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Posted by Tiberium 20 hours ago

Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation(blog.playstation.com)
708 points | 703 commentspage 12
brendoelfrendo 19 hours ago||
I don't buy every game on a physical disc—I don't see the point for live service games, for example—but I do have a fairly large collection of physical PS5 games because I like that assurance that I can continue to play that game forever. I guess what we see here is that after 2028 I have no reason to own a PlayStation ever again.
dude250711 19 hours ago||
Last step is for them to say that due to rising components' cost, they are transitioning to rent-only model for consoles.

This way you will finally own nothing except for maybe console rent arrears.

comandillos 16 hours ago||
It backfired with the PSP Go. It will backfire again. No-go I would buy a console without disks. Sorry. No.
bilekas 20 hours ago||
This is ridiculous, and not long after they've been updating their ToS to require you to sign in and phone home in order to continue to be allowed access to your digital library.

> In response to shifting trends in consumer preference.

I hate this corporate speak. If buying isn't ownership, then pirating isn't stealing.

tacticalturtle 18 hours ago||
It’s not corporate speak - they have hard data in digital vs physical sales that they report on every quarter:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-just-reported-a-new-r...

bilekas 18 hours ago||
Even more reason to call this out, they know the exact figures they need to create physical copies of, they're claiming a complete trend to reduce their expenses. I don't believe they have some agenda to simply turn off games for people for no reason, but needing to check in every few months to keep a game active is actively hostile to the customer.
bigfishrunning 19 hours ago||
> If buying isn't ownership, then pirating isn't stealing.

You're not buying a game, you're buying a license to play the game. If you don't agree with the terms, don't buy that license, but that doesn't mean you're entitled to commit copyright infringement.

If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.

bilekas 19 hours ago|||
There's an expectation that once the sale is finalised they should t be able to just take it back when they like. Agreements or not that's not how things are supposed to work.
Telaneo 18 hours ago|||
> If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.

Good thing I don't recognise copyright. Can't infringe on that which does not exist. I'm sick of pretending it does good in the world when I constantly see its consequences are things like this.

> If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.

Given the amount of agreements out there that have unfair terms from the get go, or are otherwise Darth Vadered, why should anyone care what deal the corps give you?

bigfishrunning 18 hours ago||
If you don't like the deal, don't take it. It doesn't matter if you recognize copyright, it's the law. Some people don't recognize speed limits; that doesn't always end well for them.
Telaneo 18 hours ago||
> it's the law

I can ignore that too, you know. Not all laws are reasonable.

> Some people don't recognize speed limits; that doesn't always end well for them.

Breaking the speed limit can be lethal. That's a pretty good reason to follow that rule even if you don't care who made it.

I haven't found good reasons to keep copyright law (on the contrary, I constantly see it hinder progress in society), so I ignore it.

If I get prosecuted for doing copyright infringement, I'll take it with pride.

Jigsy 15 hours ago||
> I can ignore that too, you know. Not all laws are reasonable.

I can speak from personal experience on this one! Civil disobedience is a wonderful thing.

bigfishrunning 13 hours ago||
It has the same effect as not playing the game, but you get something for free, right? it's therefore better?
soulofmischief 13 hours ago||
This sucks, especially given the recent content rug pulls by Sony, but as someone who has never owned a current-generation console outside of the PS2/Wii, I'm out of the loop:

What percentage of game discs sold today are even playable without first connecting to the internet and downloading additional content? Not in defense of Sony, I just think this battle may have already been lost and not enough people noticed.

underlipton 10 hours ago|
Many games re-release as "complete" editions with updates and sometimes DLC. I don't know if those always find their way on to the disc proper, but unless they're relabeling and re-boxing dead stock, I have to imagine "stamp it with some extra bytes" is more economical than "make all-new discs put in all-new boxes but it's just the base, non-updated game AND we have to keep the servers running."
soulofmischief 9 hours ago||
I just checked around, and according to Doesitplay?:

- over 1/3 (34%) of PS5 games on disc from their sampled games are either too buggy or missing required/advertised content without downloading something from a server before first play. 13-18% are unplayable without an initial download.

- 40% of games on Xbox One/Series X are too buggy/missing required or advertised content, and 10-11% are unplayable without an initial download.

Some of these games may even have hardcoded download requirements.

https://www.doesitplay.org/methodology

kuerbel 20 hours ago||
Aaaand I'm not going to buy a PS6.

On pc there is some competition at least between Steam, epic, gog (the odd one out but I like it) and such. I have no interest in buying a vendor specific computer with only one storefront and no competition.

Cthulhu_ 19 hours ago||
But those are still digital-only platforms, with a chance of them disappearing. Epic is the biggest risk there, I think.

GoG is an interesting case though, it has loads of games that by and large were available on physical media, but because said physical media is either gone, broken, or in the hands of collectors, getting a physical copy of those games is difficult now. Them being a digital platform re-enables people to play these games.

mghackerlady 18 hours ago||
GoG is also DRM free, so if GoG dies it's not like you'll lose access to your games. Even if you lose the files, archives will exist. Plus, if you're really that morally opposed to file sharing, you can always put it on a NAS or flash drive. Heck, put it on a bluray if you want to
Jigsy 15 hours ago||
Plus GOG allow people to download games and store them on a hard drive.

UT99 can't be bought anymore (though I think Epic now allow people to share it freely), but I can still download it (for now), and access my archived copy.

bigfishrunning 19 hours ago||
It's important to note that that vendor specific computer is 1) cheaper then a PC that can play equivalent games, and 2) much more reliable (i never have to mess with drivers, updates just work, etc...)
fluoridation 19 hours ago||
>cheaper then a PC that can play equivalent games

There are no savings to be had. What you don't pay one way you pay another.

>much more reliable (i never have to mess with drivers, updates just work, etc...)

So do you not own a computer? How do you avoid dealing with those issues, otherwise?

bigfishrunning 19 hours ago||
I own several computers, and I use them for work. Running games on them means either running windows or running an emulation layer, and both solutions are unreliable messes. High end graphics cards are generally very expensive and have required binary-blobs that are really hard to troubleshoot, and (in my experience) always have problems.

If I want to play a video game, I turn on my PlayStation and it just works and I don't have to think about it or troubleshoot anything. This has not been my experience with PC gaming.

Anamon 11 hours ago|||
That used to be my experience, too, and I always expected the PC gaming industry would have to make some serious progress on ease-of-use if they were to survive against the consoles.

What I didn't expect was how fast the consoles would catch up to PC gaming in terms of hassle, complexity, slowness, unreliability, and potential incompatibilities. PC gaming did make some progress compared to when I was juggling boot disks and editing AUTOEXEC.BAT, but consoles got so much worse so fast. In my opinion, the last time consoles were noticeably simpler than playing on PC was probably about 15 years ago.

kuerbel 18 hours ago|||
I exclusively play on Fedora if on pc and the only problem I had up to now was with the ps5 controller and some weird rumble input. That was easily fixed with some googling.
mghackerlady 18 hours ago|||
Sidenote but why do you use a PS5 controller? I can understand if someone already has a console they'd prefer to use the controllers they already have, but I see so many PC gamers go out and buy a playstation or xbox controller when they want a controller when 8bitdo is right there and much better for the price
fluoridation 18 hours ago|||
Not everyone wants to do research for every little purchase. XBox and PS controllers are likely to be at least good enough, if not the baseline of quality. A few weeks ago I got an XBox-compatible third party controller with Hall effect sticks, and while it's mostly alright, I found a weird issue where when I enter a specific mode in one game by holding the right trigger I have to have the stick centered or it doesn't register for about a second. This doesn't happen with MS's controller, and I have no idea how the input device can be causing something so specific.
mghackerlady 17 hours ago||
Do people genuinely not know about 8bitdo though? It doesn't take a lot of research if you're in a store or recommended it by amazon
Narishma 16 hours ago||
No, they don't. They're a niche manufacturer, of course they're not as well known as Xbox or Playstation.
kuerbel 16 hours ago|||
Because I also own a ps5
mghackerlady 14 hours ago||
> I can understand if someone already has a console they'd prefer to use the controllers they already have
bigfishrunning 18 hours ago|||
See that's a great example. By the time I sit down to play a game, I don't want to be googling issues.
zuzululu 16 hours ago||
If buying isnt owning a physical disc

then burning dics isnt stealing

Pooge 17 hours ago||
I can't wait to see the impact this will have on game prices due to the monopoly Sony is creating on selling PlayStation games.

Thanks for the fish but enshittification is only getting started.

ex-aws-dude 16 hours ago|
This sucks but I guess PC has been like this for a long time and no one seems to care/talk about it
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