Brother, I have those 40tb raid arrays at home. None of this crap will affect me.
Oh and for games I don't play those. But if I did I would stop buying Sony crap.
Bluray is still alive and well because its the only format that has full quality basically 1:1 media encodes which ironically make up the backbone of full quality media piracy.
No streaming service will ever support 70Gb+ file sizes because they never bothered to implement multicast so it would shred their bandwidth or rely on predownloading which would shred the tiny local storage included on most smart TVs.
You could of course use jellyfin or any other file share protocol to DIY, but you'd better have a stable 100Mbps minimum upload/download speed lol.
I don't have a source, but I do believe I've already seen articles about multiple studios reducing their bluray releases. I think there was one studio which wanted to completely stop all of them even.
I think all games, even those in physical media, are licenses to play them, is what OP means. You might be thinking of download carts, which doesn't contain game data, but makes you download games.
Bluray is higher quality than all the streaming bullshit that's usually lower than default settings x265. Also for anime the bluray is a great way to support the creator and used as a metric for deciding if a series gets picked up for more releases.
My personal conspiracy theory is that Sony is trying to kill Blu-ray before it enters public domain. (2028-2030 or so). Single-layer Blu-rays are invaluable for my cold storage backups. So I'm going to keep buying them. And thanks to them, entering public domain, innovation will be possible once again. So, in all honesty, I don't have that much to fear, as mega corporations also use blu-rays heavily for backups, together with tape.
Magnetic tape depolarizes over time. CDs were organic and they would literally rot away. But as long as your Blu-ray discs are high to low (HTL)/inorganic Then you're really set for at least 30 years as well, just like professional tape, but at a fraction of the price.
I also have CDs that are this old. There's a big difference between CDs that you can burn yourself, because those are using organic materials and the weak laser in your disk drive to burn them and professionally made disks, which are usually using inorganic materials and molds. The molds then are embossed into the datalayer of the CD, making it significantly more durable than organic discs.
Yeah, used to. But people figured out years ago that old copies of pokemon go for 100€+ on ebay so they are basically hunting every thrift store or flea markets for elderly mothers who sell their sons stuff who moved out 10 years ago and hasn't bothered picking his old stuff up.
Yeah, a lot of shops have gone off the rails with prices. The same thing happened with the vintage clothing market. All these folks started selling old shirts on eBay for like $50 minimum, and now all of the thrift stores are picked clean, or are selling those items at crazy prices themselves.
I tend to get games that aren’t in the sought after list and get lucky sometimes. You can still find games at thrift stores if you’re lucky. You just have to hunt and be okay with disappointment lol.
Last time I was there they had Pokemon Crystal version for over $400, which is probably a fair price but reminded me the used games market is expensive :(
I have a No Man’s Sky disk. Like 5% of the code on that disk is in the production game today. It’s online only, so I couldn’t even play it with the disk.
Cartridges do kinda make sense, you could patch the game on them (in theory), they can come in much larger sizes than disks too.
Side note: modern gaming is shit.
I bought Spyro and couldn’t even play it without agreeing to a privacy policy. It’s a single player offline game from the PS1 era. I installed The Sims 4, I can’t even play without an EA account. I tried Assassin’s Creed and you need an Ubisoft account to open the game.
Cartridges do kinda make sense, you could patch the game on them (in theory), they can come in much larger sizes than disks too.
If AI wasn't making SSD prices so outrageous right now, an SSD-based cartridge system would make a lot of sense. They could be made in a variety of sizes, to accommodate games with different filesystem footprints, and if the SSDs in them have tolerable performance, they could be played directly off the cartridge, without needing to 'install' anything -- just insert and go.
Pretty sure it has the 2016 version of NMS on it. Booted up a ps4 install with it to try and couch co-op only to look around and ask why the UI was so different from what I was used to. It had internet access we thought but it can't have or it would have installed whatever the latest patch is. It was surreal seeing pillars of Emeril again.
But you point yes, gaming single player offline is a joke now with DRM requiring single player online. We ripped EA Simcity for this. Simcity died to City:Skylines because it became such a movement.
I don't doubt that digital is more accessible and readily available than other formats. The biggest problem is that few services allow me to download locally what I've purchased.
So, for me, you're not buying anything, you're just renting for the long term.
Honestly, I'm tired of buying digital only to suddenly find out I can no longer use what I purchased. For these services, I prefer self-hosting or any method that allows me to have a working copy locally. At least I can decide what to do with the digital content.
Yes, you can buy and download CD quality or HD quality (up to 24-bit, 192 kHz) FLAC from their store. From their homepage, there should be a link to the download store in the header bar: https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop
Steam seems to be one of the very few services (perhaps even the only one I know of) that hasn't transformed its product by following the trend of enshittification. I have many games on Steam, purchased years and years ago, many of which are no longer available, but I can still download and play, having purchased them back then.
I really appreciate Steam, but from what I read every day, I don't think "forever" exists, especially online. If we think of it in terms of "everything's in the cloud," well, the cloud costs money, so unless they somehow dispose of data, I don't know if a company can actually keep every single piece of data "forever" while maintaining a good price and not losing out or burdening consumers.
The same goes for physical copies: I could lose them, break them, my house burn down, and I'd lose everything, whereas if they were in the cloud, I wouldn't have any problems. The point is that consumers should be allowed, where possible, to export what they've purchased. Honestly, I think that anyone who bought movies or other content on some platform and then years later discovered that the company had removed them and they could no longer use them (or worse, the same content was on another paid platform) would honestly bother me.
Well at least Nintendo themselves still releases full game cartridges and it's not like you buy a Switch for third party games anyway. Nintendo only introduced the Gamekey card because third party publishers, especially Acti and Ubi, were releasing their own version on Switch 1 and not using consistent packaging labels to tell a gamekey from a full game cartridge apart so probably confused many consumers. Hence why Nintendo created an official version.
Data md existed. If it had been included from the beginning, md would have been a killer. As usual, Sony decided to shoot themselves repeatedly in the feet instead.
I'm torn. Like, there are two online medical equipment shops covered by my insurance. The one I use and Amazon. I'm the unusual event my supplier is having delays I can usually get equipment from Amazon in their standard delivery window.
Like, we've gotten bipap parts on there when a family member traveled across the country and left half of their ventilator at home. It was not cheap, but it was quick and that's what they needed.
Like, there's a good, necessary service under all the bullshit that other companies seem to be unable to match for reasons I don't understand, probably having to do with paying and treating labor more fairly. If it weren't life and death sometimes
Honestly 90% of the movies we want to watch aren't on Prime (which we happen to have for non-movie-reasons) and we would need extra subscriptions for each of them. It is cheaper and more convenient for us to buy used blu rays or dvds of the movies. It's 3,99€ to rent a movie for 48 hours (best case, usually it is some arthouse subscription) or 2,17€ for the DVD on medimops. We watch during lunch break so we usually can't make it through a movie in 48 hours without stressing. (My spouse does not want to pirate anymore and I support that.)
Our daughter has her own small collection of cartoons and anime that she can choose for a TV treat instead of scrolling through the endless void of the internet.
I feel sad Radio Shack ran out of business bc now you have to be at least 30 years old to know you can still acquire rippers for $10 to rip/burn dvds, cds, and games. I still use my first Xbox and my latest PS5 as DVD players. The most expensive part is storage atp.
Physical mediums aren't gone - they are just all HDD and SSD now.
I switched from CDs to HDDs two decades ago. HDDs are still great as physical long-term storage.
Your digital is just HDDs and SSDs in someone else's computers.
Backups can always use all of these.
Doesn't matter how scrappy it is a couple of hard drives with a parity in running true as/freenas or just Debian with Mergerfs will last you a lot of years.
Cassettes made a bit of a resurgence recently for audio cassettes though I would never want to return to those days for games.
You don't have to play their game just wait it out Sony and Xbox aren't doing so hot financially ATM.
And i am still ripping them all to use on a digital consumer device thanks to a specific local law that ruled people who own an mp3 player can rip cds from libraries to listen on the go.
Its not that i care personally but its nice to know i am legally protected and my library isn’t going to care with how often we come lend new a new stack.
Records aren’t considered digital media though (atleast not by anyone who knows what they are I guess), that’s what a pressed disc is. You do understand that a pressed cd is completely different than burned ones…. yeah?
Pressed and burned optical media are different in how they physically make the pattern the laser reads, yes, but they both encode digital data. A vinyl record is not but that wasn’t on op’s list.
So you’re implying that vinyls also encode digital data? Because that clearly wrong, vinyl is analog. That’s the entire point. Did you miss that…?
If pressed vinyl is analog, than pressed cds have to be too, they’re the exact same process even. Why would you argue otherwise? Do you not understand how pressing is analog data…? You think that pressing vinyl, and pressing a cd somehow makes one digital and the other analog? That makes no fucking sense lol.
Wikipedia doesn’t even agree with you, and says what you’re saying is absolute complete bullshit lmfao.
They may contain analog or digital information, or a mixture of the two. T
What are you even on about man I never said vinyl is digital, that is obviously an analog format.
Here’s the Wikipedia page for cds though saying that they’re digital in the very first line.
You’re the one saying pressed cds are digital, what makes a pressed cd digital? You’re just wrong dude.
An optical disc is a flat, usually[a] disc-shaped object that stores information in the form of physical variations on its surface that can be read with a beam of light. Optical discs can be reflective, where the light source and detector are on the same side of the disc, or transmissive, where light shines through the disc to be detected on the other side. They may contain analog or digital information, or a mixture of the two. Their main uses are the distribution of electronic media and data, and archival storage.
A cd is only one type of optical drive, and not all cds are digital, if they’re pressed, they’re analog. Like vinyl.
What are you even on about man I never said vinyl is digital,
Yes you did. A pressed cds and vinyl are the same thing, if one is analog, the other HAS to be too.
obviously an analog format
Like a pressed CD should obviously be analog too…? That’s the point lmfao.
And before you asininely claim that a laser makes it digital. There is laser vinyl readers does that somehow make vinyl a digital media…? No, so why would CDs be different?
This weird in context of the show. Skips is the oldest, as an immortal, and would outlive the rest of them. Labeling him as the newest media is off. It'd be more accurate if it were depicted as daguerotype outliving digital.
I know this might get me a lot of hate on here, but I don't really care and I don't understand why people are this upset about it. I can't remember the last time I bought physical media, nor do I know anyone that has. And most games that are released on physical media are unplayable anyways without the obligatory 40GB day one patch - making the entire concept of physical media pointless.
So yeah, idk if people are actually upset about this or if this is just a big outrage over nothing if I'm honest. But maybe I'm just too PC-pilled in my free and open source ecosystem to realize the struggles of living under the boot of a corporation that removes stuff you paid for at will lmaooo.
I get where you're coming from, but I disagree both personally and objectively. I said this in another post, but if you zoom out from the specifics here, what's being eliminated here is choice. Sure, it's not much of a choice, but as a consumer you could buy physical or digital, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Valve, etc. By removing the only other choice we have you have to buy the games digitally. At that point it can be altered, up-charged, revoked, or any number of other shitty decisions and we have little recourse - other than to opt out entirely.
Yes, all of this has been a slippery slope: digital downloads, DLC, games ballooning in size/requiring internet connectivity for day 1 patches, removing games from stores due to expired music licenses, etc. But the death of physical games is a big final step forward. I totally understand that this decision doesn't directly affect you - but it likely will, in one way or another. Killing off DVD/BR because we have streaming now means that streaming services can jack up prices because there's no alternatives: no competition. They can remove shows that don't make money and then they're lost forever (Disney removed the Willow TV show a month after it aired. Beyond piracy, it's now a lost property). They can remove, edit, or censor TV shows that are now thought of as offensive as taste change. Physical media is the backbone of preservation (which is particularly difficult with games) and it will be made much harder as physical is killed off.
Or maybe these are the desperate dying gasps of the dinosaurs of old media? Console prices are rising (5yrs into the lifecycle), sales are decreasing, game dev cycles take longer and longer, graphics/tech advancements are plateauing, the youths only play Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox, and AI is being shoved into everything. There is a wonderful renaissance of indies and smaller scale games! So maybe Playstation's downfall and XBOX's dismemberment will free up capital and interest into the vast variety of games that exist beyond COD & Assassin's Creed?
I'll get off my soapbox now, and I'm not trying to beat you up for your opinion. Personally, I am in a similar boat as you where I feel compelled to opt out of big tech, focus on FOSS, play indie games, go touch grass, etc, etc. It's clear to me that all of these awful threads are connected: we are being forced back into serfdom in ways big and small. Everything is a subscription. No right to repair what you own. Corporations have more 'free-speech' than a citizen. It just sucks to see more and more evidence of the boot stepping down on our necks.
But you never had a choice from the beginning when it comes to consoles. Even if you obtained a physical copy, you only could play these games on their systems and they can in theory revoke the license at any given point for any reason, making the disc a useless brick. The console ecosystem has always been under the boot of the company that "controls" the hardware.
The only time where these devices were fundamentally free was when there was a way to root them and extract data from them, like the switch jailbreak for older versions of the switch.
Killing off DVD/BR because we have streaming now means that streaming services can jack up prices because there’s no alternatives
Or you just don't watch these shows. It's honestly that simple. Streaming isn't a universal human right that you need to survive. Quit streaming services. Obtain older shows on DVD that you haven't seen.
It just sucks to see more and more evidence of the boot stepping down on our necks.
The digital world has never been more free than today tho. You have an incredibly competitive free operating system, you have a ton of great open source software for almost anything you can imagine, you can literally free yourself from the boot TODAY.
It's just the willingness that is lacking for many as it seems. Many people want the luxury of a free world, but are unwilling to sacrifice something for it. Which I think is very sad.
Does that mean, that headstones are permanent and will be there forever, whole digital withers away? I'm pretty sure my SNES cartridges will hold on another decade or two.
Guys, y'all did this to yourselves. You didn't have to use Steam when it launched, but you did because it was convenient.
Physical media started dying the moment people flocked to Steam for PC gaming.
The public wanted this. A niche minority doesn't. The overwhelming majority of game sales are now digital. Why would companies keep manufacturing discs when almost everyone is downloading their games?
And I know, I know, physical media is better for the consumer. I know about the EULAs, licensing, and the ownership issues. I'm not defending digital media. I'm simply saying: y'all made your bed, now sleep in it.
For the record, my entire game library is digital too, aside from some old Xbox 360 and PS4 games I still have on disc. I'm in the same boat. I'm no better than anyone else.
I just see reality for what it is.
If you want physical media back, stop buying digital games. Stop playing them. Delete your Steam account. Uninstall your games.
What the hell did you think these companies were going to do?
To say that Steam is the one solely responsible for this is misleading. That would mean only gaming is switching to digital only. Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc are also responsible for killing physical media outside of gaming
Physical media has the inherent benefit of being difficult to remove from the customer. Because of the several thousand years of precedent and "argument" has lead to the current protections many countries have.
Digital distribution of Digital goods has significant benefits to the customer and producer over physical distribution. A lot of physical game media at this point is basically a license key and a mostly working game that needs downloaded patches they were still developing while the discs were being printed. The downsides are the current legal mechanisms and that a lot of people involved in the producing would like to continue to eat and pay rent.
Yes, I understand. This is the most common talking point I see when discussing this topic, and it's completely valid.
Ownership is an important consideration. Unfortunately, the buying public has either decided, through ignorance or because they've been convinced, not to care about it.
Digital downloads are, by a massive margin, the preferred way to acquire games. The market has spoken.
Like I said, delete your Steam account. Don't purchase digital games.
Otherwise, accept the fact that we've willfully surrendered our leverage to the corporations.
But when I download a game on steam, I can do whatever I want with the file, and play it whenever I want. I can't say the same thing when I download a game on my PlayStation
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don't worry, it will vanish soon and everything will be "in the clouds"
aren't you excited?
Brother, I have those 40tb raid arrays at home. None of this crap will affect me. Oh and for games I don't play those. But if I did I would stop buying Sony crap.
Neat!
There are open-source PC games, completely free, and they are awesome.
Do you mind sharing some of your favourites?
Many mentioned already, but also CDDA, 0AD, Beyond All Reason, Battle for Wesnoth
OpenTTD for transportation management is a favorite of mine.
Mindustry, Friday Night Funkin', Xonortic, Luanti(former minetest), doom
There is an awesome list too which has a ton of stuff that would take me ages to list https://github.com/michelpereira/awesome-open-source-games
Wouldn't that still be digital though? Just not on your computer and not in your direct control?
digital is pure semantics here, we are talking about control
Meanwhile, vinyl is minding its own business...
Turns out pressing PVC into the shape of a sound wave is so cheap and so easy that people won't stop doing it
I was thinking of having a vinyl backup of my current favourite playlist but it's ten hours long so it could take some time
You're going to have forearms like tree trunks by the time you're done.
Only ten hours? Nice. I'm having trouble getting mine below 24.
I want it a nice even 17 hours, but I don't want to change anything. Yes, I know that doesn't work.
Just make a larger record, easy.
🗿
It's not PVC, it's vinyl.
Just need a couple to backup a few terabytes of data
Techmoan has entered the chat
Bluray is still alive and well because its the only format that has full quality basically 1:1 media encodes which ironically make up the backbone of full quality media piracy.
No streaming service will ever support 70Gb+ file sizes because they never bothered to implement multicast so it would shred their bandwidth or rely on predownloading which would shred the tiny local storage included on most smart TVs.
You could of course use jellyfin or any other file share protocol to DIY, but you'd better have a stable 100Mbps minimum upload/download speed lol.
I don't have a source, but I do believe I've already seen articles about multiple studios reducing their bluray releases. I think there was one studio which wanted to completely stop all of them even.
Blu ray video is lossy compressed. Lossless video is huge.
Your mom is lossless.
Yeah she's a classy lady
It's still pretty good...but yeah lossless is like 1GB+ for 30 seconds.
Boy does it look good though.
They still make CDs and Blu-Rays you know. The others are obsolete technologies.
And DVDs (movies get released as DVD, BR and UHD4K) and Floppies (New Amiga releases with a physical release) and Cartridges (evercade)
Also cartridges (switch 2)
true, forgot about the switch (2).
It is just a license though
Some of them, not all of them iirc
I think all games, even those in physical media, are licenses to play them, is what OP means. You might be thinking of download carts, which doesn't contain game data, but makes you download games.
Well yes that’s what I assumed they meant, a non-download cart wouldn’t be just a license, it would be the license and the game data
Right, gotcha. My bad.
I miss HDDVDs. Their better error correction will be missed more, soon, as this stuff degrades a bit.
No error correction could compensate for Warner Brothers discs...
Bluray is higher quality than all the streaming bullshit that's usually lower than default settings x265. Also for anime the bluray is a great way to support the creator and used as a metric for deciding if a series gets picked up for more releases.
No! Sony bad!
Both of those are dying unfortunately
I like blurays but at some point we need go acknowledge the truth
Time to upgrade to reel-to-reel optical drives
My personal conspiracy theory is that Sony is trying to kill Blu-ray before it enters public domain. (2028-2030 or so). Single-layer Blu-rays are invaluable for my cold storage backups. So I'm going to keep buying them. And thanks to them, entering public domain, innovation will be possible once again. So, in all honesty, I don't have that much to fear, as mega corporations also use blu-rays heavily for backups, together with tape.
How's the long-term stability of Blu-Ray? I know we're running into problems with magnetic tape and CDs degrading.
Magnetic tape depolarizes over time. CDs were organic and they would literally rot away. But as long as your Blu-ray discs are high to low (HTL)/inorganic Then you're really set for at least 30 years as well, just like professional tape, but at a fraction of the price.
There's M-Discs which are supposed to last 100 years I've heard.
I have 30+ year old CDs still readable.
I also have CDs that are this old. There's a big difference between CDs that you can burn yourself, because those are using organic materials and the weak laser in your disk drive to burn them and professionally made disks, which are usually using inorganic materials and molds. The molds then are embossed into the datalayer of the CD, making it significantly more durable than organic discs.
Go to your local used game shops! There’s a treasure trove of good shit there.
I have never been to a game shop with prices based in reality. They upcharge the hell out of their stuff and it’s insane.
Thrift stores used to be pretty good. It was a flat few dollars per game the last time I looked at them.
Yeah, used to. But people figured out years ago that old copies of pokemon go for 100€+ on ebay so they are basically hunting every thrift store or flea markets for elderly mothers who sell their sons stuff who moved out 10 years ago and hasn't bothered picking his old stuff up.
You get lucky sometimes, but you’re right. Some shops are insane. It really depends on what you’re looking for.
... all of them priced like brand new games. Some more expensive than their original retail price, thanks to inflation.
At least that's the case in my local used game shops.
But that's okay. I can find plenty of booty to plunder on the high seas.
Less thanks to inflation and more due to scalpers who will buy them and flip them on ebay if they’re not
Yeah, a lot of shops have gone off the rails with prices. The same thing happened with the vintage clothing market. All these folks started selling old shirts on eBay for like $50 minimum, and now all of the thrift stores are picked clean, or are selling those items at crazy prices themselves.
I tend to get games that aren’t in the sought after list and get lucky sometimes. You can still find games at thrift stores if you’re lucky. You just have to hunt and be okay with disappointment lol.
You know, I haven't tried requesting a video game through interlibrary loan and now I kind of want to just to try it. I love inter library loan
Hell, I want to try it now! Especially if you can find games that are generally rare at shops.
i only have one librarian at the local library i dare ask for battletoads. we've been friends since about when we were born.
That’s awesome! Hold onto that one. My childhood friends have all scattered to the wind since we all moved away.
well also if she tries to beat me up for being stupid, as i would deserve, my belly is larger than her. i need a large belly for professional reasons.
Last time I was there they had Pokemon Crystal version for over $400, which is probably a fair price but reminded me the used games market is expensive :(
all of those are digital
It's meant to stand for "digital download", but that's what you get from trying to shorten everything to one word or less.
cassete tape, zx spectrum style:
modulated digital by same definition
They're actually all analog, because they all get processed by your senses, which are analog.
But your senses are electrical impulses, which would be digital.
What exactly do you think analog signals are?
Cassette.
At some point does it make sense to use Blu Rays?
I have a No Man’s Sky disk. Like 5% of the code on that disk is in the production game today. It’s online only, so I couldn’t even play it with the disk.
Cartridges do kinda make sense, you could patch the game on them (in theory), they can come in much larger sizes than disks too.
Side note: modern gaming is shit.
I bought Spyro and couldn’t even play it without agreeing to a privacy policy. It’s a single player offline game from the PS1 era. I installed The Sims 4, I can’t even play without an EA account. I tried Assassin’s Creed and you need an Ubisoft account to open the game.
Shit is fucking stupid.
Blu-ray for movies are great, they can store a lot more that DVDs
Blu ray for data is also fucking nice. I used to use those for data backups before thumb drives got decent capacity
If AI wasn't making SSD prices so outrageous right now, an SSD-based cartridge system would make a lot of sense. They could be made in a variety of sizes, to accommodate games with different filesystem footprints, and if the SSDs in them have tolerable performance, they could be played directly off the cartridge, without needing to 'install' anything -- just insert and go.
Pretty sure it has the 2016 version of NMS on it. Booted up a ps4 install with it to try and couch co-op only to look around and ask why the UI was so different from what I was used to. It had internet access we thought but it can't have or it would have installed whatever the latest patch is. It was surreal seeing pillars of Emeril again.
But you point yes, gaming single player offline is a joke now with DRM requiring single player online. We ripped EA Simcity for this. Simcity died to City:Skylines because it became such a movement.
It is hard not to look at nms as an outlier.
With storage redundancy, of course. Because eventually, your hard drive will fail.
Across two medium!
With one of the backups off-site!
I don't doubt that digital is more accessible and readily available than other formats. The biggest problem is that few services allow me to download locally what I've purchased.
So, for me, you're not buying anything, you're just renting for the long term.
Honestly, I'm tired of buying digital only to suddenly find out I can no longer use what I purchased. For these services, I prefer self-hosting or any method that allows me to have a working copy locally. At least I can decide what to do with the digital content.
At least HDTracks and BandCamp let you download what you buy.
And Qobuz
It does streaming but can you buy and download mp3 or similar?
Yes, you can buy and download CD quality or HD quality (up to 24-bit, 192 kHz) FLAC from their store. From their homepage, there should be a link to the download store in the header bar: https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop
Ohhh, thanks for the new go to site. I buy lots of (digital) music and avoiding amazon has made finding what I want that much harder.
Just make sure, that you don't buy anything with unbroken DRM. If you ever lose access, you can just get it back from the pirates.
Then become gog costumer number one, you could say we pay with our wallets and for the change, Gog is right there.
but honestly, I like valve enough, me, personally, not to worry that much.
Steam seems to be one of the very few services (perhaps even the only one I know of) that hasn't transformed its product by following the trend of enshittification. I have many games on Steam, purchased years and years ago, many of which are no longer available, but I can still download and play, having purchased them back then.
I really appreciate Steam, but from what I read every day, I don't think "forever" exists, especially online. If we think of it in terms of "everything's in the cloud," well, the cloud costs money, so unless they somehow dispose of data, I don't know if a company can actually keep every single piece of data "forever" while maintaining a good price and not losing out or burdening consumers.
The same goes for physical copies: I could lose them, break them, my house burn down, and I'd lose everything, whereas if they were in the cloud, I wouldn't have any problems. The point is that consumers should be allowed, where possible, to export what they've purchased. Honestly, I think that anyone who bought movies or other content on some platform and then years later discovered that the company had removed them and they could no longer use them (or worse, the same content was on another paid platform) would honestly bother me.
You're forgetting the two most important words:
... so far.
I know that's not what you meant... But those are all digital...
The only one that is not a digital medium is “digital”, because it is not a medium.
It could be if we intentionally misinterpret the word digital
👉👈
Cartridges aren't dead yet.
Cartridge is alive and well in the Nintendo ecosystem.
A lot of Switch cartridges now only have license keys.
Well at least Nintendo themselves still releases full game cartridges and it's not like you buy a Switch for third party games anyway. Nintendo only introduced the Gamekey card because third party publishers, especially Acti and Ubi, were releasing their own version on Switch 1 and not using consistent packaging labels to tell a gamekey from a full game cartridge apart so probably confused many consumers. Hence why Nintendo created an official version.
Many are just Game Key Cards.
Which are like Carts, but they need to download digitally. The worst of both worlds :D
Nintendo has its own slew of ethical issues.
Alive, but well?
Where's MiniDisk?
*MiniDisc.
UMD you mean, i don't think MiniDisk were ever used to distribute games or even general software.
Data md existed. If it had been included from the beginning, md would have been a killer. As usual, Sony decided to shoot themselves repeatedly in the feet instead.
Not sure it was even used to distribute music. Was decent for copying a CD to it though...
No, music (unless you count Hi-MD) but except for cartridge i see no direct correlation between "games" or "general software" and the picture posted.
True, but there's bad digital like Amazon Video, and good digital like GOG.
Yes. The thing people actually don't like is DRM, which can also exist on discs.
I'm torn. Like, there are two online medical equipment shops covered by my insurance. The one I use and Amazon. I'm the unusual event my supplier is having delays I can usually get equipment from Amazon in their standard delivery window.
Like, we've gotten bipap parts on there when a family member traveled across the country and left half of their ventilator at home. It was not cheap, but it was quick and that's what they needed.
Like, there's a good, necessary service under all the bullshit that other companies seem to be unable to match for reasons I don't understand, probably having to do with paying and treating labor more fairly. If it weren't life and death sometimes
After digital: Direct brain implantation. IE all your games are stored in memory. And I don't mean RAM. It also isn't YOUR brain.
Definitive way to curb RAM prices, just use people's brains.
You could also sell part of your brain to openAI to offload part of their models for the cloud.
It's the matrix book but instead of cpu power is RAM storage.
What like on the brains on Indian children in those Matrix tubes?
Honestly 90% of the movies we want to watch aren't on Prime (which we happen to have for non-movie-reasons) and we would need extra subscriptions for each of them. It is cheaper and more convenient for us to buy used blu rays or dvds of the movies. It's 3,99€ to rent a movie for 48 hours (best case, usually it is some arthouse subscription) or 2,17€ for the DVD on medimops. We watch during lunch break so we usually can't make it through a movie in 48 hours without stressing. (My spouse does not want to pirate anymore and I support that.)
Our daughter has her own small collection of cartoons and anime that she can choose for a TV treat instead of scrolling through the endless void of the internet.
I love booklets too much to ever let go of CDs.
I have been living the resurgence of vinyl. I'm not old, I just need large print liner notes.
I still buy any new music on CD and regularly buy DVDS. I buy more new DVDs than Blu-ray actually.
Me two! Except without the Cds or Dvds or buying
All of these media are digital! Only digital is no medium but an encoding scheme.
Currently used media are HDD and SSD.
Sure pal, yea, cd is dead.......
DVDs still exist. DVD players still exist.
so do dvd burners
I feel sad Radio Shack ran out of business bc now you have to be at least 30 years old to know you can still acquire rippers for $10 to rip/burn dvds, cds, and games. I still use my first Xbox and my latest PS5 as DVD players. The most expensive part is storage atp.
Dont lose hope yet. Im (barely) under 30 and have one of those.
Physical mediums aren't gone - they are just all HDD and SSD now.
I switched from CDs to HDDs two decades ago. HDDs are still great as physical long-term storage.
Your digital is just HDDs and SSDs in someone else's computers.
Backups can always use all of these. Doesn't matter how scrappy it is a couple of hard drives with a parity in running true as/freenas or just Debian with Mergerfs will last you a lot of years.
Cassettes made a bit of a resurgence recently for audio cassettes though I would never want to return to those days for games.
You don't have to play their game just wait it out Sony and Xbox aren't doing so hot financially ATM.
Yup, been running my
plexjellyfin server for like 15 years on Ubuntu server off of an 80gb mechanical boot disk.10TB RAID I storage tho
I still have a 2008 2tbb harddrive from a western digital external in my stack. Mad how long they can last when you win the lottery
missing the next guy to the right "subscription"
One day digital is also going to die and we will be forced to stream games on a crappy service that costs 50$ a month
My library is still lending cd dvd and blueray…
And i am still ripping them all to use on a digital consumer device thanks to a specific local law that ruled people who own an mp3 player can rip cds from libraries to listen on the go.
Following local laws? Don't be a pussy. Upload those cd and dvd rips to Pirate Bay.
Its not that i care personally but its nice to know i am legally protected and my library isn’t going to care with how often we come lend new a new stack.
I've still got my tapes.
All of these were digital media.
Cartridge and floppies are also digital.
Even if they’re pressed?
Yes? All the data is still digital
Records aren’t considered digital media though (atleast not by anyone who knows what they are I guess), that’s what a pressed disc is. You do understand that a pressed cd is completely different than burned ones…. yeah?
Pressed and burned optical media are different in how they physically make the pattern the laser reads, yes, but they both encode digital data. A vinyl record is not but that wasn’t on op’s list.
So you’re implying that vinyls also encode digital data? Because that clearly wrong, vinyl is analog. That’s the entire point. Did you miss that…?
If pressed vinyl is analog, than pressed cds have to be too, they’re the exact same process even. Why would you argue otherwise? Do you not understand how pressing is analog data…? You think that pressing vinyl, and pressing a cd somehow makes one digital and the other analog? That makes no fucking sense lol.
Wikipedia doesn’t even agree with you, and says what you’re saying is absolute complete bullshit lmfao.
What are you even on about man I never said vinyl is digital, that is obviously an analog format. Here’s the Wikipedia page for cds though saying that they’re digital in the very first line.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc
You’re the one saying pressed cds are digital, what makes a pressed cd digital? You’re just wrong dude.
A cd is only one type of optical drive, and not all cds are digital, if they’re pressed, they’re analog. Like vinyl.
Yes you did. A pressed cds and vinyl are the same thing, if one is analog, the other HAS to be too.
Like a pressed CD should obviously be analog too…? That’s the point lmfao.
And before you asininely claim that a laser makes it digital. There is laser vinyl readers does that somehow make vinyl a digital media…? No, so why would CDs be different?
Regular Show has multiple episodes about this exact topic.
Some of them are still around just not as big anymore
Console players kinda deserve this. They put everything into a closed ecosystem and they couldn't justify thier usecase to the masses.
Dude. This idea that it needs to be one or the other died with the Sega dreamcast.
This weird in context of the show. Skips is the oldest, as an immortal, and would outlive the rest of them. Labeling him as the newest media is off. It'd be more accurate if it were depicted as daguerotype outliving digital.
I know this might get me a lot of hate on here, but I don't really care and I don't understand why people are this upset about it. I can't remember the last time I bought physical media, nor do I know anyone that has. And most games that are released on physical media are unplayable anyways without the obligatory 40GB day one patch - making the entire concept of physical media pointless.
So yeah, idk if people are actually upset about this or if this is just a big outrage over nothing if I'm honest. But maybe I'm just too PC-pilled in my free and open source ecosystem to realize the struggles of living under the boot of a corporation that removes stuff you paid for at will lmaooo.
Today it's games and movies. Tomorrow it's something actually important and they'll rent us an apology for a terminal illness and nothing else.
I get where you're coming from, but I disagree both personally and objectively. I said this in another post, but if you zoom out from the specifics here, what's being eliminated here is choice. Sure, it's not much of a choice, but as a consumer you could buy physical or digital, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Valve, etc. By removing the only other choice we have you have to buy the games digitally. At that point it can be altered, up-charged, revoked, or any number of other shitty decisions and we have little recourse - other than to opt out entirely.
Yes, all of this has been a slippery slope: digital downloads, DLC, games ballooning in size/requiring internet connectivity for day 1 patches, removing games from stores due to expired music licenses, etc. But the death of physical games is a big final step forward. I totally understand that this decision doesn't directly affect you - but it likely will, in one way or another. Killing off DVD/BR because we have streaming now means that streaming services can jack up prices because there's no alternatives: no competition. They can remove shows that don't make money and then they're lost forever (Disney removed the Willow TV show a month after it aired. Beyond piracy, it's now a lost property). They can remove, edit, or censor TV shows that are now thought of as offensive as taste change. Physical media is the backbone of preservation (which is particularly difficult with games) and it will be made much harder as physical is killed off.
Or maybe these are the desperate dying gasps of the dinosaurs of old media? Console prices are rising (5yrs into the lifecycle), sales are decreasing, game dev cycles take longer and longer, graphics/tech advancements are plateauing, the youths only play Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox, and AI is being shoved into everything. There is a wonderful renaissance of indies and smaller scale games! So maybe Playstation's downfall and XBOX's dismemberment will free up capital and interest into the vast variety of games that exist beyond COD & Assassin's Creed?
I'll get off my soapbox now, and I'm not trying to beat you up for your opinion. Personally, I am in a similar boat as you where I feel compelled to opt out of big tech, focus on FOSS, play indie games, go touch grass, etc, etc. It's clear to me that all of these awful threads are connected: we are being forced back into serfdom in ways big and small. Everything is a subscription. No right to repair what you own. Corporations have more 'free-speech' than a citizen. It just sucks to see more and more evidence of the boot stepping down on our necks.
But you never had a choice from the beginning when it comes to consoles. Even if you obtained a physical copy, you only could play these games on their systems and they can in theory revoke the license at any given point for any reason, making the disc a useless brick. The console ecosystem has always been under the boot of the company that "controls" the hardware.
The only time where these devices were fundamentally free was when there was a way to root them and extract data from them, like the switch jailbreak for older versions of the switch.
Or you just don't watch these shows. It's honestly that simple. Streaming isn't a universal human right that you need to survive. Quit streaming services. Obtain older shows on DVD that you haven't seen.
The digital world has never been more free than today tho. You have an incredibly competitive free operating system, you have a ton of great open source software for almost anything you can imagine, you can literally free yourself from the boot TODAY.
It's just the willingness that is lacking for many as it seems. Many people want the luxury of a free world, but are unwilling to sacrifice something for it. Which I think is very sad.
Does that mean, that headstones are permanent and will be there forever, whole digital withers away? I'm pretty sure my SNES cartridges will hold on another decade or two.
That one pierces the heart 😭
Guys, y'all did this to yourselves. You didn't have to use Steam when it launched, but you did because it was convenient.
Physical media started dying the moment people flocked to Steam for PC gaming.
The public wanted this. A niche minority doesn't. The overwhelming majority of game sales are now digital. Why would companies keep manufacturing discs when almost everyone is downloading their games?
And I know, I know, physical media is better for the consumer. I know about the EULAs, licensing, and the ownership issues. I'm not defending digital media. I'm simply saying: y'all made your bed, now sleep in it.
For the record, my entire game library is digital too, aside from some old Xbox 360 and PS4 games I still have on disc. I'm in the same boat. I'm no better than anyone else.
I just see reality for what it is.
If you want physical media back, stop buying digital games. Stop playing them. Delete your Steam account. Uninstall your games.
What the hell did you think these companies were going to do?
To say that Steam is the one solely responsible for this is misleading. That would mean only gaming is switching to digital only. Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc are also responsible for killing physical media outside of gaming
Agreed. Streaming services are a whole different can of worms that contribute to this issue.
Physical media has the inherent benefit of being difficult to remove from the customer. Because of the several thousand years of precedent and "argument" has lead to the current protections many countries have.
Digital distribution of Digital goods has significant benefits to the customer and producer over physical distribution. A lot of physical game media at this point is basically a license key and a mostly working game that needs downloaded patches they were still developing while the discs were being printed. The downsides are the current legal mechanisms and that a lot of people involved in the producing would like to continue to eat and pay rent.
Don't act like this guy.
Yes, I understand. This is the most common talking point I see when discussing this topic, and it's completely valid.
Ownership is an important consideration. Unfortunately, the buying public has either decided, through ignorance or because they've been convinced, not to care about it.
Digital downloads are, by a massive margin, the preferred way to acquire games. The market has spoken.
Like I said, delete your Steam account. Don't purchase digital games.
Otherwise, accept the fact that we've willfully surrendered our leverage to the corporations.
But when I download a game on steam, I can do whatever I want with the file, and play it whenever I want. I can't say the same thing when I download a game on my PlayStation
Correct. Sony is pure crap.
cartridges aren't dead. are you stupid? nintendo is alive and well and uses cartridges in both switch and switch 2. bluray also isn't dead