Digital isnt the worst thing, but how “ownership” is controlled can be. I wouldn’t blame Sony for the move but their method is garbage, and their past practices with digital ownership is too.
GoG on the other hand knows how it should be done. I have tons of games from them on a thumb drive. I’ve never actually needed to use it, but its nice to know I can. Major kudos to them.
That said, most of my games are owned on steam, which still has DRM, but at least I can play those games on a 20 year old PC, a modern one, a box in my living room, or on a multitude of hand helds. With Sony you are tied to a specific console and thats that. Good fucking luck when they stop selling that console.
Nintendo churns out the same slop franchises year after year and aggressively sues anyone for anything.
Sony (somehow) believes that investors are what give their company value, not customers, and certainly not employees. They’re abandoning physical media and not backing down on their anti-consumer practices that only continue to get worse.
Microsoft has become the new EA, aggressively buying up every single schmedium-sized gaming studio they can get their hands on, mismanageing them all into the ground, then selling them off for parts to save their own asses while leaving talented studios to die on the vine. They’re basically buying the right to scrap their competition and they’ll get away with it because they have enterprise IT subscriptions to absorb the losses.
AAA gaming is dead. And greed killed it. I’ll be playing indie PC games and emulators for the foreseeable future.
Nintendo churns out the same slop franchises
looks at most highly rated video games of all time
Look mate, not everything you don’t personally like is “slop”.
And the Switch titles in all of those franchises range from some of, to the flat out worst, in their respective series.
TotK may as well be DLC for BotW, and Windwaker would have been more similar to those titles were it not for the technical limitations of the Gamecube.
They still can’t seem to get Starfox right since 64 and even that was a reboot of the NES title. You’re really gonna look at all those 3DS attempts to reboot the same NES game and tell me that’s not slop?
Pokémon is seeing the worst quality of the whole franchise on Switch and apparently Pokémon Go was just to train military robots or some shit. You’re really gonna look at 3DS models in a Switch game and tell me that’s not slop, my opinion is just wrong?
Smash Ultimate’s online play has 11, ELEVEN frames of input lag under ideal circumstances, the metagame has been busted since Steve, DLC characters are OP, patches were promised, then canceled, and support is over now. You’re really gonna tell me that’s acceptable, totally not slop, my opinion just sucks?
I hope you play Switch games forever, and I hope you love it.
Popularity does not imply quality.
I’ve played the recent Zelda games. They’re okay. But also disgustingly overrated.
It’s all about maximizing shareholder value. Unfortunately, companies have come to the realization that happy customers are no longer the path to success. There is more value in capturing a market and then gutting services to squeeze those pennies out. Long term this can’t be sustainable but here we are.
Greed has been a problem in the AAA game space for a long time. It’s just that before reliable Internet connections, it was harder to exploit people.
Before this, it was lootboxes and gambling mechanics, before that, it was microtransactions, balancing the game to incentivise spending money, and before that it was chopping bits off the game and selling it as DLC.
Prior to that, the worst we got was cheap sequels and shovelware.
There’s a whole wide world of AAA video games out there aside from those you mentioned. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was fantastic just last year; Metaphor: ReFantazio the year before that; Baldur’s Gate 3 the year before that; Elden Ring the year before that. Plenty more still might be significantly smaller, but it would be difficult to count something like The Alters as indie; or Invincible VS or Screamer or Mouse: P.I. for Hire.
And all of those are available on an open platform digitally if not available on physical media.
Maybe controversial, but I and most of my friends have said fuck GTA6. We’ll wait to see what happens with the PC release.
don’t need these shitty corporations and their walled platforms…
Sony didn’t really “double down”. The decision to wind down their physical games category was made years ago. Everything after the initial public announcement is to manage public relations.
Not sure many outside Japan realise but Sony are a conglomerate that dip their fingers into unrelated industries. This to them is clearly just a line through a smaller category on the balance sheet.
There’s a discussion to be had about ownership and physical games but i think that market is going to re-emerge in the future in perhaps a more bespoke way, like the resurgence of music vinyls.
To me, Sony seems to be interested in just managing the distribution of IP opposed to “gaming” itself. They’re not true custodians in that space or if they were, then they’re not now.
2 clarifications:
1 - because of Sony’s requirements for printing physical discs, it requires permission and effort from Sony itself. A company cannot simply burn blurays for playstation games, they MUST engage Sony. This isn’t interest in “just managing of the IP,” this is specifically to increase profit by removing physical needs altogether (shipping, manufacturing, distribution, etc) as well as snuffing out the second hand market which, in theory, would drive more profit towards Sony, and finally it provides control. Access can be revoked, products become fluid, and the store can remove your access to older versions if a remake or remaster comes out that you would then have to buy on the new storefront. No new market can spring up with a resurgence in terms of Sony as Sony would have to allow it, being a closed console platform.
2 - they directly respond to shareholder questions around the backlash to the announcement, which they refer to as “various opinions.” They did not retract their statement or change course and choose to push forward. How is that not doubling down?
“There are various reasons we made this decision, the biggest being that the digitalization of content overall has been progressing. That’s the big factor,” he said. "It’s not just for PlayStation, but for all kinds of content; digitalization is progressing. And so, when we think about the future – and we put in a lot of thought and time, and we cautiously considered this – and we came to this conclusion, and we’re going to cautiously move this forward.
Tao added, “And to this decision, we have received various opinions and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forth those views to us.”
i was referring to physical games as a whole and not necessarily tied to Playstation games or their discs.
They’ve been transitioning this specific manufacturing division since 2024. It can’t be a “double down” because they’re not going to revert two years of already re-trained staff and re-purposed equipment because of online forum talk.
Messages to shareholders like this is pretty standard. They’re basically saying:
- decision is final
- components manufacturing is more lucrative than disc manufacturing
- we will distribute our IP
So they’re hedging their bets on what their future could be. If they lose out on gaming they’ll make back on microlenses.
Stand-down August 23rd-30th. Want to send a fuck you to Sony? Fuck their profits, then they’ll understand.
Not saying don’t do it, but it’s a blip on the radar. As someone who works in tech, a week blackout looks like a bunch of people going on vacation. Especially during August, which is during many summer vacations.
Never buy a digital title for a console. If you need to buy digital, buy it on the open hardware platform.
If you really want to send a message, deleting your account or cancelling PS plus if you have it does more. That shows a decline in MoM retention.
Timed boycotts are an assimilation to corporate control. If the goal of a boycott is to affect change it must be indefinite as the change it wishes to bring about is required to end it.
Do it this week, next week, the week after…
No tangible amount of people are going to put their money where their mouth is. Gamers have time and time again shown that they can be screwed over. I mean look at the state of the big games now and games as a service taking over, people are happily paying $20+ for a skin in a game, something that used to come included with the game as an unlock.
It’s not just gamers. All of these performative bucking of the norm lasts a few days then back to business as usual. People don’t want to give up their comforts for lasting change.
Not saying you’re wrong but the backlash to this Sony decision seems to have most gamers up in arms. Maybe even waking up a little bit. Maybe I’m too hopeful though.
If your friends agree, just spread the word, there’s no need to spend on those skins when there’s soooo many indie titles out there. Hours and hours of content to keep us busy and direct money away from Sony, Microsoft, etc.
Get some drm free games on GoG.
I’ve already primarily moved to PC over the last year or so but this whole incident has opened my eyes to the jailbreak scene. I have a PS5 for the exclusives but they will no longer get a dime from me and I will not be buying any of their consoles going forward.
Nobody has explained how simply not using the console you already bought would affect their profits negatively at all. If anything, it will lower their server costs from the reduced bandwidth for a month.
Just stop buying anything from Sony until they get the message. No music, no games, no subscriptions, no movies, no media players or proprietary media (ie BluRay disks regardless of what they are for; even Xbox games), no hardware, etc.
^ now that’s a boycott
Gave it a go this week. Did some Gardening made a friend :
At least someone likes my cauliflower 👍
Felt pretty okay with it tbh. Will give it another go on the 23rd.
