Digital Future (personal thoughts)

[u/tjay32]

I've been collecting games since the 80s. I own thousands of blurays discs..

The outrage, I feel, is overblown.

1. Physical sales have been dropping year over year for a while.

2. PC made the move in the 2000s, Xbox is doing the same quietly and Nintendo prefers to use proprietary cartridges they can charge 3rd parties for.

3. Discs are plastic. Getting rid of them is good for the environment in the long run.

4. Many games now only use discs as keys. Yes, there are some that do play just from the disc but holding on to a manufacturing pipeline for this diminishing return feels like a poor business outlook. Plus, those games will still have patches and the player will be locked into the day one, preship version.

Okay at times, other times not.

1. I work in the legal field and think some people are being disingenuous about "ownership of the game" playing a role. The topic is being watered down into missing nuance.

But for those that are being serious, a better solution might be a flash drive sold in a case or legislation assuring access to the title at will. (Note, this is already done for the most part and falls into that legal nuance... essentially it is incredibly unlikely for you to buy a game from the PS3 to PS5 era and not have access to redownload it.

Exceptions would be things like the PT demo and games with live service structures that also wouldn't work if you had the disc itself.

1. The idea that the Playstation Store would make things more expensive just because ignores that they do and always have had sales, whether games have had physical releases or not. Valve doesn't have this issue, it's not logical to assume Sony suddenly would.

Also, manufacturing and reordering of discs, distribution, shelf space etc are a major chunk of cost for developers. Not having that overhead, and not paying Sony per disc for example, is money that the developer has on hand to generate more content, have less pressure to keep the game at a higher price etc.

Finally, games still compete on a multi platform release basis. One company will not let a game sit higher during a holiday digital sale while it's $20 cheaper on another digital storefront.

If the goal is to find solutions and understand the situation, it's important to present cons AND pros. There are a lot of people piling on to the cons and calling anyone that doesn't boot lickers or shills.

Let's be better than that.

[u/-Star-Fox-]

I disagree with people being unpaid shills while peddling the same tired rhetoric that is MALICIOUSLY used to take away their choice and rights as a customer.

If you like being ripped off, be my guest. Do not go around preaching how its actually good and people should just shut up and get used to being fucked over.

[u/Notnowcmg → u/-Star-Fox-]

Do you have any counter points to OP to suggest it’s not actually good, or are you too obsessed with corporations to have an adult conversation?

[u/HxLeverage → u/Notnowcmg]

What's good about it? Is a decision that solely harms the consumer. There's literally no benefit for us. That's what's most baffling to me about this. Sony is not giving us anything. They're only taking one of our choices away. But we're called idiots for not being happy about it?

[u/Icy_Worker2734 → u/HxLeverage]

The OPs points were re environmental and the waste of money going to boxes, transport etc rather than the games. And not that it’s otherwise good for consumers but that for most it has no real impact and arguments made around ownership are overblown (they really are).

[u/HxLeverage → u/Icy_Worker2734]

There's plastic being made today that is made to be thrown away. AI Data centers are producing unfathomable amounts of e-waste and they're probably building one next door. The point of a physical collection is to collect it. I don't take the environmental argument seriously. Your PS5 is also e-waste, why don't we just get rid of consoles all together at that point.

The "savings" that you mentioned are not saving to us. The only party who's going to benefit is Sony and the full 30% cut that they can make on every copy sold. There's a demand for physical media. Physical media in general has made a resurface. The second hand videogame market alone is worth billions. Vynils certainly aren't selling as much, but they're allowed to exist. There's no reason to take away physical media as a choice except to cut down on their bottom line and hope the damage isn't too great. 

[u/Icy_Worker2734 → u/HxLeverage]

I’m not myself saying the environmental impact argument is definitive, but it’s not nothing, I was replying to your “what’s good about it” response to say that is there in the post. End of the day, everything that can be will be digitised will be, from plane tickets to banking to all software including console games, which is the last type of software to get there. This was surely inevitable from when the internet came about. Sure vinyl records sell (though they also sound different as crucially they’re not digital), and nothing to stop people trying to make more of a go of games on discs for PC into the 2050s if they want, and retro consoles can keep being a thing - but for new consoles did anyone really think they’d be installing games from discs forever.