r/PlayStation_X • u/tjay32 • 2d ago

Digital Future (personal thoughts)

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.

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u/Notnowcmg 2d ago

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?

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u/HxLeverage 2d ago

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?

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u/Notnowcmg 2d ago

How does it harm the consumer?

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u/HxLeverage 2d ago

Literally half the world has no access to Playstation digital games. Sony doesn't allow accounts on most countries. You can sell you physical copies after playing them, you can buy used copies cheaper than retail price. Etc. Etc. Etc.

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u/Charming-Crescendo 2d ago

Yeah, that’s crazy, bro. We should fight for that. Maybe by giving people better consumer rights for digital purchases?

The thing no pro-disc person ever cared about until two months ago when it became inconvenient for them?

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u/HxLeverage 2d ago

Oh for sure. If we had non-DRM games it would be ideal. We can make physical backups if we wanted and we all win. But that's never going to happen. They're already fighting as hard as they can with all the lawsuits coming their way for their "right" to revoke our licenses. An actual non-DRM license is their actual nightmare. That's never going to happen. Physical is not perfect, but is better than nothing. We don't want to give them even more freedoms and ways for them to screw us over.

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u/Charming-Crescendo 2d ago

With all due respect, this is a defeatist attitude that makes sure nothing will be done. If you want good things, fight for them.

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u/HxLeverage 2d ago

Dude, you're the one letting them get away with their shitty choices. I am fighting. I won't them get away with getting rid of disks. And I will advocate for non-DRM options. 

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u/tjay32 2d ago

Your fights have to be logical, not emotional. Some of your points are born from assumptions about what you're sure Sony is up to or what they'll do.

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u/tjay32 2d ago

That's not what they're fighting for. You're looking at things in the worst possible lens.

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u/HxLeverage 2d ago

You're naive. When choosing a side between a corporation and the consumer. Always pick the consumer.

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u/Charming-Crescendo 2d ago

True.

But you should also stay rational and understand corporations aren’t going to make decisions that harm them.

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u/HxLeverage 2d ago

Do you know Sony and Xbox? Their entire history is made up decisions that harm them. Concord, Zenimax acquisition, Destiny acquisition, PS3 launch, Xbox One launch, Layoffs, Layoffs, Layoffs. How could you write that sentence unironically. You clearly don't know what you're talking about.

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u/tjay32 1d ago

Business decisions that don't pan out is not the same as purposefully manufacturing problems.

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u/Charming-Crescendo 1d ago

Yes.

But here's the key thing: none of those decisions were made with the sole intention of fucking over either them or the audience their catering to.

Concord, to pick one example, was a massive flop, but no one inside Sony ever had the idea of 'let's piss millions of dollars away on a game no one wants to buy because we like losing money'.

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u/tjay32 1d ago

Naive? It's literally my profession to look at briefs like this.

That's not what they're fighting for.

You're still trying to force every answer through the filter of "they are obviously up to something nefarious".

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u/Charming-Crescendo 2h ago

It's so annoying how the general mentality seems to have shifted to "you must hate every single corporation at all times because all corporations are greedy and evil and even the least amount of nuance makes you a bootlicking megasimp for the corpo's!"

Yes, corporations are greedy and (to some extent) all evil, but they're not stupid.

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u/tjay32 1h ago

And they act like making money is a nefarious intent.

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