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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

#551

Post by hnlmorg »

bogwog wrote: post #542
dogwalker5000 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they know consumers are trapped. Gaming is a luxury good. We can all just walk away.

Walking away from the closed platform you invested hundreds/thousands of dollars into over the years is a luxury (especially if you were mislead into buying a PS5 with a disc drive thinking it'd be supported at least until the end of the product's lifespan) Monopolies, anti-competitive behavior, and anti-consumer behavior in general are all bad bad bad. You have to be a very interesting individual to disagree with th…

> especially if you were mislead into buying a PS5 with a disc drive thinking it'd be supported at least until the end of the product's lifespan

8 years is roughly the lifespan for a games console though.

And I say this as someone who hates Sony perhaps more than most, having lived through their the CD rootkit and PS3 OtherOS debacles. And been burned by their substandard yet overpriced audio equipment.

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

#552

Post by kjkjadksj »

mywittyname wrote: post #337
CM30 wrote: post #165

Well, if Nintendo and Microsoft go the same route (and sadly, I see that being almost inevitable at some point), that's probably the end of my interest in gaming as a whole. I generally refuse to 'rent' or 'license' things on a temporary basis, and have decided in this generation that every game I'll get for Switch 2 will be a physical game on cart version, without exception. And the reasons for that are pretty simpl…

Counter-argument: I have a Steam account associated with a day 1 purchase of Half Life 2 (so, 25 years or so). Every game I've ever purchased is still available for me to download, while I lost probably 50% or more of my physical games collection. If I'm renting those games, it sure seems like a good deal. I do appreciate that console online market places have not historically been as well managed as Steam. But also,…

Your library on steam is tied to you. When you die, it is gone. Your children or family using it is against terms of use.

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

#553

Post by chaosharmonic »

cjk wrote: post #358
mywittyname wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sony in particular is doubling down on platform exclusives again. I was waiting for Ghost of Yōtei to come out on PC, but Sony cancelled the port. We're well and truly fucked without physical media for exclusives like this.

Then let them turn into SEGA.

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

#554

Post by moniosi »

artisinal wrote: post #204
antisthenes wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's kind of an annoying side effect of this is that you have all this fancy new display tech, like quantum dot LED (marketing term, but w/e), or OLED, but it's all pointless because you're just watching it with crappy compression, negating the quality gains.

The football World Cup 2026 is being broadcast in 1080p with washed out colors. Yet every shop was advertising 4K OLED for the best experience of watching the matches.

i'm proud my country (italy) pionereed dct-based digital transmission during the 1990 world cup, i wish we lived in a present were europe was still ahead (or at least on par with) the rest of the world

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

#555

Post by kjkjadksj »

buran77 wrote: post #8

Discs are less convenient so people have slowly moved to digital sales. This worked even better for console manufacturers, cheaper to drop that disc reader, and the second hand market is effectively dead which increases new game sales. The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy. And the most relevant part is that you cannot transfer/sell a digital copy. For everything else…

Discs are way more convenient. You can store how many multi hundred gb games on your internal storage before you have to start triaging. Also, want to play a game you haven’t played in a while after work? Sorry, 3 hour forced update.

In the old disc era you’d just pop in the disk and start playing in minutes. You could have as many disks as would fit in your house.

Oh no, you have to stand up and walk 10ft to put it in. What a great inconvenience.

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

#556

Post by sixdimensional »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #178

I have a PS4pro; technically I also already own a PS5 (kid-brother arrangement; not currently in my possession). When he gets his PS6, I'll get my PS5 back... then still keep the PS4 (always been offline: RDR2; GTA5; &c). If Sony doesn't offer GTA6 on disc, offline: I'll sell the PS5, too. I just got a 5070Ti, so it's probably back to PC-MasterRace I'll go... Reasons like this [Sony's 2028 disc-stop] are exactly why…

You're assuming that you'll still be able to get a personal computer in the future. With the rate that we are losing the ability to purchase new affordable equipment, I am not sure how much longer personal computers will remain a thing except for hobbyists, and if they will get much more expensive.

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

#557

Post by hnlmorg »

neilv wrote: post #525
Marcan wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget closing the PS3 and Vita Playstation stores, which they announced at the same time: https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/an-update-on-playsta... This is a weird marketing strategy. They must feel free to do as they please since they know consumers are trapped.

> This is a weird marketing strategy. They must feel free to do as they please since they know consumers are trapped. I've been on PlayStation family since PS2, and used to think I was married to it, with my game library and my player character stuff/gear/creations in various games. But the platform no longer lets me play many of those games, anyway, whether due to console gen or server shutdowns. And nobody cares ab…

Server shutdowns are a problem regardless of the platform.

There used to be a time when PC games allowed you to connect to random servers. These days Minecraft is the only one that still allows it. And even there, Microsoft go hard on the upselling of their Realms.

Some studios kill their servers after just a couple of years. Even for games that are online first.

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

#558

Post by canthonytucci »

gambiting wrote: post #418
canthonytucci wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Is there a lower form of “art” than always online AAA garbage? Im not going to lose any sleep over _COD 75: More of the Same Bullshit_ becoming lost media

I cannot explain how offensive this is to work of people who work on these games. Years and years of my life working on some incredible AAA games and you call it garbage because it's always online. Like, you think all the effort, all the actual art, music, writing, lore, world building....all of it garbage, because the game is online only? Do you think WoW is garbage and "art" in quotes? I mean, it's the internet, yo…

I’m calling it garbage because the content is boring and the gameplay is tired for well over 99 out of 100 games I see.

The music, visual design, dialogue and “world building” of most games (indie and AAA) is trite recycled junk that without the budget would be indistinguishable from the output of a high school drama club (at best).

That’s before we talk about the cynical stuff like the always online, the loot boxes, the decontenting, the Day 1 dlc, the lack of physical disks you can share with friends or sell to GameStop, the bugs, the prices, etc. etc. etc.

I have failed at enough art and software myself to totally appreciate how much effort it takes to ship something even on the level of the crap that most games are. That doesn’t mean I think that makes them precious and people should be compelled to preserve them. Slop is slop regardless of if it was made by a human or a robot.

People put a lot of effort in to a lot of things that yield boring and or unethical results all the time, I don’t know why people treat games as some special case.

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

#560

Post by kjkjadksj »

gdulli wrote: post #55
r0ckarong wrote: post #32

Most games with retail copies drop in price soon after the hype window is over. They stay full launch retail price in the PSN store unless there is a "sale". Anti-consumerism at its finest.

I wonder if that's because there's a downward price pressure on physical inventory because it needs to get liquidated to free up physical space for new inventory.

I never saw actual downward price pressure on unsold new physical games. At most they’d go for $45 instead of $60. Only at gamestop with the most ratty booger infested chewed by dog used copy would you see real deals. That or boomer parents selling off their kids childhood when they went off to college for pennies on the dollar, but I think going forward gen x parents are smart enough to check prevailing values on electronics, so that source of deals are gone too.
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