Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation • Hacker News Board

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

#831

Post by GreenWatermelon » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 10:09 AM UTC

carra wrote: post #481

mywittyname wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

People have got too used to Steam doing things well, but don't forget that: 1) that's not the norm, and 2) there's no telling when it will change. Gabe Newell will retire not too long from now. Will the next one in charge be so lenient? Don't forget what happened with Unity, for instance.

Unity is publicly traded, Valve is privately-owned and Engineer-led and Gabe is handsoff according to all current reporting, so I think Valve is still good for the foreseeable future.

In fact, it's thanks to Valve that I no longer need windows to run games and have finally nuked it from my system a bit over a year ago.

So yeah, nothin remains good forever, but credit where it's due, and Valve's DRM is cosmetic at best, and trivial to bypass.

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

#832

Post by GreenWatermelon » Wed, Jul 08, 2026, 10:13 AM UTC

ErneX wrote: post #327

dandellion wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At his point, buy the SteamMachine if it's available on your region and get the same couch-experience.

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

#833

Post by wtetzner » Fri, Jul 10, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

nemomarx wrote: post #392

wtetzner wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what's the point of even releasing the next console? The current console generation has barely gotten started, and developers have barely taken advantage of the new hardware. Maybe they need to look at releasing a cheaper console and making more quality games instead of constantly pushing so hard on graphics. Graphics help sales to an extent, but it's clearly not the whole story, given the popularity of the Wii o…

For the ps6, they were already done with design and they'd need to let that go to waste to not put it out. I doubt it'll have many exclusives though - it's probably a ps5 pro pro thing. But I'm also not sure they can sell a cheaper console. PS5 prices just rose and they'll rise again next year - so that level is already going to cost 800 dollars to consumers. You can't really sell hardware to anyone until ram prices…

I'm wondering if going back to cheaper and less capable hardware will actually result in better games. Forcing creativity, and maybe (by necessity) dropping the constant push for higher fidelity graphics. I think that push for fidelity is so costly that a large number of game developers don't even attempt to innovate in the rest of game design anymore.

> For the ps6, they were already done with design and they'd need to let that go to waste to not put it out.

I guess nobody can predict the future, but this sounds like the sunk cost fallacy. E.g., if it's not going to sell well enough to recoup manufacturing costs, then producing the console will be more costly than just wasting the design effort anyway.

Maybe they don't need mass market sales to at least break even?