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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

#681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let’s take all these games as great artworks - why don’t their creators have the right to destroy them? Because they sold them . They put it out in the world. If they just made it and then immediately destroyed it, wonderful! But they didn't. And, also, their creators are not a monolith. They were worked on by hundreds of hands. The production company shouldn't get to unilaterally make that decision. > Should be co…

> Because they sold them. They put it out in the world. If they just made it and then immediately destroyed it, wonderful! But they didn't. They sold a pass to play the game while it was open. Just like a swimming pool or a buffet. Just because we got an executable software instead of a wrist band doesn’t change what it is. Is the naming convention the sticking point here? Did we really think it meant “all you can ea…

Sorry, but I don't believe in the categorical imperative. This is this and that is that.

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

#682
post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is partially false, Steam has an official system for children and families to share purchased games: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/054C-3167-DD7F-49... In practice, Steam is likely not going to know or care if the owner of a Steam account has died and someone else is using the account credentials.

Reading through Steam's list of what's allowed or not, it all seems very reasonable: * Up to 6 people can share games in a family account * Each account can join as an adult or a child * No age verification done, the person who created the account simply marks each invitation as "join as an adult" or "join as a child" * Adult members have parental controls over child members and can control which games they have acce…

One thing Steam doesn't advertise is that all family members MUST be all using the same IP address or it refuses to link the accounts.

If you use a VPN then gl

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

#683
post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a decision to get away from other consoles and only invest in Steam a while ago. In the 2010s I was a big Vita player but Sony backed away from investing in the Vita and I saw that the kind of Japanese games I liked were coming out on Steam so I sold my Vita.

Steam has been (mostly) a good citizen. But there's not much in the way of legal or technical hurdles to them going down the same path. It's all goodwill and reputation. I hope it's enough.

You can at least make local backups of your Steam games. If a game is removed such that you can't even download it anymore, you can always just install it manually.

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

#684

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/

We do this with movie night now. It can be 15 bucks to rent an HD movie - not even a new release! Frequently it’s cheaper to buy a copy and give it to a thrift store afterwards.

I’m considering trying one of the mail order rental companies again.

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

#685
post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading through Steam's list of what's allowed or not, it all seems very reasonable: * Up to 6 people can share games in a family account * Each account can join as an adult or a child * No age verification done, the person who created the account simply marks each invitation as "join as an adult" or "join as a child" * Adult members have parental controls over child members and can control which games they have acce…

One thing Steam doesn't advertise is that all family members MUST be all using the same IP address or it refuses to link the accounts. If you use a VPN then gl

I think that's the VPN rather than the IP. I've had a family set up with someone I don't live with for years and it's never been an issue. The initial account enrollment has to be in the physically same location but after that you can roam.

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

#686
post #435

Great buildup on Sony's side to gain trust in this move in the gaming community ahead of this announcement when just this week they again pulled hundreds of "purchased" movies from customer's libraries without refund, reminding everyone that digital content is rented, not owned. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/sony-erases-digital-...

The sad reality of DRM is that only rentals and subscriptions can honestly be done with it. You can guarantee access to a subscription library (Netflix, Xbox Game Pass, etc) for 30 days. You cannot guarantee access 30+ years in the future. And selling access like that is just a lie.

I do think if you are claiming something is not permanent you should basically have to make some specific claims about the timeliness of it (eg you can use it for at least 10 years or your money back).

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

#687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Sony is notoriously bad at actually securing their consoles.

The PS5 has been pretty secure (though, not perfect). They learned their lesson from the PS4 and took some pages out of the Microsoft playbook - brought back the hypervisor and implemented e-fuses. Byepervisor did crack the hypervisor, but it requires an old version of the firmware and the console has to be kept offline to avoid being upgraded. There's no mechanism to downgrade the firmware like there was with the PS…

All true, but you don’t need to crack the hypervisor to play cracked games, and if you manage to jailbreak your console there are game backports for older firmware versions.

Also, there are unreleased kernel exploits (i.e. jailbreaks) even for the most recent firmware versions, which will inevitably come out in the future.

The scene is not as mature as PS4, but a lot of progress was made this year.

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

#689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam isn't the Steam machine. If somebody's on a budget a PC you could get for a couple hundred is way more than enough to run nearly all games on Steam; $600 could get you a beast of a machine. I don't really know who the market for the Steam Machine is, because that price is kind of insane. I suppose we'll see how things look in a year or two there.

> $600 could get you a beast of a machine Where can you get a new gaming "beast of a machine" for $600? In the past you could build a reasonable gaming machine for $600 but parts are drastically more expensive today. If you go to microcenter and look for gaming PCs, their cheapest option is $800 [1]. PC Part Picker's entry level build is $780 [2]. The only option I found with these constraints is this computer from W…

In the past you could build a reasonable one for $200-$300. When "we" were growing up - consoles used to offer huge performance at a tremendous discount. For instance the video card in the original XBox was worth significantly more than the entire system's retail cost. But that era ended at the PS4. Consoles since then are sold with midrange hardware, derivative of typical retail hardware, sold for or near profit on day 1. Beyond this fact, their prices tend to stay fairly comparable to launch prices even as the price of hardware plummets. And now a days we've apparently entered the era of their prices going up relative to launch prices lol.

So the most expensive, and important, by far on both accounts part of a decent gaming PC is the video card. A PS5 is around an RX 6700 or a NVidia 2080, and that's being generous. That's a ~$300 card. You then have $300 left for case + mobo + CPU + RAM, which isn't hard. And in reality your CPU doesn't really matter (within reason) because in modern times basically 0 games are CPU limited. It's pretty much always the GPU. Work out the minimum amount you can get the non-GPU parts from, use your remaining budget on the GPU - you'll end up with a great machine for easily under $600.

There's a bunch of subreddits dedicated to this exact topic as well. /buildapcforme could be nice for more specific advice. In general I'd recommend against buying prebuilt systems. The markup they charge is unreasonably high and 'building' a PC in modern times is basically legos for adults, and there's about a million videos on YouTube showing you exactly what to do, step by step.

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

#690
post #459
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jokes on them if they think a significant portion of those sales will convert

Of course they will convert. Not all, but even a single person buying the game at full price is better than dozens of reselling transactions where Sony makes no money and is actually losing money as those people are not buying new games. Not a fan of this of course, just saying it’s a calculated move they just copied from other industries. People complain and minority ends up following their principles, but similarly…

> Not all, but even a single person buying the game at full price is better

I'm not so sure this is the case. It would massively reduce their market share which is one of the biggest reasons ps5 is relevant imo.

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