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[awwr999999]

Walked into a Best Buy the other day.. the game secion for PS, Xbox and Switch are extremely barebone.. sad to see

It's not sad - BestBuy and Walmart refusing to sell A Rated games and EXPLICIT cds are the reason PlayStation hasn't had "A rated" games in the US.
This has forced studios to accept the lame sounding "M for Mature" rating in the US as opposed to the badass "AO" rating.
On top of that physical media has been savagely undercutting studio and platform profits for decades.
The move to single user licenses for games will mean studios and platforms get paid for every game sold.
Studios being able to improve ROI should mean less studios going under or being acquired/absorbed by bigger studios.

Why would stores continue to sell physical when most people dont give a fuck? The gaming world is just catching up to what PC gamers have been doing for decades.

PS moving to digital would have to come with the same 2hr return window and permanent access to older versions of games that Steam has.

 

[awwr999999]

you think that disc drive is going to last you forever? you think that disc is going to last you forever? If you want to really own something in perpetuity just make a backup, physical discs will stop working sooner or later

PS needs to have something more than that fear driving users to adopt new HW, IRL CDs, DVDs and BRs can last forever if taken care of.
New PS consoles having improved legacy HW provides a positive reason for users to migrate from old consoles to new and digital libraries would transfer over as opposed to being locked to EOL HW.
DualSense would improve every PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4 game and provides an obvious reason for PS to sell users new digital copies of legacy games that have DualSense functionality baked in.
From that point forward each new PS console would have legacy HW baked in and user's digital-only games would come with them.

I personally think it's a little bit of platform wars. I notice the the people who love digital are the same people who love renting their games...
They've been brainwashed by corporate pr

It's more about looking around and seeing that from PS1 to now we've lost a ton of studios and physical media has been a massive part of the problem.
Even the poorest/stingiest users are going to prefer paying full price for games to having no new games to buy or only being able to choose from a few giant mainstream studios.

 

[Effigenius]

Until you get the store with bare shelves I guess?

There's no reason to not buy digital any more. Walled gardens need to come down I agree totally, but the disk is just a data vessel these days, and pretty much every game requires multiple patches to put it in a decent state.

If PC can do it, there's no reason consoles can't. It's as ludicrous as those paying 2k for a new GPU then crying that a game is £50+ on steam.

Nah. There’s a Ton of reasons not to buy digital. It benefits the game makers, not us. Outside of ‘hey cool I dont have to get up to change games”. They haven’t been forcing this change for OUR benefit.

 

[AREYOUOKAY?]

What a real mystery we have going on.

Maybe it's because they can only be found online these days and places still only offer games that are years old by now? I sure love having my games delivered in the worst possible packaging imaginable.

Best of luck to those who collect sealed copies of games.

 

[awwr999999]

That's a lot of cope but missing is the biggest piece: Sony benefits huge from a digital future as they all do so they have every incentive to push us towards that future.

Digital-only is good for users, PS and studios. In the end, all three parties and gaming as a whole will benefit tremendously.
Physical games can't be returned and a move to digital-only means adopting Steam's 2hr no questions asked return policy.
Steam's policy means 100% of digital-only purchases are positive experiences for the user. This frees users to spend money and try games that they wouldn't normally risk buying.
As soon as PS makes that move Nintendo will be the only 'bad guy' who doesn't allow returns on games.

No more repeat sales or 'remasters' of the same game - selling one copy of a game to each user and having that game stay with the user for life as opposed to selling the same game to a user on PS2, PS3, PS4 and again on PS5.
Finally bringing an end to the 'remasters' and 'remakes' will force studios to focus on creating new content.
It means studios never being able to pull back a game for any reason, the original day one game will always be available for users to download and play.

 

[Effigenius]

On top of that physical media has been savagely undercutting studio and platform profits for decades.
The move to single user licenses for games will mean studios and platforms get paid for every game sold.
Studios being able to improve ROI should mean less studios going under or being acquired/absorbed by bigger studios.
has.

Jesus you sound like a shill. It won’t mean any of that. It will mean fatter bonuses for executives.

‘Savagely undercutting’ are you for real? It’s called understanding how the market works and planning for it. Not trying to nuke it so your customers get screwed.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I understand people having preferences.

But I'll never, ever understand the praise of not owning physical goods. It makes absolutely no sense to me. If you take care of your physical goods, they can last your lifetime, if not more so. A digital good can't do that, hell, we don't even know how long they'll truly last. Options are great, and I hate that we're going into a future where the only options we have are where you stream it, or what platform you bought it from or on.

I agree for the most part with anyone saying physical is better than digital for sake of having a copy.

Problem is most people don’t care about it that much, digital is more convenient, and if people cared that much about owning media nobody would sub to plans either, but instead still accumulate racks of CDs and DVDs like it’s 2000.

Playing a physical medium also requires the hardware too. I think most people sell or give away their old consoles or just stick it in a box in the basement.

Unless someone is a collector or core gamer still playing discs, I don’t think the avg gamer really cares if they can still play a PS2 disc on a 20 year old console or 10 years from now whether their PS6 can play PS4 discs.

 

[AREYOUOKAY?]

Unless someone is a collector or core gamer still playing discs, I don’t think the avg gamer really cares if they can still play a PS2 disc on a 20 year old console or 10 years from now whether their PS6 can play PS4 discs.

The original PS2 and Xbox 360 hardware is exactly why backwards compatibility is so important with their disc read errors or other hardware issues. I’d gladly toss older faulty systems away if the newer consoles could play all the games I’d want on them.

 

[ValiantInstance]

Back compat with 360 discs is the singular reason I own a Series X. Apart from that I just use it as a Game Pass machine, but I have a PC for that.

If the PS5 was discless and not backwards compatible with PS4 discs, I probably wouldn't own one either. Certainly wouldn't have needed one for the first couple of years.

You open a game, unwrap the film and smell the box. It's an experience. Then if it's worthy of keeping you put it on your shelf to display, if friends come over you can even lend it to them for no cost.

That is console gaming. Without it you just have a low-powered closed source Steam Machine.

 

[The_Observer]

Physical game sales declining. Now what could be the cause? Let’s see…
Lack of innovation
Woke propaganda
Worse technical state
Unfinished/unplayable without online/broken games on discs
Price hike while providing no more/sometimes less value than in the past
Soft pushing people to digital via various methods

Plus, I’m sure that digital sales are down as well thanks to the above, but that would not help this person’s corporate shilling I guess.

I will still keep buying day one physical games when they worth it, like the new Doom. Or Space Marine 2. But besides these two I can’t remember when I did this, thanks to all the above reasons. Anyway, f your digital future.

 

[ProtoByte]

Barely any fucking games that you would other buying physical came out last year. Maybe 3.

 

[DryvBy]

Publishers don't put out their games on physical media.

No option but digital.

Digital only missionaries: "The consoomer has spoken!"

 

[SHA]

Walked into a Best Buy the other day.. the game secion for PS, Xbox and Switch are extremely barebone.. sad to see

And these corporates cry about sales when they actually got all the money without a percent share with retailers. there is clearly something wrong with these people, I don't trust what they say.

 

[SoloCamo]

If a console doesn't have physical media I don't bother with it. On PC it at least made sense due to storage options and quite frankly cheaper pricing but on consoles it was never worth it.

 

[ArtHands]

Publishers don't put out their games on physical media.

No option but digital.

Digital only missionaries: "The consoomer has spoken!"

Its all about supplies and demands. If their games were selling pitifully on physical but sell well on digital, publishers will just stop putting their games on physical media.

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

It's over...

Where's your profile pic from

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

PS6 and next Xbox gonna be digital-only for the US market.

I honestly hope so. For the same reason I hope the $100 for GTA 6 (as a base price) rumors are real. I want to see something that will really wake up the masses, something dramatic.

 

[Gameplay Gods Bless]

Well, the average consumer is an idiot. Digital only means walled gardens and no competition among retailers making the digital storefronts monopolies effectively, which therefore have no incentive to lower prices or offer sales. Licenses can be revoked. Games can be altered post release. Games can be delisted for any reason. Fuck an all digital future.

Yes although PC is the exception because nobody controls PC there's competition and valve allows you to use steam keys how you'd like without them making money off the same.

 

[Cakeboxer]

Fun fact: You can quote multiple people in one post.

 

[Hudo]

I honestly hope so. For the same reason I hope the $100 for GTA 6 (as a base price) rumors are real. I want to see something that will really wake up the masses, something dramatic.

The sad part is that if they really release GTA6 for $100, enough absolute fucking retards will buy the game and they will therefore normalize this pricing for all games. Even though GTA 6 a) doesn't need that pricing because it has a pretty big live-service component attached to it and b) no game is worth $100, it reeks of incompetent project management that you need 10+ years to get a new entry in your flagship franchise out.

 

[ArtHands]

I honestly hope so. For the same reason I hope the $100 for GTA 6 (as a base price) rumors are real. I want to see something that will really wake up the masses, something dramatic.

I think it'll be interesting to see what other publishers will do for console games if GTA6 cost $100 and still sell well

 

[PhillMeCream]

I think it'll be interesting to see what other publishers will do for console games if GTA6 cost $100 and still sell well

GTA can do that, but I can't think of any other ip that can do that.

 

[PhillMeCream]

Such a biased graph.
It should be from the year where the Xbox 360 and PS3 online store started to now.

 

[Trilobit]

Fun fact: You can quote multiple people in one post.

You can even quote one person

Fun fact: You can quote multiple people in one post.

Multiple

Fun fact: You can quote multiple people in one post.

Times.