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definitely end of an era.
I’m not buying a console without physical media.Sony can kill the second hand market if they want, but that was the last thing that differentiated them from Steam. Good bye Playstation, i’ll remember you fondly.
Rest in piss
They are also lobbying to make hosting you own videogame server illegal: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/esa-bafflingly-declares-private-minecraft-servers-illegal-in-stop-killing-games-hearing-we-consider-it-piracy-we-have-lawsuits/
Sony is part of ESA.
So is Microsoft who owns Minecraft who definitely presents private servers as dangerous (which for children may very well be true).
Having the possibility to setup a server allowed me to setup one for my sons and I. I’d rather have that then them going online…
You would think that’s what every parent would prefer…
Both because it’s more safe and secure. Plus I have very fond memories of LAN parties and without private servers and local multiplayer kids won’t be able to experience that :(
So are bicycles and kitchen knives. Ffs
That was kind of my point?
That just because it’s “dangerous” for children doesn’t justify banning it wholesale. Sorry I wasn’t more clear.
Yet Microsoft allows people access to host a private server while also putting up scary warnings for kids telling them to stick to the “safe” realms servers or whatever (are they even still called Realms? fuck if I know). On the one hand, it’s good they haven’t removed it entirely, on the other hand, it seems like that may be their eventual long-term goal with how they treat the private server ecosystem.
I also think Discord and Roblox contributed to people not knowing what the fuck “server” actually means anymore.
Its like they saw how much Xbox has been sucking and thought “hold on, instead of building on this market lead, I bet we could beat Xbox in enshittifying!”
Ever since the PS3 and Xbox 360, it’s like the console wars have just been about them trading whose turn it was for the next PR disaster. Racing to the top was too expensive so they race to the bottom instead.
probably going to complain when steam/valve is the only competitor making bank. MS wasted all thier money on trying to make AI work.
It helps when you get that their goals and ours are not really the same. They want to earn more money, and don’t need to provide a perfect service to achieve that. They just need to be (slightly) less shitty than Xbox.
Don’t forget they also paid $3.6 Billion for Bungie just to shut down their most popular game and put all their hope in their new extraction shooter that’s been struggling. No new games in dev or even green lit. Also they just laid off a bunch of people.
Destiny got what it deserved. I can’t believe it lasted as long as it did. I noped after they started charging $40 for a couple maps and a raid labeled as “expansions”. And that was destiny 1. The game was an unbelievable ripoff.
Can’t believe people still stuck with it even after they locked down the legacy content. It’s crazy how much it takes to get people to stop buying enshittified products.
I agree I don’t blame Sony at all. Also I hate myself for it but for me no FPS I’ve played comes close to the fluid gunplay in Destiny and Destiny 2. That is where Bungie always shined for me above everyone else. The rebooted Doom games are a close 2nd. and there are a few indie titles like Turbo Overkill that get close as well. Everything else just doesn’t match up when I get that FPS itch.
Don’t blame Sony for bungies mess. Sony got absolutely scammed by Bungie because they were desperately and panicking after MS accounted they were buying ABK.
Bungie have been a terrible studio for a decade at least. Microsoft turned them down when Bungie attempted to sell themselves back to them for a fraction of what Sony paid them only a few months later.
This one is more on the Bungie side of things. Bungie got a few lifelines and STILL fumbled.
Oh yeah don’t get me started on Bungie. The are a shell of their former selves. When they split from Activison and it all came out that the mircotransactions was all Bungie’s idea that was my first WTF moment with these guys. They let us believe it was the Corp overlords ruining our game but they did it themselves. Then they did everything they could do to make themselves look profitable for Sony’s acquisition. Just horrible decision after horrible decision.
Imagine if Bungie never “vaulted” (read: deleted) any part of Destiny 2 and we were still able to play the original campaign it shipped with? More people would still be playing Destiny 2 and you’d get plenty more new players without them having to use a guide or YouTube lore videos to get caught up on the story.
Instead of mArathon they’d probably be making a Destiny 3
What really sucks is that Marathon is actually pretty fun.
They just completely fumbled the marketing and launch, the UI needs to be cleaned up, and it doesn’t feel worth it at $40. IDC if it’s a AAA developer, it’s still a pretty small game content wise even if it is fun to play.
I’m a diehard Marathon fan, I dumpster dived for an Apple to play the first two on when I was a kid. I can’t even try the new one because they purposefully broke it on Linux.
I don’t pay $70 for a game I can’t even sell after using it.
Yeah I’m completely done with Sony. They also killed Destiny as a franchise and are already getting ready to launch a PS6 despite them basically producing no games during the pandemic because most people didn’t own a ps5 due to shortages. Feels like we got half a life cycle for this console, then they release the pro for like twice the price, and now they expect you to get ready to upgrade. And of course they are stopping disc production while simultaneously proving they can and will just stop letting you use your digital purchases. I’m sticking to PC and switch 2 for the foreseeable future. I honestly may never buy another console.
This is Sony though, they care so much about playstation customers they even went to the effort of updating the ps3 firmware in March this year to improve things for their customers.
I mean it would be crazy to suggest they would do that for a console they discontinued a decade ago just to try and fuck with people who have the temerity to run custom firmware on hardware they bought and paid for 20 years ago…
Sony business logic is fucked.
Do they still make money of it or was the security hole easy enough to fix, that they paid a few engineer hours from pocket money, just for the fuck you?
Don’t think that there was ever a security hole. I wouldnt consider installing alt firmware to be a security hole
Per the patch notes: https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/support/hardware/ps3/system-software/
"By updating, you can enjoy additional features, improved usability, and enhanced security.
Please note, to play Blu-ray discs, your PS3 system needs a renewed Blu-ray player encryption key. Please update your PS3 system software to the latest version to renew the Blu-ray player encryption key."
I havent actually tried to watch a bluray on custom firmware since, but I’m a weirdo who uses it for playing games so that doesnt matter to me.
I dont see any money being made on the ps3
The updates were for the BluRay licenses they do it on a schedule. You can easily still play online even with pirated games
Sony doesn’t care about what you do on your PS3. You can literally play online and earn trophies with pirated games without getting banned.
They also just announced that the PS3 and Vita Playstation Stores will be shutting down, starting next month in certain regions and everywhere by July 2027. At some point in the future it will be impossible to buy games for your old PS6 because it doesn’t support discs and the Playstation Store doesn’t support the system.
Honestly, once cheap physical media wasn’t able to keep up with game sizes this became inevitable. Blurays can store 100GB, which isn’t enough for the bigger games of today, and they will only get bigger. It was still nice to have the disc as a sellable, tradeable license for the game as long as the servers were up, though.
2 disks is an option
True.
Nintendo winning this console generation with the Switch 2 was not on my bingo card.
Why not? They kicked everyone’s arse with the Switch 1.
Nintendo being the best option for a consumer (from a legal perspective) was not on my bingo card
Why bother with consoles anymore? PCs are so much better
Sadly, I can’t qualify for the 40 year loan I would need to buy a PC.
Nintendo shut down the e-shop for the 3DS. All the digital games you owned? Gone.
They’re part of the problem.
The 3DS is very easy to jailbreak. Highly recommend it. Just in case anyone needs to hear this.
They need to up their exclusive game…game. Other than DK Bananza, their output has been disappointing. I only got a Switch 2 now because it’s only going to get more expensive and I’m hoping for quality exclusives in the next 6 or so years that they’ll be supporting it.
You do realize the Switch 2 already has more exclusives than the PS5, right?
Edit with sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nintendo_Switch_2-only_games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_gamesYes, but the quality of those exclusives is lacking compared to their previous consoles. It’s only been a year, so I’m going to be optimistic that their output will improve. Looking forward to Ocarina of Time and Xenoblade Genesis.
Ports of games to Nintendo consoles are always the worst way to play them due to the weaker hardware, so exclusives matter a lot more on them. It’s the entire reason I got one. PS5 is good for more than just exclusives (especially since, as you pointed out, it barely has any!)
My MSPaint skills aren’t what they used to be, but imagine a console version of this
Between this and most of the games coming out these days, apart from indies, being complete crap, I think the PS5 will be my last console.
I feel like defending consoles is a lost cause at this point. We can’t trust any of the big 3 anymore.
Sega, Atari, and
Nintendo of course
This was me a decade ago when Xbox suggested something like this. Nintendo was shutting down their old eshops and making purchased games in playable and Playstation was selling shovelware on their online store.
In a dystopia like that… Suddenly, Steam’s digital only didn’t look so bad.
Xbox’s digital future was actually incredibly user friendly - it was all digital, but it allowed people to re-sell and loan their digital games. People were just too dumb to understand what was so good about it.
The alternative is what Sony are now doing - all digital with zero of the perks of physical.
People were just too dumb to understand what was so good about it.
I wouldn’t have trusted Microsoft to follow through on this in the long term. I have little doubt they would have removed that concession as soon as they thought they could get away with it.
Found one of the people too dumb to understand it 🤣
Just get a console they said. Console just works they said. Why get a PC when it won’t work in a year they said.
This is why I don’t buy consoles. I can use a controller on my computer which is upgradable and not subject to one individual company dictating what I can and can’t do.
Why get a PC when it won’t work in a year they said.
Interesting because my Steam digital purchases go back to 2007 and I can still play them all.
My first digital purchase was the Orange Box and my second purchase was Psychonauts.
I had purchased Half Life 2 as a physical copy and it still works, too.
Sure they’re all just licenses, but a lot of effort has been put into me being able to continue playing them, including on Linux.
Yes, Valve is a different story because they’re a private company, but 20 years of license when I could play on any computer I owned at any time I think is showing that digital licensing isn’t inherently evil as much as it is widely abused for control.
Orange Box was my first digital purchase too!
If steam changed ownership and control, there is nothing stopping the new people from doing things similar to other big companies.
Many games are potentially a heart attack away from loss of access
Absolutely, that’s my point about them being widely abused.
This is why I keep a good chunk of my steam library downloaded locally and don’t buy always-online required games.
They’re actually not just licenses. When you download a game from steam you get the game data. You can back up this gamedata if you wish. Sure it will have steam DRM but thats something on can get around one way or another.
This is the power of open platform like PC
Real and based. If you get them on GOG, you can download offline installers with no DRM. My GOG collection isn’t as big as my Steam, but it’s also fairly significant as well. Heroic Launcher on Linux is sweet for GOG games (you just have to plan out wine prefix and directory structure to properly have updates install).
The same is true of Xbox consoles btw. You can back-up your game files from your Xbox to a external hdd and transfer them back to your Xbox in 50 years time and play them even if they’ve been delisted and Xbox no longer exists.
They are still only licenses though, same with steam. Steam still has verification servers. If steam disappeared you are no better off than if xbox did.
If steam disappeared you are no better off than if xbox did.
Steam DRM can be trivially removed. 3rd party DRM is a problem, but thankfully not all games use it and many games have had their DRM removed as well (either by the publisher or through crackers).
Xbox and Nintendo are basically doing the same thing
How are Microsoft doing it?
And PC games have been digital for ages it feels. Still a loss, I usually wait half a year to two years before buying new games and can just pick up whatever I want for 20€ on disc without having to wait for the next PS Store sale, often even the version that includes all the DLCs and the remaster of the previous game. PS5 is probably my last console.
Steam kinda killed physical PC games 20 years ago.
And the Steam zealots will come and say, “Yeah, but but you can still buy games on other storefronts! So it’s not like this Sony thing at all!” OK, sure.
But Steam still helped kill physical games on PC.
But since PS is an open platform, you can preserve your digital games for it. Not always legally, but buying isn’t owning anyway.
Yeah, no game bought on Steam is owned, just licensed. It sucks. Have to go to other places to actually own it digitally.
Depends on how long Nintendo plans to keep doing game key cards. They suck, but they’re better than having no way to transfer a game license at all. I suspect that the “Switch 3” won’t have any physical media at all, though.
Yea the era of giving the “big 3” any of my money
Media rights expiring surely isn’t on them.
Why can’t they renew them?
Well they could, but that would cost them money
Second point isnt that?
What is it then?
We aren’t talking about some small indie movie website here. Sony should have never signed a deal that would force them to take away their customers purchased movies if a contract ran out. If that’s not possible either don’t sign any deal at all or only offer rental. Simple, as long as you’re not greedy and make promises you can’t keep.
Now that they apparently have to claw back those purchased movies, the least they could do is to refund everyone their money. If you can rent movies, they could also only refund the difference between renting and buying.
Maybe not, but the fact that customers who thought they purchased a movie are having it stolen from them with the excuse that the license ran out IS their fault, 100%.
Sony chose to advertise items for sale that indicated that their customer was buying the movie, not renting it for the lifetime of the license. From a consumer point of view, it doesn’t matter whose fault the license expired, because Sony is at fault for misleading storefront and advertising. They knew the terms of the license, and chose to advertise the product in ways that were absolutely not in line with what the customer thought they got vs what they actually got.
There is no world in which Sony does not take fault in this. Well, outside of a courtroom anyway, because media owners can do as they want in our current copyright hellscape. In any sane world, this would be seen as the theft it is. In this world, it’s just a Tuesday.
