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Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

blog.playstation.com

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Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#321

Post by palmotea »

lelandfe wrote: post #38

To illustrate why this is stupid, I will furnish two links to purchase Dark Souls 3 (PS4, 2016) Ebay, to buy: $11 + shipping[0] PS Store, to rent: $60[1] [0] https://www.ebay.com/itm/298370753624 [1] https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/dark-souls-iii/

> To illustrate why this is stupid, I will furnish two links to purchase Dark Souls 3 (PS4, 2016)

> Ebay, to buy: $11 + shipping[0]

> PS Store, to rent: $60[1]

Yeah, Sony is stupid to be leaving money on the table like that. Lucky for us, we live in a market system that we can trust to optimize for maximum consumer benefit (like Sony is doing here). It's our revealed choice that we want to pay more for old games.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#323

Post by TFNA »

dylan604 wrote: post #39
phire wrote: post #23

With this news, I have to wonder how much longer bluray will live. Will we continue seeing new bluray releases of movies and TV shows for decades, or are their days numbered? The loss of console gaming presumably removes a guaranteed revenue source that was keeping Bluray pressing plants alive. Sales of DVDs and Bluray have been declining for years [1] [3] . Some people have been excited pushing the news that UHD blu…

I can't imagine content owners wanting the physical media to continue any longer than they can get away with. The control they have from digital only must make them feel so powerful. At least as long as everyone continues to buy into their DRM systems. I've recently looked into purchasing a dedicated 4K Blu-ray player to start building a disc collection again. I'm assuming there's some pretty decent deals in the used…

Why not just get everything on the high seas for free, instead of paying for used-bin stuff which is cheap but still costs something? I’m a huge cinephile with a collection on my hard drives of ripped Blu-ray and DVD images, a number running now into the four figures, and I have almost never paid for a physical disc; I own something like 6 that are in a box somewhere.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#324

Post by Lammy »

They also changed the way DRM works for digital games purchased after March 2026. It used to be a permanent license at purchase time and is now a temporary license that requires online check for the duration of the refund period with the claimed reason of combating “refund fraud”.

It's pretty hard for me to believe that going through the trouble to set up an entirely new Playstation account, buy a game, refund it, and have the dedication to stay offline forever to keep the game could possibly have been a widespread behavior. It will obviously be easy for them to ratchet that into online check required every 30 days once the current thing is out of the news cycle: https://kotaku.com/playstation-drm-ps4-ps5-support-30-days-o...

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#325

Post by popcar2 »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #191
asimovDev wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On PC you can fight this by buying from GOG DRM-free digital storefront or the second more sinister option

Gog might consider linux more, which will make me reconsider it. I stopped buying from them because the lack of linux support

Use something like Heroic Launcher which lets you easily download/install GOG games via Proton.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#326

Post by Kerrick »

fg137 wrote: post #304
kuerbel wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not op) it typically offers better video processing and upscaling, more accurate color reproduction, cleaner gradients, and superior HDR handling (including dynamic tone mapping on some models). Many also support Dolby Vision from UHD Blu rays, which the PS5 does not. It won't show on a bad screen that much, but a dedicated player will squeeze out more of the disc.

Knowing nothing about the topic: what kind of processing and upscaling happens when I play a 4k movie on a 4k TV?

Most blu-rays are 1080p, not 4K. The latter gets marketed as "UHD" and sold in a black case, to contrast the blue case of traditional FHD blu-rays.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#327

Post by ErneX »

dandellion wrote: post #267
antiloper wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There will always be modding and ways to play game dumps There won't because advances in defensive cybersecurity have made it so that software exploits are extremely rare (if they exist at all), and modern chips contain hardware defenses against electrical attacks like voltage glitching.

There are already more game dumps and mods than anyone can play in single lifetime. There are plenty games without DRM and always-online protections in GOG alone.

I think they mean on console, which has become increasingly difficult, there are a number of PS5s that can do it but that’s only because those were at older firmware versions as far as I know. The majority of the consoles are incapable of that unless other vulnerabilities are found.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#328

Post by mywittyname »

mrandish wrote: post #298

Between DRM, DLC, mandatory connectivity and the end of physical media, the future will look back on this era as the 'dark age' of digital gaming history. Maintaining activation servers, cloud storage and digital delivery costs money. If it doesn't disappear when the title reaches EOL, it certainly does when the company is gone or shifts business models. And draconian copyright laws create legal jeopardy around orpha…

For now, it's still possible to crack consoles and extract the games from disk. However, we are probably approaching an era where encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked.

However, the flip side is that so many games are built using common game engines, and receive multi-platform releases. So there's a broader surface area for potential preservation. Maybe the PS6 version is permanently dead, but the PC version lives on.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#329

Post by Night_Thastus »

maherbeg wrote: post #196
miiiiiike wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw my first Dolby Vision Blu-ray and immediately started a Blu-Ray collection. The Blu-ray player on the PS5 is fine, but a nice dedicated player from Sony blows it away. I would pay for my favorite albums on Blu-ray too. I wish more artists released their entire discography on a really well produced Blu-ray. NIN would be perfect for this. So many Halos, so many videos, all in release order. A real release of Pure…

What's better about the dedicated player out of curiosity?

There's a bit of misinformation here. At the end of the day, a blu-ray player is reading information from the disc and passing it onto the TV digitally - one player or another are going to do that identically. One can't have 'better color' or anything like that.

HOWEVER, there is an exception: Feature support. For example, not all blu-ray players support 4K blu rays. Not all players support Dolby Vision.

If you try to play a 4K blu ray disc in a non-4K blu ray player, it won't function at all (won't read). If you try to play a disc using Dolby Vision in a player that doesn't support it, it will fall back to HDR10.

But assuming 2 players both support the features a disc uses, the end output will be identical.

There's also upscaling, which some players can do differently.

Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

#330

Post by mikepurvis »

xp84 wrote: post #246
giwook wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've illustrated exactly why Sony is getting rid of physical media. Money.

Also, remember the marketing idea of the "Disney Vault"? In the 90s, Disney would take all their movies in and out of print basically, only selling tapes some of the time, and they'd charge top dollar for them, because you couldn't just walk into Walmart and grab a copy of "Cinderella" anytime. They created scarcity easily this way, since before ebay, finding specific things like a certain videotape at a thrift store…

Hopefully emulation and piracy will continue to provide a reasonable check valve on this getting too far out of control. I don't personally engage in either at present outside of an old homebrewed Wii U, but I feel like the existence of those is important to remind the digital storefront/platform owners that at the end of the day they aren't actually the only game in town.

Either that or eventually we'll have to get some antitrust stuff happening to open these things up, though Epic's App Store lawsuit does not give me much hope in that direction.

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