM systems attached (something small, to make certain people don’t borrow the whole catalog, and then crack them on the spot)
I’m sure it’s easy for people to come up with gripes about such a system, or any use of DRM, and would express their preference for physical, but: Physical games prioritize/benefit consoles over PCs, and prioritize AAA games for which the costs of large disc printing runs make more sense. You’re not likely to find many copies of Mina the Hollower at libraries.
- makeshift0546@lemmy.todayEnglish2 hours
The last reason to own a console just died.
Fuck you Sony. Fuck valve too, completely destroyed ownership of games.
I’m okay with no physical on PC, because there are ways to maintain control over your games, whether legal or not.
There are still DRM-free games. Call it just buying a license if you want, but they can’t be taken away from you.
Nobody bought my old copy of Uncharted 4 either. I had to give it away for free.
- makeshift0546@lemmy.todayEnglish38 seconds
I literally sold mine a month after release when I finished for something like 85% of new on Amazon.
Consoles are by a long shot the cheapest way to play games unless you want a billion throughs. This isn’t some imaginary scenario. The are still rental services for discs. But yeah keep on simping for corpos because you aren’t clever enough to see the difference.
I get if they reduced disc output but fully ending is nasty work and stripping away consumer choice. There tons of factors of why people have been going digital lately and I still do a mix of both. I don’t trust the big 3 with a digital only landscape even Switch’s 2 gamekey cards still have issues. I guess the good times are slowly ending.
I would argue that DRM-free has always been what we really need rather than the physical media, particularly in the era of patching.
- 4 hours
True. But also, some places that don’t have reliable Internet access rely on physical media. They’re cutting out part of the market entirely.
I read PS physical sales are currently about 15% of the market. That was about 70 million sales in 2025. Seems dumb to cut that out, but maybe it will work out for them.
I forgot about that part. I hope people get them to rethink this.
- 4 hours
It says in the article that Sony (and other platforms too) have seen a significant drop in purchases of physical media. So I really think they just don’t care about those customers that rely on it and Even with some backlash this is likely to go ahead (same as with Blu-ray disks which are also being sunsetted). I can’t say I’m surprised that they’re doing this given that they want to stop manufacturing Blu-rays altogether.
- 4 hours
The issue, normies dont understand DRM free digital media. Once its digital its like its invisible. A disc or a tape, is so easy to understand, you just HAVE it and it works.
My tapes from the 80s/90s just work when I put them in. Does a disc game or digital game from even 2018 do that? Likely not.
Does a disc game or digital game from even 2018 do that?
Yes. When it comes to Sony, any PS4 game (so from 2013 and on) will work on a PS4 or PS5 with a disc drive.
Normies figure it out on a lag, but they get there, with enough exposure to nerds like us.
- 4 hours
It’s going to make companies like Limited Run and Video Games Plus more important. You’ll end up waiting a LONG time for a physical release, though.
Since it’s guaranteed the next gen of consoles won’t have disc drives, they’re going to be gone as well.
- 4 hours
In the same week they’re in the spotlight again for removing purchased content from people’s libraries?
Born too late to explore the world, too early to explore space - but just in time to watch the rise and enshitification of the internet and gaming.
I have a feeling humanity won’t last long enough to be exploring space, anyway.
