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.
If you wait for a good sale, digital is sometimes cheap or cheaper. I just go with whatever is cheapest at any given moment.
I got the disc version for used games too, but the sad truth is that where I live there isn’t really a market for used games.
Or, well, there is, but the prices on used discs are often barely below retail price, if you can even find a copy.
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?
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.
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 🏴☠️
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.
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.
Maybe someone could do the numbers and see if a memory (USB, SD*, …) can be cheaper than a BR for this case.
Maybe but look what happened to Stellar Blade
unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups
or you straight up pirate it.
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”?
If you can’t modify it, sell it or know what the game software is even doing then calling that “ownership” would be rather lacking. I mean in terms of traditional ownership, not the modern definition: “page 69 of the EULA defines “purchasing” (the software) as a limited, non-transferable lease which can stop working at any time due to dependency on a proprietary server code we will never share I fucked your mom”.
You could sell the NFT and lose access to the game just like a disc
You wouldn’t be able to modify it as the nft would just allow you to download (edit and run) the game.
Edit: But allowing people to freely resale their digital copies would be a big win for people. No gatekeepers just like with discs
As long as the network exists
If it’s a networked game, but there’s no reason a offline game shouldn’t work other than incompetence.
Also since the NFT is the DRM the game could be available for download outside of the publishers purview, such as a public torrent site.
But if the game has to call home every time it starts and there is no server your game won’t work. StarCraft can be played offline, as it was created, but you need to connect to play because Blizzard.
One big “advantage” (for the companies) of NFTs is that the emitter can take a commission or fee every time the NFT is sold. This can kind of alleviate their fears of people buying from each other instead of buying a new copy. I think that’s a fair middle ground for owning a fully digital copy, between physical copy that companies don’t want and digital copy that consumers don’t want.
How can they force that and not also force a fee to move it to a different wallet you own?
People change wallets all the time and putting a fee on that would be inexcusable
Without knowing why people change their wallets, it’s hard to nail down a solution. But, perhaps a smart contract wallet whose access is controlled by an underlying wallet that can be swapped out may help. In any case, all transfers or smart contract execution attracts a fee. Even sending money between wallets.
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.
Meh. If life weren’t so focused on material gains and losses, I wouldn’t need to.
It would also mean potential losses for the distributors, as people are (supposedly) less likely to buy directly for them.
So, again, the problem isn’t the media, it’s the distributors.
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…
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 disc’s at all.
Death by a thousand cuts
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.
I’m not sure. If that is their strategy they’re dancing on a razor. I mean, the market is pretty slim. Basically, you can get a pretty sweet gaming PC for the price they’re offering. And if you project the amount of games you’ll get and estimate the price differential with prices of the same games on a PC you might be able to uprate the specs a few times. I would say that a PS5 with a reasonable amount of games is probably worth a similar amount to a $1k PC.
I think the steam deck is genuinely the only console worth buying these days.
I REALLY want Sony to release a handheld that can run PS1, PS2 and PS3 games 🥺
That’s the Steam Deck.
Wait can it run ps3 emulators?
Double wait are ps3 emulators working now? I remember pscx2 or whatever being buggy as shit.
TLDR I’m ancient in internet years
RPCS3 can run most PS3 games but Steam Deck may fall short in some of them. Recommended specs include 6 core CPU but Deck has 4.
Going by core count alone is a pretty shitty metric for CPU performance. The 4 core APU in the steam deck will outperform an 8 core bulldozer cpu by any metric
I’m gonna blow your mind by telling you there are already working PS4 and Xbox One emulators, although both only support a small number of games so far
PS3 and Xbox 360 can be emulated very well by a modern PC, the majority of games work without glitches
PS4 is actually easier to emulate than PS3, because former has regular x86 architecture, but latter has a very weird CELL/PowerPC architecture CPU.
To be fair, PS2 emulation is still not that great, but I guess it’s due to sheer amount of games for that system. Last summer I decided to check the PS2 emulation after 10 year break and 2 out of 3 games I tested didn’t work properly. Granted, those are kinda niche games (Transformers (2004) and Free Running), but compatibility still needs work. Hardware requirements are decently low for the games that do work, though.
So…steamdeck lol
Vita can Run 99% of PS1 games “natively” and has a bunch of PS2 ports (some through PSP). Not PS3 though.
I wouldn’t trust Sony to not fuck that up somehow like everything they do.
They’d give it a 2 hour battery 😂
To be honest my steam Deck doesn’t go that far beyond 4h either on a single charge when I lower all the settings.
Playing witcher 2 at decent FPS only gives me 2 hours on the original steam deck
That’s the one drag for me about the PS5 contrllers, the battery life before recharging. The PS3 controller did great, but the PS5 ones have so many features built in they die to quick for my liking.
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.
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.
If you pirated it you could have played it offline though. Paying customers get a worse experience than pirates
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.
That’s weird, I could.
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
At $700 you could build a pretty decent PC that would last a lot longer (3060 12gb, Ryzen 5 5600, 16gb of DDR4), 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 versions of 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.
Barely any game on GOG has a Linux port and CD Project enforces the Windows monopoly. GOG Galaxy only available for Windows, their own games only available for Windows, none of their massive resources put into improving WINE.
I was more successful running witcher 2 with the windows installer on the steam deck than with the linux one.
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.
How many people actually download and store those installers though? I think GOG is awesome too but practically if you exclusively shop there you have the same problem unless you have a massive NAS on hand
I’ve still got my original installers and CD keys for Unreal Tournament 99 GOTY, Need for Speed Underground, Trackmania United, and a bunch of others, and even some DOS games, so there’s at least some of us that keep the installers. I have a few of them on USB hard drives I’ve collected over the last 25 years or so… I really need to move them onto my NAS. :)
I used to buy directly from the publisher though. Some of them still have working download links, for example Ubisoft/Nadeo still have a working download link for Trackmania United even though it’s nearly 20 years old now.
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
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.
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. I wear through the switch on the mouse button in less than that, starts to act unreliably.
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.
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.
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
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.
Even if you give a shit about upgrading, binding yourself to sony or whatever company.
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.
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.
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.
I was just trying to say something absurd that I’ve seen being sold for PCs lol
I work in IT, the rule for me, closed lid drinks around PCs, no food or drinks in the server room. Unless you are me…the system/network engineer
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
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.
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.
Ahhhh, so my ps5 is the most superior PlayStation still, good to know.
It’s not, but it’s the most reasonable purchase.
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
It’s too expensive. $500 is already too much for these things.
But capitalism’s gotta capitalism.
$700 is actually probably a fair price for a PS5. You can’t really build an equivalent PC for less than that. $900 to $1,200 would probably be close to how much manufacturing the PS5 Pro costs.
But PSN subsidizes these costs, which is why these systems can be this “affordable”.
I doubt it costs that much. You’re looking at it from buying PC components perspective. But they are mass producing identical boards with components that are 4+ years old by now, except the GPU. The cost of production is probably around the same as it was for non-Pro when it was released.
the fuck you are smoking? my first desktop kost that much and it ran crysis really fucking good
These days a good GPU costs almost $700 just by itself, mid range is almost $500, value is $400, budget is $250
The 4060 or the 7600xt are about in the ballpark for the original ps5, but you can’t beat the price if you don’t already have a computer with most of the components
Better than a PS5 Pro? Bruh 😂
Adjusted to inflation and time, hell yes
900 to 1200’s an insane guess. This many years out R&D’s sure to have chilled out and companies that buy parts by the millions get them at much lower prices than individuals, plus partner companies that kit out their facilities to manufacture those parts recoup their investments in those facilities over time as well. I’m sure Sony’s still taking a few bucks hit on the sale of a console but it’s nowhere near close to double.
You can’t share or sell the games… Looks like a bad investment…
Wait are you talking about without the disc drive or even with it?
Lol, e-waste
Seriously though. Just buy a shelf and spend all of your money on anime figurines of you want to collect something that can still contribute micro plastics to the oceans.
Total waste of sand.
IDK, something like this will probably be MOD. There’ll be minimal waste here.
Like it or not the majority of game purchases are digital these days. It’s a sad development for sure. I buy all my console games as physical discs myself.
