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/
It's not just games. For several years the cheapest way to buy a legit U.S. Office 365 sub is to order a physical box from Amazon on Black Friday. Inside the box is nothing but a scratch-off card with the online license key. It's literally cheaper to get printed color packaging overnight delivered to my door than to sign up on the webpage.
Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
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Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#812Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Because within my job/industry, getting caught pirating would end my career.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#813Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It looks great on youtube at 4k, at least if you are somewhere where they are transmitting it through youtube.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#814Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's there to like about Trump? And how do those compare against all the negative things he's done/caused so far?
There is disliking Trump and then there is thinking that Trump is so bad that the EU would break international copyright agreements just to spite him.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#815Discs 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…
"The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy." I understand that this is the reality we live in, but I don't know how we have accepted it.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#816Discs 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…
I remember joke “you will own nothing and will be happy”, it is less of a joke now.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#817Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If steam ever goes up in smoke, there will be infinite justification to never trust download only ever again.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#818Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were using the word correctly, "monopoly" doesn't only mean greatly dominant player in an open market. Current consoles are by definition vertical monopolies.
There is no legal, economic, or dictionary definition of monopoly that supports your position. The closest example is "aftermarket" (what you call vertical) following the 90's Kodak SC case, which has long since fizzled out. Monopoly might as well not mean anything if you can define it however narrowly you want.
'1: exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action specifically : exclusive control of a particular market that is marked by the power to control prices and exclude competition.'
That definition doesn't define any boundaries on to what market a company has control over. A hardware platform like Playstation only has one store, run by the company who sells the platform; explicit control of the particular market, that market being Playstation games. By going digital only, they now have total command of supply. They also explicitly deny competition from participating. They even have a hand in pricing the games sold on the platforms, an ability they're able to leverage because they hold a vertical monopoly.
The issue isn't me or anyone else defining the word "monopoly" too broadly, it's that the frog has so thoroughly been boiled on what we once considered monopolies that we can no longer see a monopoly for what it is even when it's self-evidently obvious. I agree that anti-trust enforcement has become lax, I'm not arguing that it hasn't... but it shouldn't have. It's been about 30 years of letting big tech and media conglomerates do whatever they want and it is time for that to stop, and not just for video games.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#819Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except it really is. I don't see how businesses don't understand how this sort of anti-customer predatory behavior, MBA stuff, is directly driving reduced sales. The PS5, for instance, has only managed 96 million sales. For contrast the PS2 managed 160 million sales to a smaller market with much fiercer competition. And I'm one of those tens of millions opting out. The PS2 felt like a great consumer-focused value. Mo…
So they sold half as many. The next question should be: did they make more than twice as much profit per sale? I suspect the answer is yes.
- The published profit margins from Sony are misleading. They take maximal advantage of inflation, currency shifts, and generational overlap to create a picture of profitability that is well above whatever the 'real' figure might be.
- You're comparing the present to the past, instead of an alternative present. Given the very large increases in market size and reduction in competition I think there's little doubt a consumer friendly Sony could have easily doubled their sales, if not substantially more.
- The downward slope of anti-consumerism is not sustainable. You end up in a situation where you have to keep charging more and more for a product where demand keeps going lower and lower. Especially as we reach an era of declining fertility, there's only so many fools.
- Why would you even want to do this? Even if, and I think that's a huge if, Sony ended up more profitable than good behavior would have yielded, it's going to be by the thinnest of margins. And they've put themselves in a situation where they're now in an increasingly adversarial relationship with their own users. See companies like EA or Activision on the software side doing the same thing. I think there's some je ne sais pas to be had for leaders of a beloved companies, as opposed to leaders of yet another corporate bottom feeder.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#820Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This week a Microsoft representative told Congress that all Minecraft servers except the ones sponsored by Microsoft are illegal piracy.
Microsoft themselves support self-hosting Minecraft servers. As evidenced by the fact that the server software itself is provided as a free download from an official Minecraft (and thus Microsoft branded) site.