Cowardly little shits.
I am imagining the marketers leaving the office with life jackets riding small boats. 🛟🚣
It’s interesting because Japan has traditionally been very big on physical media. I guess Sony PlayStation has had some foreign CEOs recently that may be a factor??
they saw the $$$ in perpetual subscriptions.
PlayStation has had foreign leadership for 7 years
How crazy is that for a Japanese company.
Nissan was ran by a Brazilian guy for almost 20 years.
Sure. I just found it humorous a multi-national company like Sony is run by a ‘foreigner’. Foreigner to whom?
Most publicly traded companies are ran by a revolving door of CEOs from around the world. They live a totally different lifestyle from normal people. The majority of wealthy people are not aligned to any country. Only to money.
Most CEO’s have a ‘big item agenda’ which they implement in 5-7 years. After that, it’s time to move on to look for the next challenge. I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing in and of itself as it provides new insights and goals for the company.
Sometimes this works and sometimes the company dies due to the incompetent new CEO or is a CEO hired by a hostile takeover private equity firm to extract as much money from it as possible.
PlayStation, not Sony.
Omg. Do you know the difference between a product and a company?
I wish this would be the anine cabbage of the gaming world.
Could this be a signal that CDs DVD and Bluray Discs production maybe coming to an end soon? The companies that make them are very likely reporting low sales and a lot of stock on hand.
I mean, I’m all for replacing physical items as it reduces physical plastic waste.
But it does put the onus on consumers to pay for the storage rather than the manufacturer and prices for digital are not any lower than physical so all it does is save the manufacturer money, not the consumer. If it resulted in a 10% decrease in game prices that would help.
The other issue however is that manufacturers do not guarantee a download will be available forever. If that were guaranteed there wouldn’t be an issue, as digital games often need to be re-installed if a bug or error occurs.
physical media for movies and tv is next on the list. sony makes those, too.
I would have understood them making this call for PS6 onwards - digital edition only. But while they’re still selling disc PS5s at eye-watering prices? What the fuck are they thinking? Way to burn good will with your ever-shrinking fanbase.
Shows how much they care lol
They are afraid haha. And they should be. Dammit.
Their competition (Nintendo and Steam) already don’t have physical media. Nintendo is moving towards 100% Game Key cards, and Steam is all downloads. Playstation could have used physical media as a competitive advantage, but decided against it for cost reasons. So now this is the end of gaming physical media. The game sizes are just way too large.
Just to be fair, the Nintendo Switch 2 does support “Game Key Card” games. Such that you still must download the game and use the card to authenticate your game.
However there are zero first party* Nintendo games that are “Game Key Card” games. If you buy Mario or Zelda you do get the game on the card.
I do expect that will change in the future and follow the trend Sony is taking to be 100% digital. So you’re right to be concerned that they are heading in the same direction.in fact with Sony already heading that direction it’s even more certain.
*(Pokemon, which feels like a first party and Nintendo owns a large portion of, is technically third party.)
Sorta annoyed Nintendo didn’t receive as much flak as this with hoards of people trying to justify game cards by pointing at Microsoft and Sony.
I had no idea “game key cards” were a thing until this comment sent me down a rabbit hole. What a total scam! Clearly deceptive and anti-consumer. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a class action lawsuit yet. Maybe most are ignorant like myself.
How is it a scam? It is exactlly what is printed on the box. Not everything you dislike is a scam.
The box and packaging makes it look like you are buying a physical game that will play for years after Nintendo turns off their servers. If someone wanted to buy a download key, they could buy the little cardboard scratch off things. Packaging it as if you were actually buying physical media is intentionally misleading.
There is a huge banner at the bottom of the cover art that clearly states that a download is required. It’s only misleading if you can’t read.
How am I as a regular consumer supposed to know what a game key card is? And yes, the non-standardized one off example of a company using a non-plain language description completely destroys the argument that this is anti-consumer and intentionally deceptive. Clearly everyone wants a game keycard inserted in order to play a digital game that if they had bought with an explicit code or completely online wouldn’t be required. It’s also great that completely digital download that takes many gigabytes of storage on my device becomes unplayable the moment I lose the game key. That way, I get the worst of both worlds! I have to be responsible with keeping track with physical media, and I have a massive drain on my devices storage space.
Just look at this Game Key Pass game sold through target. Note how the description says that it is a physical copy, and the specification notes that it is a physical copy. The only reason you may even suspect that this is game-key card that requires a download is if you happen to look at one of the cover art screenshots without alternative text. The fast food industry has been getting wrecked by that sort of oversight for a couple of years now.(Links available on request, but currently on mobile, so lazy)
How is it deceptive? It’s clearly stated on the box in unambiguous terms. In fact, the warning banner for key cards is bigger than the banner for codes in a box. Nintendo isn’t responsible for your inability to read.
the cost to produce and distribute (or rather, the lower profits), was secondary… waaaay tf under the top 5 reasons for dumping physical media: control, control, control. control, and control… control over your “purchases”
Just buy a PC, fuck the consoles. That will teach em!!
Unfortunately even a super low spec pc is still double the price of a PS5.
Also the overwhelming majority of console owners are already 100% digital.
Right now? Yes.
Before the AI bullshit, no. There was a ton of builds you could do for the cost of the PS5. Not everything needs to be current gen. On top of that most people who build a PC don’t upgrade it for a good 5+ years usually (if not longer), and you’re usually not upgrading everything at once, just the GPU usually. It’s not needed since games literally still run perfectly fine for years and years on older hardware. AM4 systems running ddr4 are now a decade old. I have an AM4 system running a 5800xt (second CPU) and a 6900xt (bought used), and it still handles pretty much everything on high settings @ 1080p, even new stuff that comes out.
That or buy a steam deck for like $300 used lol
Right now, and for the foreseeable future.
No one should be buying a steam deck, even a used one, in 2026 as their main gaming device. That makes the steam machine look like a 5090 powered beast.
People don’t want to buy a PC that already can’t play current gen games.
Yep. The steam deck was basically the equivalent of a budget PC stripped down and shoved into a handheld.
And this was 4 years ago when its new. Which relied heavily on low resolution and resolution scaling to even make due.
Now its even worse, especially with no significant price drop, and double especially with the ridiculous price increase they put on it.
Steam deck is an interesting device, and I’ll give valve credit for it. But its past its time, especially with the lack of price reductions.
With how underpowered it is, there are a dozen Android handhelds like the Retroid pocket 6 that are significantly cheaper and will be better at playing your steam library than the steam deck.
From the digital side,you can purchase games from gog, which offers DRM free games. You can download the installers and use them in perpetuity.
Yeah, as long as you don’t want to play anything other than indies. GoG misses out on 99% of AA/AAA games specifically because of the lack of DRM.
Its getting better BG3 and Reanimal and a few other AAA games recently have made their way there.
I think selling it back from CD Projekt to the original creator will slowly see this change to where more and more games are found on there day one.
But yeah if a publisher is a dickhead and not budging on DRM steam or Epic is pretty much your only option. And that does tend to happen. But in that case it isn’t really GOGs fault for what the publisher won’t allow.
That’s the thing - it’s not GoG’s fault, but that doesn’t change the reality of the fact that it is a wasteland if you want recent AA/AAA games
The fact that CDPR sold it says to me that it’s never going to be anything more than it is now in regards to being a real alternative to steam. If CDPR couldn’t do it, with all their financial backing, no way in hell can a single guy.
Unsurprisingly, when a publisher is paying $100mil-$300mil to make a game, they don’t want it ending up on pirate bay and every other download site free of charge for all within an hour of release. They will never release on GoG without DRM.
That’s not true at all, but yes consoles will be a bit more expensive than comparable Consoles.
What’s not true? The steam machine and comparable PCs are about USD$1200 when you add in a controller. The base PS5 is USD$650, or $600 for the digital one which is more comparable since the steam machine and PC’s are digital only.
The Steam machine isn’t as powerful as a PS5.
Yeah but you don’t pay monthly for internet access and you have tens of thousands more of pc exclusives
PS Plus is $80 a year for the basic and $160 a year for the ultra premium with like 300+ games. And they give you 3 free games a month even on basic. And if you buy a game, you can share the game with a friend and play online together with the same copy at the same time. With steam sharing one of you has to be offline on that game.
At $600 for the system and $80 a year that’s going to take over 6 and a half years before you hit the $1000 mark.
I have PC and PS5 and am in the middle of making cheaper PCs to get my friends to finally jump ship from PS’s BS and I can tell you absolutely with 100 percent certainty that the guy is right. It is not cheaper. It is way more expensive.
Not sure why he got down voted for that truth.
I’m resorting to making BC 250 builds for my friends (basically will pay a subscription cost through electric now but progress is progress) and it still isn’t cheaper for what you get with PlayStation.
But fuck them though killing off physical and throwing their weight behind ESA to try and make hosting your own game servers illegal and just years of anti consumer bullshit has made me intent on leaving them for good after this year.
That a super low spec PC is twice the price of a PS5.
A PC that will outperform the PS5 Pro by a decent margin could be had for about $1000 today. An entry level gaming PC could be had for $700 or so.
The premium you pay for a PC over a PS5 is only 10-15% and that’s only because Sony sells them at a loss to recoup later in PSN subscriptions and online store purchases (This is why they’re killing physical media).
You’re saving 10-15% up front at the cost of being trapped on their platform forever and you’ll pay more over the life of it in PSN subscriptions unless you play single player only games.
That’s not true at all. Have you had your head in the sand since the steam machines reveal? A machine that matches the steam machine is about $1000-$1100. That is less powerful than the regular PS5.
To make a PC as powerful as the PS5 Pro will cost a lot more.
Care to show me this ps5 pro beating pc for $1000?
It sure is. I think your problem is you don’t know much a gaming PC costs, or much at all about hardware, so your only frame of reference is the Steam Machine, which is a small form factor pre-built machine with notoriously poor value for the money.
Care to show me this ps5 pro beating pc for $1000?
This dynamically changes with price, so for posterity this listing is $1,062
Literally the only thing the PS5 Pro beats out in this build is that it has DDR5 instead of DDR4 RAM, but even that in no way makes up for its shortcomings in other areas. The PS5 Pro’s GPU is close but doesn’t quite match the performance of the 9060 xt, and the PS5 Pro’s CPU is absolutely gimped next to the 5600x due its remarkably small cache and power limitations.
SONY has always been a
littleenormous shit.I see someone remembers the 2005 rootkit debacle. Such assholes.
…and killing the dual boot feature of the PS3, and attacking Geohot for rooting the PS3 (so people could resume dual booting)…
they gotta come back sometime
That should be more than long enough to get past the attention span of sony customers
Something something sense of accomplishment…
Task failed successfully?
In a just world they’d never go back.
Discs were already kinda starting to push their limits as far as their storage capacity on a single disc, it wouldn’t.be profitable with modern AAA games for much longer anyway IMO. 100GB bluray would be like 10-20 bucks on the raw disc alone IIRC
They would sell you a game on 20 discs if you’d buy it that way. The price of discs is negligible. They are trying to kill the availability of used games so they can charge $60 for 10 year-old games because there are no other options.
Blu ray discs cost pennies to manufacture, especially at scale.
Also, Sony owns the blu ray IP.
Also also, if they gave a fuck they could just ship 2 discs in a box. Like they did at the tail end of the xbox 360 days.
They’d just rather not deal with it anymore.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony stops producing Blu-ray soon.
We have the technology for the next generation of discs that could support 8k. It just happens to be that no one wants to put money into creating the standard.
Sony may not want to deal with it anymore.
Plus no one buys physical games anyway.
