This is yet another nail in the coffin of physical media. Or, in other words games you actually own instead of long term lease.
It’s not like physical media makes any difference anyway these days.
Actual disk often gets just a glorified installer, and even if it includes the entire game you’re likely to have to activate it online anyway.
The “own your games” ship has sailed long ago, unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups.
unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups
Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer. I try to buy games there instead of Steam, purely for this reason.
Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer.
Note that this is a major selling point for GOG and available on most of their library, but unlike their early days, not everything is DRM-free.
Piracy is the only way, clearly capitalism doesn’t give and inch.
Nor a funk
The difference is the price of buying discs vs. buying from a digital store that has no competitors.
I’ve bought almost exclusively second-hand discs for my PS5, because they’re like half the price for the exact same content.
Sadly it’ll probably be just a matter of time before those will be phased out as well, one way or another.
Steam keys can be found dramatically cheaper than all of that.
They can, difference is a vast majority of people don’t want to buy/build a PC, or deal with a PC setup in general, they just want to press one button to make it work and sit on the couch. So the easy option for them is buying a console, it’s plug and play, while a PC requires quite some setup.
So we need Steam Box. Steam Deck just works 99% of the time. I can only complain about the desktop mode being buggy and non-steam games being a pain in the ass to install.
Then we return to the topic of not owning your games with Steam. Try installing non Steam games via the Heroic launcher and use Bazzite OS instead
Try getting non-playstation games on your Playstation. What about games from older Playstation? Can’t get most of those on there. And let’s not pretend you “own” Playstation games anymore when so many require online amd patches anyways.
Steam is more value for money and improved services and support. I used to be a die hard Playstation fan but it got old being treated like shit.
For $700 they could at least throw in a 4k Blu-ray player.
Then again, I ponied up extra for the disc version of the original ps5 for that exact reason, only to find out the media player software is a giant piece of garbage that was clearly given no effort. So I can’t say I’m too surprised.
Sony doesn’t put much effort into most things.
I remember thinking it was bs when half life 2 required a steam account and now everyone loves it.
For better or worse, the landscape has shifted since then. I can’t imagine people love Steam for being Steam, but rather for being the most consumer-friendly platform on PC.
Refunds? No questions asked if it’s within 2 weeks and 2 hours of playtime.
User reviews and ratings? Yes, and even comments on those reviews.
Community content? Steam discussions, guides, art, etc. Even mods with the workshop.
Bribes development studios for exclusivity deals? Nope! Devs can release games wherever the fuck they want.
Platform support? PC. Not just Windows, but going out of their way to make Linux a first class citizen. They even support Crapple despite its miniscule market share among PC gamers.
You’re right. But, all this good stuff is to obfuscate the central fact that you don’t own the property you bought. Sure, Valve has claimed that should they go away, as their last act, they’ll provide the ability for users to own their purchases, but who actually believes them?
Thing is, that’s not how it works on PlayStation. On PS5 you can download and play games without ever connecting to wifi. The whole glorified installer is mostly an Xbox thing ever since the XB1. I’d know since I own both and usually get discs to play my games.
I’m glad some companies are going full media and the younger Gen is buying physical media. It’s creating a counter culture that smart companies are using to their advantage.
Is it possible for modern games to fit on a disk?
I think it would be an interesting change if brand new games had a hard limit on file size so they can fit on and play from an actual disk.
Absolutely. It just depends a lot on the game of course. A blueray disk can contain over 100 GB. But a game could be split over several disks too. It was rather common to do that with CDs on the original PlayStation.
A lot of Xbox 360 games came on multiple discs
The issue isn’t the game engine, it’s the texture files.
If you don’t care what it looks like, you cut 80-90% or more from any modern game subbing low quality textures.
They still have to install.
Disks are too slow.
If they use a good, 12X bluray drive, it will be quicker to install from a disk than to download it unless you’re lucky enough to have a good fiber internet connection. Even then, the servers you download from will often be overloaded and slow on release day.
That’s not my point. Most games do install fine from the disk.
He’s talking about playing from the disk, too, and that’s a problem.
It does if you rent
I’ve been using gamefly for a while, I can’t rent digital only games
Sure you can. wink wink 🏴☠️
Maybe but look what happened to Stellar Blade
This in my opinion is one of the valid use cases of a blockchain/NFTs: they provide provable ownership of digital goods. This means that if implemented, in the future we could actually own games music movies ebooks etc. The only remaining step would be a decentralized torrent-like system that allows the users to download the licensed content that they own via their nft.
How would that support “First Sale Doctrine”?
I mean, I can actually own a bunch of stuff as long as it doesn’t have some sort of proprietary DRM bullshit attached to it.
The problem isn’t that there’s no way to obtain media in a non-bullshit way. The problem is that distributors don’t want to provide media in a non-bullshit way.
Sure, you can still own digital media, but you can’t sell or trade it like you can with a physical copy.
How would an NFT help in any way? We’re not lacking the means to prove you bought the game. We’re lacking companies willing to sell you games and laws that prevent companies from saying “buy” when they mean “rent”. If we got to a place where torrenting software you’ve bought in the past is legal, we don’t need NFTs to accomplish it…
deleted by creator
Death by a thousand cuts
Or, in other words games you actually own
Newer games rarely have the entire game on the disc. Usually there’s mandatory patches that must be downloaded to play it. I’ve seen games where there’s only a few hundred MB on the disc while the whole game is maybe 15 or 20 GB.
This means you don’t really own the game, since if Sony (or Microsoft or whoever) take down the downloads for the game, you won’t actually be able to play it any more.
Essentially your choice is between a physical license key (the disc) plus a download of the game, or a digital license key plus a download of the game.
And now, the physical licence path is even less accessible. The thing with the physical licence key is it’s transferrable even if the actual data is stored elsewhere. It’s a thin veneer, I mean, Sony could gate access to this data to the first account/machine that activated it. So even this advantage is taken away.
Some enterprise software used to (or maybe still do) use USB dongles for licensing… I’m honestly wondering if games are going to move that way too. Given the fact that practically every game needs a launch day patch, why even have a DVD/Blu-Ray if instead you could just have smaller, more reliable USB dongles? I suspect that in the next generation or two of game consoles, we’ll no longer see discs at all.
IDK. Between the price tag and lack of the disc drive IDK how many people are gonna buy this thing. It’s probably just for people who HAVE to have the highest graphics, to keep them from getting a gaming PC until the PS6 is ready for them.
More anti-consumer stuff from corporate bigwigs
One big reason people still play on consoles to this day is because they own a physical copy of their games and can play on their consoles even offline.
Sometimes
I couldn’t play Baldur’s Gate 3, a single-player game, when my internet went out. That pissed me right off.
If you pirated it you could have played it offline though. Paying customers get a worse experience than pirates
Yeah that’s what I meant by sometimes
Its becoming a trend where game companies are now making single player games require a internet connection just to play. I saw some games on Steam where single player games come with anti-cheat, like wtf.
Becoming a trend? This has been a regular frustration in gaming since the PS3 generation.
Could you give more details? On which platform did this happen?
Xbox series X. I couldn’t sign in to my profile, so the game wouldn’t load because I bought it electronically and it’s tied to my user. I sent them a little love letter for that.
Generally this works just fine if the console you are using is set to your “home console”. That’s what the home console toggle is for. I could see this being an issue if you have multiple consoles in your house, or you are game sharing with another profile.
I didn’t know this was a thing… I’ll look into that setting, thanks.
Couch co-op is also a big thing that I want but fewer and fewer games offer it.
It would be so funny if the EU decided Sony was a gatekeeper on the consoles without disc drives and forced them to allow 3rd party app store on them.
Hey, a guy can dream.
What the EU actually needs to do is to spearhead and help find everyone a way to actually “own” digital things. I think I’d be fine with not having a disk drive if I could buy my game, not be reliant on servers to download it in the future, trade my games with friends, and choose to sell it when I felt like it.
We need to find a way to get back (most of) the benefits of physical media without actually having to go back to it.
“If a game needs a server and the official servers shut down, the protocols have to be released to the public”. I think it would be a good starting point.
Imo, the term “buy” for all goods should pass some sort of litmus test. Eg:
does the product being sold have the same properties as a brick?
- can the product be resold privately?
- can the product be lent to another user temporarily?
- would the product still perform its function when the manufacturer stops supporting it?
- would the product still perform its function if the manufacturer ceased to exist.
if the product does not pass all these tests, the customer is not buying. Consider using terms such as ‘rent’ or ‘lease’ or ‘subscription’
The gatekeeper legislation sets minimums for revenue before you’re counted as a gatekeeper, and all the game consoles are too small a market to count.
I hate that that’s even a possibility lol
for that value just get a pc honestly not a locked down freebsd based console
No joke. A decent gaming pc can be built around that price and be used for so much more. Even cheaper if you hunt for used parts.
People who buy consoles do it for the “press a button to game”.
Not necessarily because they don’t understand pc’s, but because they don’t want the faff.For me, console gaming was for when my desktop rig was doing a video export or 3d render. It was when I wanted to sit on the couch and not be too invested in what I was playing with.
true and if you really want that console experience install smth like bazzite,holoiso,nobara home cinema edition (non immutable),etc and dualboot windows for app compatibility you can use playnite on windows to make it look like a ps5
That sounds like a lot of hassle for someone who doesn’t want hassle.
Physical media or full rejection. Fuck you business school zombies squeezing blood from rocks
Pointless if the discs still need to talk to the server before you can use them.
Fuck that noise too.
But it’s only 39.99 a month (conditions apply)!?!!
I understand if you don’t have the CD they can remove your access to it arbritarily like when they lose the license but
Nobody ever complains about Steam and they have a similar policy of no physical media going back decades. I have hundreds of gamed accumulated on Steam and no game of mine has ever been removed.
I bought the cheaper Xbox last year to play Overcooked with my girlfriend and it has no physical media. I just download and play games no problem. I actually find it more convenient not to have any physical games.
So I guess the question is- what is the reason for the strong rejection of the digital version? It is the natural evolution of these things.
Steam didn’t start with physical hardware and then try to remove it. And stream doesn’t design, own and operate the hardware for the most part.
On steam people know they have an option to sail the high seas. But the same concern is there.
It’s all good until they pull the content you thought you bought. I also prefer the convenience of downloaded games, but if it’s a game I really like, I buy the physical version.
They could still remove it if they wanted to.
For example push an update so your console can’t read certain games when they lose license. Or simply break backwards compatibility in specific ways.
I guess the games I really like are all digital. Games like Slay the Spire, Rimworld, Balatro, etc. I know that the data is sitting there in my hard drive. I can copy it, move it, delete it, etc whenever I want.
I honestly haven’t included a disc reader in my PC builds for over a decade. I guess on Xbox it’s different because Microsoft has more control. But again, if they wanted to take away the games they could do it either way.
If that’s main reason, I don’t see the point of continuing disc use
At $700 you could build a pretty decent PC that would last a lot longer, and build a steam library that you’ll have 20 years from now. I’ve had the same monitor, keyboard and mouse for an easy 10; controllers don’t last that long. They’re reaching a point where there’s less and less of an actual argument for owning one.
build a steam library that you’ll have 20 years from now
How do you know that Steam will be around in 20 years?
Use GOG instead. The DRM-free game installers will outlive Steam :)
How do you know that Steam will be around in 20 years?
Use GOG instead, since the DRM-free game installers will outlive Steam :)
How do you know Windows will keep compatibility in 20 years? Valve money partially goes into Proton/WINE development and an evolution of that will absolutely be around in 20 years, just WINE was around 20 years ago already. CD Project doesn’t put any GOG/Cyberpunk money into breaking the Windows monopoly. (Also plenty of titles on Steam come without DRM because DRM is optional.)
How do you know Windows will keep compatibility in 20 years?
I didn’t mention Windows anywhere in my comment? GOG has Linux games too, for games with Linux ports.
plenty of titles on Steam come without DRM because DRM is optional
That’s true - for the DRM-free Steam games, you can just keep a separate backup copy of the game files. They usually run fine without Steam installed.
My GOG games run great on wine, it just takes a bit more work to install them. Wine has better support for early windows games than windows does now.
CD Project doesn’t do anything to improve WINE, so spending money there is wasted.
It’s kinda rich to plug Steam, where you also don’t own your games.
Well for Steam at least the library is independent of the hardware
It comes pretty close to feature parity in terms of ownership. My kids can play my steam library on their own computers, I can play it on any machine I own, I don’t have to pay them any kind of rental fee, and they maintain my software for me.
Only thing I can’t do is what…sell my games to someone else? I don’t do that anyways.
I’m not betting on Steam disappearing in the next ten years. I probably wouldn’t even bet that they’ll disappear in my lifetime. But, they could, anything could happen, and then you don’t have that library anymore. Physical is the only way to truly own.
But, they could, anything could happen, and then you don’t have that library anymore. Physical is the only way to truly own.
That’s exactly my point. Steam has allowed me to OWN Half Life longer than I would have been able to with physical media. Those CDs don’t last that long. I’m not that careful.
So the balance is “own my own stuff and all the problems that come with keeping it pristine so that it continues to work, taking up space in my house” - or the infinitesimally small chance that STEAM goes belly up. Steam has allowed me to own my games for a lot longer than I could have kept them myself. So the argument of “oh they could go away!” doesn’t really hold any water for me. Especially for games with an online component (which is all of them now) – What’s the use of physical media when the game requires some servers that vanished long ago anyways?
That’s a strange point, imho. We disagree on what own means. You being bad with your physical media doesn’t mean you didn’t more truthfully own it. We will have to agree to disagree, have a nice day.
Well then you don’t own your home. With that argument, nobody does. Because the government has the ability to take your home from you, then you don’t own it.
Ownership has granularity to it. You’re failing to see the grey spaces in between, and only seeing black or white.
Replace the 3060 with an equally-priced AMD card and you’ll actually get something decent for your money. Nvidia is horrible at these “lower” price points.
I mean, if you like horrible driver stability; sure. There’s a reason NVidia has like 75% of the market share, and it’s simply because they have a better product. Drivers are more stable, everyone develops for CUDA processing, lots of games only support DLSS for frame-gen, all of the GPU accelerated AI stuff is all NVidia centered, etc.
And something that can run PS3, PS2 and PS1 games!
I’m sorely disappointed that none of that fancy AI-powered Sony upscaling can be put to use to any of those old games.
I’ve had the same monitor, keyboard and mouse for an easy 10;
I guess it depends on frequency of use, but I’ve never had a mouse last ten years.
Unfortunately, physical media for gaming died when always-online DRM was normalized. It doesn’t matter if you have a game on a disc when you have to phone home every time to use it. The corporation may still block your access.
One more step in ensuring no one owns anything. Lease or rent are your options.
That’s fine, I’ll just get better at sailing.
That’s why your favorite letter is R.
Lease and rent, or piracy.
Nintendo is going to continue to eat everybody’s lunch with decisions like this one
Reminder that you can put in whatever you want in a PC. And that you can get a decent gaming machine for 1k (700+PS plus).
CD Drive? No problem. DVD? Of course. Another SSD? Get some random 50$ thing and throw it in there. Floppy? Harvest some old PC and voila.The real point is that you can upgrade it incrementally, you don’t have to throw it away, and upgrading will allow you to play all your old games from generation to generation without having to rebuy them for the latest Gen.
Depends how old you get. After 30 years some games just don’t work like they used to!
Thankfully we do have modern solutions for old fashioned problems now.
Within limits though. E.g. If your mainboard only supports old CPUs that is a huge limiting factor and we saw MS messing with older CPUs just not being supported at all by Win 11.
Now i made the switch to Linux myself too and i am very happy, but for people who want to start somewhere, maybe starting with their own linux gaming PC is a bit much for the start.
I think that’s overkill, but a Steam Deck is on par with a PS5, but portable, and for a cheap dock and a ps5 controller you can play it like a console.
Linux has made such leaps though, have a container with lutris and vulkan and it can handle most basic gaming that doesn’t deal with modern AAA titles.
I mean i am fully in support of PC gaming and in particular Linux gaming. It is just not as easy to keep upgrading PCs component by component. Eventually there is limits, mostly from the mainboards limits.
Meh, gaming pc of theseus, you replace the mobo less often than a console Gen, more if you want.
I got a Steam Deck because it’s a little computer. I can put my own OS on it, that’s awesome. The marketing page was talking about DIY repairs and offering spare parts, too.
Even if you give a shit about upgrading, binding yourself to sony or whatever company.
While this is true, consoles still manage to have a way more convenient experience. Its the only reason why they exist (today)
I think that’s mainly a relic from the past. I didn’t have compability or driver issues for a long time.
Once the PC is set up, it’s as comfortable as a console. Setting the PC up to console standards is reduced to installing steam.
Looks like you never played on a computer on a TV screen. The experience is plaged by pad connection problems (Bluetooth), windows popups, random no full screen issues, sound suddenly on the wrong channel, microphone not working, mouse cursor in the middle of the screen (often reset to the middle after launching the game, even when you are playing with a pad) and so on. You still need a keyboard and a mouse near your couch and there is always something. For sure iam still not paying the markup for a console, but i get why there is a big market.
What are you on about? I use my PC on my TV all the times and I don’t have a single issue you describe. I just have it connected with Hdmi. The TV even turns on and off automatic if function activate.
I’ve definitely had some of those issues. I won’t count an old issue where my GPU needed a special connection to attach audio to its DVI output (rare oddity). Some others:
- Most computers would need to swap default audio device between whatever you use at a desk, and the TV registered as an HDMI audio device.
- Bluetooth connections to arbitrary controllers have gotten better, but they had often needed manual enablement each time through mouse-based menus or a number of firmware updates to work with Windows/SteamOS.
- My Steam Deck, even in its current iteration, takes some time to recognize the connected TV and swap resolution.
- The mouse cursor issue can come up if you had to do any mouse-based option swapping, like that thing with audio devices.
I’ve definitely gotten it working and had a blast, but the number of button presses to get to starting the game can sometimes be hard to predict. Even when I had a computer dedicated to the TV (a long time ago when SteamOS was fledgling) it was pretty unreliable about having all the right updates and not needing a mouse.
You’re doing something wrong. I’ve been playing PC games on my couch for a decade and haven’t had any of those issues.
They make pull out cup holders to put in the CD rom rive slot. There are so many goofy fun things a computer can have in it.
Having a pull out cup holder seems insane to me, my personal rule is no drinks near my pc at all.
That said, I have a drawer in place of my cd drive that holds all my small peripherals (thumb drives, usb to sd card adapter, stuff like that) and it’s great.
LGR did a great video on crazy expansion slot PC accessories. One of them was a pull out ashtray with a push plug lighter like cars used to have. https://youtu.be/_ErL39wqO-c?si=zWyVR6m_LqE6SBE0
The only problem with optical drives for PC is that most modern case no longer support them.
A surprising amount of Fractal Design’s cases do.
I’ve checked it, and yes. Also some of the lower-end of Be Quiet!.
Floppy drives connect to the PC via ATA. I don’t have that connector in my computer
Do you mean IDE? I’m confident your PC has S-ATA.
There’s IDE to SATA cards available for eight bucks.
It was standardized as ATA, some people calling it PATA or IDE to distinguish it from the newer SATA standard
But I remembered wrong, it was a similar IDC connector for the floppies with a different amount of pins
There’s always some a usb-converter for 10$ around.
In what universe do you live? Ps plus is $80, not $300
So you use your PC or console for only a year?
I can use it as long as I like. Ps plus just gives you 3 “free” games a month and let’s you play online with games that require ps plus. Imo the three games a month for six bucks and change is already worth it. And you keep those games for as long as you have your account, even if you don’t renew your subscription. You can also just get games that don’t require an online component, though those are becoming harder to find.
Eh, on PC you can keep your games forever as long as you don’t lose the drive they’re stored on. And you don’t need to pay extra to access online features.
And you can play any generation of games going back to pong.
If we’re talking raw capabilities… Piracy is subscriptionless and grants you access to virtually 99% of all games from all time and across all consoles. I’m going to say that PC is the clear winner here…
I’m not justifying console vs PC. I’m just pointing out that the $300 on the original comment I replied to for ps plus is insane. $80 a year for a positively moderated, optimized gaming experience the vast majority of the time is worth the money imo.
I’m just pointing out that the $300 on the original comment I replied to for ps plus is insane.
And you justify the value of it based on the 3 “free” games a month. To which I’m arguing against. $80 a year for the life of the console will almost certainly be more than $300. With console generations lasting nearly 5 years on average each that’s actually $400 in subscriptions, keep in mind that generations have been getting longer, and seventh and eighth gen consoles lasted for 8 and 7 years respectively… So closer to $600 in cost.
I’m not justifying console vs PC.
But that’s the context of the whole thread…
positively moderated, optimized gaming experience
bwuahahahah. Sure. Cause console lobbies aren’t filled with kids screaming racial slurs. And it’s so positively moderated that all your data including credit cards leak (https://firewalltimes.com/sony-data-breach-timeline/).
You definitely lose access to your “free” games if you don’t have PS+ anymore.
I stopped buying consoles after they wanted to charge me to use the internet. That’s not how this works.
So, 24 years ago? If so, I’m right there with you in the “getting old” camp.
Paystation
799€ here, 920€ with a disc drive. That is stupidly insane for a console. We’re almost breaking the 1000€ barrier for an “upgrade”, not even the new generation.
I’d bet my money Sony is just testing the grounds to see if they can set PS6 price in a few years over the 1k barrier.
This tbh
There’s little incentive to not go with a gaming PC instead, or to not just wait for the PS6 since I’m sure it will be cheaper
How are you sure? No one else seems to be…
Because Sony knows it won’t sell if it isn’t $600 or less. They’ve learned from experience.
Nah I’m good with my 2017 jailbroken switch with free games lol
What games are even worth it? Sony has like 5 'must play" exclusive games on their console
Putting the 5 in PS5
For me it’s literally just EA Sports College Football 25. I’ll be playing it for years (my brothers and dad have a family tradition of playing a college football dynasty mode together every year) so that makes a console worth it for me…probably not the PS5 Pro though.
It’s EA. You’ll be playing it until they randomly decide to turn off the servers.
Well…most EA games you quite even before the support ends. But not this one lol
I’d have lobbied for us to do an offline dynasty if I wasn’t going to be moving out in a year or two.
Sony has exactly one must play game you can’t play on a computer and I still own a ps4 for that one game, and believe me when emulation gets slightly better I will have a new Linux computer shaped suspiciously like a ps4
I think Sony never wanted a physical media PS5 console. The design made it seem like an after thought. Like a growth on the side of sleek lines.
they weren’t completely wrong now. on thier own financials, its mentioned that only 30% of game sales are physical. physical buyers are now the minority.
I still jerk off manually.
I’m one of those people. I just can’t be arsed to get up off the couch and put a game in. After work and kids I’m beat and just want to pick something and start playing.
basically market has always shown convenience often trumps ownership, music streaming, video streaming, games now. ownership is the vocal minority
I’ve also just learned over the years that I just don’t go back to stuff all that much. If I finish a game, that’s it I’m done. If I really want to go back in 20 years there’s probably a PC port since there are very few console exclusives or just emulation.
I play multiplayer online games, there’s really no “done” if you compete with other people
All good points in the comments, but something I haven’t seen a anyone talk about yet:
WHY is a DISK DRIVE $80??? All it does is read a disk. Any encryption on the disk would be decrypted on the console. External disk drives are like $20. If you specially brand them maybe you could go up to $40.
But $80? That’s like a Gameboy Advance. That’s a miyoo mini plus. That’s an entire console in itself.
That’s actually below market value for an external 4K UHD drive.
You’re right! My point no longer stands. Removing the disk drive would then save about $100 from the console, which makes sense to remove if you’re cutting costs and most players play digital anyways.
~also if you’re pushing digital games.
Props for accepting a counterargument on the internet graciously. Not something we see often.
Digital doesn’t have a secondary market which is the real reason. No money is made when you give away, sell, or share your physical games.
Blu-Ray never really took off as a mass-market format so the drives are relatively obscure and expensive without the benefits of manufacturing at scale.
But $80? That’s like a Gameboy Advance. That’s a miyoo mini plus. That’s an entire console in itself.
Bruh, you can even get 2 or 3 DS lites for that price
