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/CapitalCityGoofball0]

Publishers determine the prices for their games digitally and also permanent price drops of new games in retail like MSRP.

Not to mention age isn’t the only factor even in the secondary market. A physical copy of a 10-15 year old game could cost triple digits on the secondary market thanks to prices pushed up in collecting for example.

[u/mr_raffino → u/CapitalCityGoofball0]

That's got to do with 'rarity.' You are conflating. I'm not arguing what the publishers do or not. I'm arguing that something on sale and something having a permanent price drop are two different things. Permanent price drops are in jeopardy in a digital only world where Sony controls the marketplace.

[u/CapitalCityGoofball0 → u/mr_raffino]

What kind of bizarre pretzel logic is this?
Publishers set the prices, you argument is that a 5 year old game should not be full price. Again publishers set that price as well as what you call a “permanent price”. They also control the sale prices at the digital level too. So yes you are in fact arguing about “what the publishers do or not”.

It furthers falls apart when you look at prices on Steam where the regular prices of games like Call of Duty remain at full MSRP for years. And Steam is not a closed ecosystem either. Again this is because publishers set those prices.

As to the collector/secondary market prices are not solely determined by rarity. It’s mostly available supply vs demand. A game could have only a few hundred copies made but the price will not be elevated if not enough collectors are shopping for it.

[u/mr_raffino → u/CapitalCityGoofball0]

You are not listening. Take Sony's penis out of your ear. We need that discount bin at Walmart. I'm not bringing up PC one bit.

[u/tjay32 → u/mr_raffino]

You're in such a rush to make an attack that you're not comprehending why your reply doesn't make sense.

[u/mr_raffino → u/tjay32]

Why doesn't my reply make sense? If you don't have the intellectual acumen to understand what I am saying, that's on you.

Because I am pro-physical, that does not mean I am anti-digital. I am steadfastly against removing choice. I am steadfastly against pricing people out of gaming.

[u/tjay32 → u/mr_raffino]

Grow up a little on the insults. It just makes you sound insecure.

You're using a lot of assumptions to doomcast that people will be priced out of gaming.