Submitted 2 days ago by ampersandrew@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Outrageous. I buy most games near day 1, and sell them later. This will be the end of console gaming for me.
As Xbox shit the bed this generation, and Nintendo is doing their own thing, Sony has no real competition is the console market, so they can do what they want. This is the result.
The steam train is coming… I just hope they pick up speed.
With hardware prices like this, gamers are fucked anyway. I would have been happy to buy the Steam Machine, but not at this price level
natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends
yet all of the comments below their post prefer physical
So a grand total of 100 people out of 7 billion want physical, absolutely a reason for them to continue
yet all of the comments below their post prefer physical
Comment sections are not a representative sample. These are people who actively follow Sony news and care enough about physical media to leave angry comments.
I prefer physical media myself because I'm a middle-aged fogey, but if you want to see how PlayStation players as a whole are buying games, you have to look at Sony's financials. Since Sony are a publicly traded company, those are publicly available
The relevant data is on page 12 of this supplemental document
In FY 2025, Sony made G¥121,159 on physical game sales and G¥949,799 on digital game sales. Those numbers exclude DLC, which is listed separately (and combined with lootboxes). In short, Sony make 7.8 times as much on sales of digital games (excluding DLC and microtransactions!) as they do on physical games. To put it another way, physical game sales make up just 11% of Sony's revenue from game sales (again, excluding DLC and microtransactions). And that figure has been trending downward ever since the PS3.
The obvious caveat here is that lots of indie games never get physical releases, which skews the ratio toward digital. That's true, but the same page of the document shows that of games that get physical releases, 76% of sales are still digital.
The fact of the matter is we're a dying breed. Most people today either prefer the convenience of digital games or are just indifferent. Comment sections may say one thing, but actual data shows a massive trend toward digital games.
If people still want for consoles to be physical media, why hasn’t the industry just moved to flash modules?
I’ve been a Steam boy my whole adult life so I don’t understand the desire, but then again Valve hasn’t spent 30 years fucking me over either…
Valve has fucked some over though. I get it. I don’t want some corporate overlord in 19, 15, 20 years just going “nope!” And deleting my purchased games.
Imagine ford coming to your house and taking your dads 1960’s mustang. “This isn’t supported anymore” and loading it up on a flat deck trailer.
Also a steam boy though. Valve has so far proven not to be evil to me and a majority. My deck and steam controller are easily repaired compared to the competition and very open in what you can do with them.
Okay, I think I’m starting to get it. Thanks for the help. In my experience I don’t recall losing access to anything I “owned” from Valve.
The thing is, even if Valve did remove your games, you could get (most of) them back via piracy and move the saves on your computer over. PC is a different beast than a console walled garden.
Yeah, this is probably the last gen for me. No reason to think Microslop wont do the same thing.
I have huge backlog of old games to play on my laptop anyway. This will keep me busy until the AI bubble pops and PCs get cheaper.
We need physical media. We can rely \ expect companies to keep servers up forever. I am beyond livid ….
Careful, look what Nintendo’s been doing 🫠
I predict they will push ps6 as cloud streaming console.
They won’t. Latency is a bitch. There is a reason why geforce now is still a niche thing, despite offering a free tier.
Yeah, the tech won’t be there yet for enough people. If civilization (or the PS brand) doesn’t collapse, who knows for the PS7 and beyond?
It aligns with all the other shit decisions they’re making
Never been a better time to reject modernity and turn to sailing the seven seas!
I might just start actual sailing again instead of gaming.
As companies greedily try to control what I have purchased more and more, that’s exactly where I’m going.
Hey you guys want this not to happen. Don’t buy GTA 6 and don’t play the game.
This is happening because GTA 6 is coming out. You’ll understand this right?
Whelp, it was a nice run having Playstation consoles. I can get plenty of old games elsewhere.
I’m not buying anything from any giant corpos til the people at the top start dropping like flies.
Steam deck. Steam controller.
I’d argue that it doesn’t count because its just a bandaid to help escape how bullshit the world is right now but thats probably just me projecting
Microsoft may not even have a next gen console, let alone one with a disc drive.
I have owned every Sony console and still own every one except PS1. I will never buy a digital only console. Looks like my Sony collection ends here. Damn shame.
I don’t get the fascination with physical disc for modern consoles, it seems like the worst of both worlds.
The only way to own your games is to have a DRM free installer on a platform that has backwards compatibility as a goal/feature (so not MacOS).
PS2/PS1 discs sure, but from my understanding modern discs don’t function like they did back in the day.
We are finally at the end. It’ll start with entertainment, such as sports (already there) and soon video games. They’ve done it with software controls in vehicles. Retailers are started working with Creditors so you can do it for Computers and TVs, but the beginning of the end is upon us.
We are now entering the beginning steps of a new era, where You will own nothing, rent or lease, or subscribe to everything, and you will enjoy it because you have no choice.
Relevant (irrelevant now?) video: youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA?is=zV2aBTaCQ7L4MQwi
This is kind of a big deal. This was partly propping up Sony’s disc manufacturing arm. All they have left is whatever DVD and CDs are still in production, assuming that’s still a thing.
Ok, I guess I’ll be switching to Xbox for Next Gen then. As long as they keep optical media, that is.
I’ll just opt out of gaming altogether if it has to come with it. Say what you will about Nintendo but at least they are smart enough to keep their games on removable media (for the games worth playing at least)
You remember the Xbox One launch, right? 0% chance that Microsoft isn’t doing the same thing.
Sadly you are likely right.
There are still prodicers of optical media?
I guess that idea I had about Sony locking physical games behind account ownership won’t come to pass after all.
Most of them can save their own copies. 😏
arc99@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
On one level I understand the move. On another, what exactly is the point of owning a console at that point? If you need the broadband to download massive games, then you have the broadband to stream games from the cloud. Just turn the console into an app and people subscribe to it like Netflix.