Check forums if the hardware you have is prone to issues. Some manufacturer years are worse then others because of the Capacitor Plague, but any capacitor can dry out, leak out or otherwise wear out. If a cap leaks, it can damage the traces on the board. Best practice is to replace before that happens. There are kits online for diy repairs and shops that will do it if you can't solder.
Luckily the ones that tend to go are the large electrolytic capacitors (the cylindrical ones that typically stand perpendicular to and proud of the board) which are also the easiest to desolder. They also have their ratings printed right on the side to make it nice and easy to source replacements. Just note the polarity denoted by the stripe on the side before you take the old one off, because your board may or may not be marked underneath with which way around it goes!
I cut my teeth doing it on Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 motherboards when I was a kid, using a $10 Radio Shack single temperature soldering iron and quite possibly the world's most awful technique, but I got away with it nearly 100% of the time.
(not the person you asked) tbh, we have an awesome local video game store that does repairs. I'd ask them. They replaced the laser on my partner's PS2 when it stopped reading discs.
Or, check ifixit.com and see if there's a walkthrough for your device.
I tried! Turns out I get to wait until I'm 45. Having a great-aunt and great-grandma with colon cancer isn't enough. The great aunt died in her 30s of colon cancer, iirc.
You have 4 in your library, but only 1 is installed; it's Call of Duty. Since there's no need for physical media anymore, the footprint of games has ballooned to the point where if you want to install CoD, it's going to cost you 2TB of storage. They threw in 8k textures just for the 0.0001% of players that actually have an 8k TV, and there are a lot of textures since the Big Chungus update which introduced 255 different coloured Chungus textures for every weapon and weapon attachment combination in the game.
They also animated each one in a strange uncompressed video format instead of using effects over them. They are not optional, even though 95% are from optional dlcs you don't own.
They also drop the FPS to half of what it was before, which the upcoming PS6 Pro is said to handle better (it'll not actually handle it much better).
With the upcoming Pro console they have removed the 2tb version of the PS6, and it has no expandable storage so you can't even play any games on the PS6 if you buy it from this point forwards.
Pre-orders used to be to make sure you have a copy available to purchase on release day. Now there's no point in that since there's effectively an infinite stock since it's a digital product. Now it's just to get a sub-par DLC outfit that doesn't look good with anything.
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already does. I had a Samsung bluray player from over a decade ago that refused to play any movies made a year after it was manufactured unless I connected it to update. it went in my kids room and plays DVDs from the local library now.
This first happened to me in 2014? It's super frustrating.
It also happens with Steam. I remember forgetting to go offline before taking my gaming laptop to the woods or in airplanes, and suddenly not being able to play.
do you remember those old pcmcia card cellphone adapters so you could work wherever you had cellphone coverage, but subscriptions were so expensive you needed a good excuse to make your boss pay for one because [dude who invented money. I dunno. Prometheus?] fuck dude, those cost a lot in the early 2000s.
i felt this way when A: drives went away. if it doesn't have to be a sony brand BD player and could just be one that meets certain specs... fuck prices are going up such that 350 will be "cheap" soon.
If you base your gaming life around piracy, no one is paying for the industry. No golden parachutes for Take Two execs, but also no return on indie development - every game would be by a first time studio mortgaging their house and closing immediately after.
Do not condition people around never paying for media. You get what you pay for. And if you’re not paying, you doom yourself to pages of games full of ad-driven AI slop.
How about if a game is too expensive, you just don’t play it?
That rule forms some interesting results; sometimes, people realize they really DO want to play that game, and can stomach the high price more than they can missing out. People are not always honest with themselves about their judgment of a price. They always want it for less if possible, but may confess that a higher price is better than no product.
If you’ve ever seen the “walk away -> Wait!” style of price negotiation, that’s this - it can happen with both consumers and publishers. Also called driving a hard bargain, or haggling. Factorio dev famously called people out on their habitual approaches to sales, and I think it’s hard to say he didn’t earn his success.
Plus, on devs having lots of money: They’re often putting that money to future development. Some studios I love like Supergiant and Game Bakers had some semi-flops as they tried new ideas. If they didn’t build savings from success stories, they’d have to close down after that. Besides, they deserve some results for their risk taking. And don’t you dare say indie development doesn’t involve risk.
Lots of indies DO have demos. That’s what Steam Next Fest is. Many of them are generous with playtime.
Steam has a refund policy. In the event you find you made a mistake with a purchase, you can tell support it wasn’t fun.
People are streaming a lot of games, even indies now. Those can give you a closer idea of even the midgame.
Lastly, I’m not going to use the S word that rhymes with Peel, because a dozen pirates will dogpile on how it’s not technically the correct terminology, but you’re still breaking a societal expectation - that people interested in another person’s work will pay for access to that work. Some museums will provide a donation box, but others have you pay for entry - Because artists gotta eat, and that’s the rule. No one cares you’re not lifting the paintings out of the hall. You have interest and curiosity, so pay some dues to the people who piqued that.
Jesus, i not stealing candy from babies, do you remember Dave the diver, the game who almost won the indie GOTY prize beside been backed by a milionare fund corporation, ain't saying i gonna pirated a "artistic" five dollars game made by one guy while living in some basement, althrought nothing would stop me.
I more than glad to pay for games i appreciated, like "El Paso, elsewhere", Mina The Hollower, Pigface, Dandara, Huntdown, etc, but you have to understand, i live in a place where some of those more popular "indie" games cost me as much as double AA or some AAA games on sale, they still very expense for a lot of people.
That's the exactly dumbass discussion who the Silksong caused on the piracy community, it was farly expensive for a lot of people and team cherry have swimming in money from the first game and the people who bought Silksong on launch, but the fanboys are trying to convince people than would be wrong to pirate a game who already have paid itself on launch (it broked the Valve server ffs).
People have this illusion than pirates are there to fight big corpo or some moral bullshit, people are in piracy to get free stuff, some people would like to, sometimes, take his money to help the devs, because a lot of people using pirate products are fucking broke or live in places where such expenses would make no sense due the prices of some games
just thought I should chime in here, as another first world country gamer. Go ahead and pirate the fuck outta games, they were made to be played. Anyone genuinely mad about pirating is someone who deluded themselves into believing they're currently a down-on-their-luck future billionaire.
Games are better when more people enjoy them, and the only way to do that is by lowering the barrier to entry. It's the same with manga, anime and most of the other "booms" that have occurred since the start of the 2000's. They were all started by piracy, or in the case of AI, legitimatized theft. Only real difference is who's doing the stealing, the 'poors' or the currently billion dollar companies.
You are morally obligated to pirate whatever the fuck you want until you can purchase it, if you want, or until the product comes to you (i.e., it's priced reasonably for your region, and the service/product brought to you is of acceptable quality).
If people buy GTA 6 without a disk, particularly after Sony just deleted people's purchased movies without a refund, then they deserve whatever fate awaits them.
Perhaps if people stopped buying those shitty anti-consumer consoles, but people never change, and after all, "iTs jUsT A GAme bRo ahaha" - player that bought fifa every year for the full price
It likely would have died out if it was JUST online as a sole benefit. People often forget Xbox Live pushed the online experience forward before we had things like Discord. Now, to stay competitive they offer free games and other benefits.
People do change. But they have to start from somewhere.
You can convince a 20 year old on a budget not to buy a PS6 by showing them a PC rig at 1/4 the cost with a better catalog. But you're not going to convince an 8 year old who wants parents to buy it because a guy in a TMNT costume did a TikTok dance telling him to buy it. That's just 8 year olds for you.
player that bought fifa every year for the full price
There are folks with more disposable income than sense. And $80/year to get the players you're familiar with on the roster, when you've got a decent job and a couple of roommates to play with, simply isn't a big deal. At the same time, you get older and you have less free time and suddenly you're not playing soccer video games anymore because you don't recognize the players. And then maybe you end up going back to the old FIFA titles because you're nostalgic for your youth.
But this idea that people just mechanically buy all new FIFA titles forever really neglects how people get old and stop playing the games at all. And the industry has to bring in new younger people with billions of dollars in saturation advertisement if they want to keep churning out titles.
All consoles are digital-only, legally-required to verify your identity, and locked-down
But Linux still exists! In adapting, it's now hyper-optimized for thin-client corporate workstation terminals, the only computers still made. Distributions are shared via illegal mesh networks or person-to-person on physical media
Gamers can simulate operating a "grocery store", something that used to exist back before the States collapsed
As there is no way for the NSA/CIA/FBI/PTA to monitor what's on a flash drive in your pocket, such physical media will be made illegal. Possession of physical computer storage media that is not permanently connected to the internet will be grounds for arrest and reeducation.
not quite the same, but in Hungary you had* to pay an extra tax on writeable CDs because it was assumed that you're buying them for piracy 🫠 iirc the tax went to support the music and film industry
(* maybe still have to, but I haven't lived there in more than a decade)
US kind of had that in the '90s. CDRs designated as music disc's cost extra because we were all criminal scum pirating non-stop. However, if it was a data disc, there was no surcharge.
There was no difference between the two except the packaging.
As there is no way for the NSA/CIA/FBI/PTA to monitor what’s on a flash drive in your pocket, such physical media will be made illegal.
I'm old enough to remember when it was impossible to get your hands on a CD-Burner, because the industry didn't want people to use discs with 650MB capacity to store and transfer files between systems. I suppose we could see some kind of return to non-writeable media, but I'm not holding my breath. Data transfer is the entire backbone of the modern internet. If anything, flash drives will simply go out of fashion because we'll have even more data-dense and rapid transfer alternatives in another five or ten years.
I've been balls in my ass kinda guy since before balls had been to be as in ass could can does, which is why I'm a Mormon Occultist now, so I understand exactly as you do say it
I doubt most console gamers have enough of the know-how nor the desire to figure out how to emulate.
And before you say it’s easy: yes, for many that is often the case. But for an even greater amount of people all they want to do is install the game on their platform of choice and play. Too many hoops to jump through and the casual/technologically unmotivated audience loses motivation. And the minimum amount of hoops before that ends up being the case is smaller than you and I would probably hope for.
Plus things like emulating seem to be age bound. My niece could maybe figure it out. My nephew can barely use a computer. He can install anything. And will, no matter what it is or from where. He will also then never uninstall it cause he doesn’t know how. Tech literacy seems to be dying. Not just email and a browser. But actually doing nerdy things and knowing how to do things like emulate or rotate a pdf.
You're not wrong but that can be rectified. Back in the day, like half the population knew how to use Napster and then KaZaa and then Limewire and among those who didn't, enough people did that they just asked a friend
It's downstream of a bunch of retail game shops - GameStop, Newegg, Toys'R'Us, RadioShack - all going tits up over the last ten years. Giving up on physical media isn't some Machiavellian business play. It's a response to their historical vendors dying out.
Unless Sony starts opening up their own mall kiosks, they won't have anywhere to sell physical copies outside Amazon or Walmart. And there's a reason you don't want these two to be your primary retail pipeline.
it's 2043
523 days into the war
Found your PS6
It boots
Games won't play, requires internet
Internet has been down since the dawn of the war
Want to shoot yourself in the head
But you lost your Yubikey to unlock the safety
If Nintendo keeps making games I like and their console isn't outrageously expensive, I'll get the next one. It's not due until like 2032, so MAYBE prices will be better. If not, I'll use my old stuff until it falls apart.
I thought switch 2 games were also essentially Download only? Like you got a cartridge but it was just a means to download the game, rather than the game itself
Most non-first party ones are, though I'd be getting those on PC rather than Switch 2. And even though game key cards suck, having a tradeable license for the duration of that game's shop server is better than having none at all.
Steam is one company and is the exception to the rule. Steam also can’t run on consoles and not everyone wants to build a PC, has the time, or the know how. Plus with part prices these days building something may be too costly. Gotta consider the average consumer, and I have the feeling that the kind of person who uses federated social media is more technically aware than most.
Of course it will happen, but still no one is forcing you. It's up to you to decide how much you can tolerate. At one point you have to decide that it's enough and you wont buy anymore and if it means you can't participate in that hobby then yes you wont participate in it and find a new hobby.
The meme is accurate, but it still is a luxury product and quitting it is always an option.
I've quit multiple things just because the price rose over some predetermined limit.
If you want physical disks just pirate and make them yourself. You'll save lots of money and won't have to support these shitty companies making such a decision.
All I'm trying to say is you have options and don't have to let them make you believe you dont. I don't like them doing this either but I don't get a say just like you.
Thats not really possible at this point with the triple A games. Not unless you copy them to physical dedicated SSDs. The games are so unoptimised and bloated these days, you are forced to believe that a digital download is the solution - unless you use a bunch of bluray disks, but thats just annoying.
Consoles have exclusive digital marketplaces for their games. At least physical games provided a veil of competition. I don’t particularly like that PC games are effectively digital only now but I can still choose where I buy my game I don’t really own.
That’s not entirely true. Valve has removed games from user libraries, most commonly MMO games post server shutdown (which tbf is more of a stop killing games issue) but also on a handful of occasions there have been legal disputes (removing all content from digital homicide) and what appears to be error but still never corrected (people who got agony unrated as a free bonus, though people who actually purchased did not lose access)
This is an issue inherent to only being able to buy “licensed” content. There are no good guys here unless they allow you to archive the installation media (eg gog) and either do not use drm or commit to removing/breaking drm if the validation servers ever need to be turned off. Physical media isn’t necessary, but that much is
While Valve is objectively better and more insulated from anti-consumer policies as a privately held company with good ownership...
I still have reservations about having my eggs in one basket with Valve, though I have a substantial Steam library. Someday Gabe will retire and/or the competition will stop shooting itself in the foot. As a result, the current customer friendly behavior may shift and then all bets are off.
If that were to come to pass, I think we'd see a huge jump in 🏴☠️ 🦜
Because when your ToS states you're purchasing a license to play the game instead of the actual game itself, physical media becomes important.
What can you do if your favorite game is removed from your account? You have the option to pirate it. But console owners don't without jailbreaking. Which gets harder and harder each generation.
Furthermore, ToS can be changed at any time, and the fines Sony will pay for a ToS violation doesn't give you your game back. So a physical disk is a way to avoid random ToS changes.
The reason why you don't (usually) see content completely removed from PC is because they know you can and will just pirate it if they take it away from you.
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The controller has 3 hours of battery life and the joystick drifts by default out of the box now.
You can buy the premium subscription to ensure that feature remains disabled.
5 bucks per joystick calibration. 8 for both.
The left comes misaligned out of the box, the right drifts after two weeks.
You get 3hrs? I can’t even get mine to charge at all.
It's 2029. My Gamecube, Dreamcast, and PS2 still work just fine, thank you.
Check your caps.
how does one get started replacing capacitors? what are good practice devices
Check forums if the hardware you have is prone to issues. Some manufacturer years are worse then others because of the Capacitor Plague, but any capacitor can dry out, leak out or otherwise wear out. If a cap leaks, it can damage the traces on the board. Best practice is to replace before that happens. There are kits online for diy repairs and shops that will do it if you can't solder.
Intersting reading, thanks
Luckily the ones that tend to go are the large electrolytic capacitors (the cylindrical ones that typically stand perpendicular to and proud of the board) which are also the easiest to desolder. They also have their ratings printed right on the side to make it nice and easy to source replacements. Just note the polarity denoted by the stripe on the side before you take the old one off, because your board may or may not be marked underneath with which way around it goes!
I cut my teeth doing it on Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 motherboards when I was a kid, using a $10 Radio Shack single temperature soldering iron and quite possibly the world's most awful technique, but I got away with it nearly 100% of the time.
(not the person you asked) tbh, we have an awesome local video game store that does repairs. I'd ask them. They replaced the laser on my partner's PS2 when it stopped reading discs.
Or, check ifixit.com and see if there's a walkthrough for your device.
You're also old enough to schedule your first colonoscopy.
Everyone is old enough to schedule one if you make up a convincing enough reason. I just had my 3rd one this year!
I tried! Turns out I get to wait until I'm 45. Having a great-aunt and great-grandma with colon cancer isn't enough. The great aunt died in her 30s of colon cancer, iirc.
The SWAT team comes to your house and smashes them all.
You have 4 in your library, but only 1 is installed; it's Call of Duty. Since there's no need for physical media anymore, the footprint of games has ballooned to the point where if you want to install CoD, it's going to cost you 2TB of storage. They threw in 8k textures just for the 0.0001% of players that actually have an 8k TV, and there are a lot of textures since the Big Chungus update which introduced 255 different coloured Chungus textures for every weapon and weapon attachment combination in the game.
They also animated each one in a strange uncompressed video format instead of using effects over them. They are not optional, even though 95% are from optional dlcs you don't own.
They also drop the FPS to half of what it was before, which the upcoming PS6 Pro is said to handle better (it'll not actually handle it much better). With the upcoming Pro console they have removed the 2tb version of the PS6, and it has no expandable storage so you can't even play any games on the PS6 if you buy it from this point forwards.
Don't forget that you paid a %50 deposit to reserve/pre-register your "copy" of a digital game
Pre-orders used to be to make sure you have a copy available to purchase on release day. Now there's no point in that since there's effectively an infinite stock since it's a digital product. Now it's just to get a sub-par DLC outfit that doesn't look good with anything.
A classic
Indeed but I still hate when people refer to things from the 2010s as classic/retro/vintage.
I hate when people refer to things from before 1750s as classic.
$80 is 2026 prices. It is going to be $100 at least.
Literally, the $80 is the most unrealistic thing in that post.
It's been 90$ for a long time in Canada and being bumped to 120$ ish, its painful
Nah, owning a PlayStation
It says you bought it, doesn't say you own it.
Your PSN account was banned because of your social network comments and you lost all of your games.
Notification: Your Social Credit System has been reduced 2 points for posting unfavorable comments on social media. This reduces your Social Credit status from Deviant to Dissident. Your gaming and social media accounts have been temporarily suspended. You must take a mandatory course on Pro-USA affairs at your local Government Community Education center to learn how to be a better Citizen™. Your primary bank account has been charged the tuition fee of $499.99, plus $10 convenience fee, plus $10 Sony Convenience processing charge.
Alert! Your bank account has been overdrawn by a sum of $19.38. You are charged a nominal Overdraft Protection fee of $50, an overdraft interest convenience fee of $10, and a processing fee of $15.
Notification: Your Social Credit System score has been reduced 1 point due to Financial Bank Overdraft.
A storm knocked out Internet, so now you can't play any games due to Always-on DRM.
You try to watch a movie you physically own, but you didn't buy the $350 optical addon to the digital-only version of the console.
So depressing.
Its so going to happen
already does. I had a Samsung bluray player from over a decade ago that refused to play any movies made a year after it was manufactured unless I connected it to update. it went in my kids room and plays DVDs from the local library now.
This first happened to me in 2014? It's super frustrating.
It also happens with Steam. I remember forgetting to go offline before taking my gaming laptop to the woods or in airplanes, and suddenly not being able to play.
do you remember those old pcmcia card cellphone adapters so you could work wherever you had cellphone coverage, but subscriptions were so expensive you needed a good excuse to make your boss pay for one because [dude who invented money. I dunno. Prometheus?] fuck dude, those cost a lot in the early 2000s.
It is the one thing that grinds my gears about Steam sometimes.
i felt this way when A: drives went away. if it doesn't have to be a sony brand BD player and could just be one that meets certain specs... fuck prices are going up such that 350 will be "cheap" soon.
Solution: Don't buy a PS6. Fuck Sony.
Okay, but how will I get the Most Cutting Of Cutting Edge Graphis with Ray Dicking And Light Emulsifying and Video To Smell Technology?!
Everything that isn't on 64k resolution video is basically unplayable.
The future of gaming is budget pc builds and piracy.
No, budget PCs and indies - NOT piracy.
If you base your gaming life around piracy, no one is paying for the industry. No golden parachutes for Take Two execs, but also no return on indie development - every game would be by a first time studio mortgaging their house and closing immediately after.
Do not condition people around never paying for media. You get what you pay for. And if you’re not paying, you doom yourself to pages of games full of ad-driven AI slop.
If your indie game is too expensive, i will pirate it too, if it worth it i will bought, if not i won't, very simple.
Damn, i end up buying RDR2 as i finished him pirated and fell than the game deserve it.
Some indie games, where i live are still very expensive and sometimes rhe devs already have a shitton of money like Team Cherry.
How about if a game is too expensive, you just don’t play it?
That rule forms some interesting results; sometimes, people realize they really DO want to play that game, and can stomach the high price more than they can missing out. People are not always honest with themselves about their judgment of a price. They always want it for less if possible, but may confess that a higher price is better than no product.
If you’ve ever seen the “walk away -> Wait!” style of price negotiation, that’s this - it can happen with both consumers and publishers. Also called driving a hard bargain, or haggling. Factorio dev famously called people out on their habitual approaches to sales, and I think it’s hard to say he didn’t earn his success.
Plus, on devs having lots of money: They’re often putting that money to future development. Some studios I love like Supergiant and Game Bakers had some semi-flops as they tried new ideas. If they didn’t build savings from success stories, they’d have to close down after that. Besides, they deserve some results for their risk taking. And don’t you dare say indie development doesn’t involve risk.
If a too expensive game is available for free as pirated media, why wait ? You can at least try before buy or decide if worth it your time
Lastly, I’m not going to use the S word that rhymes with Peel, because a dozen pirates will dogpile on how it’s not technically the correct terminology, but you’re still breaking a societal expectation - that people interested in another person’s work will pay for access to that work. Some museums will provide a donation box, but others have you pay for entry - Because artists gotta eat, and that’s the rule. No one cares you’re not lifting the paintings out of the hall. You have interest and curiosity, so pay some dues to the people who piqued that.
Jesus, i not stealing candy from babies, do you remember Dave the diver, the game who almost won the indie GOTY prize beside been backed by a milionare fund corporation, ain't saying i gonna pirated a "artistic" five dollars game made by one guy while living in some basement, althrought nothing would stop me.
I more than glad to pay for games i appreciated, like "El Paso, elsewhere", Mina The Hollower, Pigface, Dandara, Huntdown, etc, but you have to understand, i live in a place where some of those more popular "indie" games cost me as much as double AA or some AAA games on sale, they still very expense for a lot of people.
That's the exactly dumbass discussion who the Silksong caused on the piracy community, it was farly expensive for a lot of people and team cherry have swimming in money from the first game and the people who bought Silksong on launch, but the fanboys are trying to convince people than would be wrong to pirate a game who already have paid itself on launch (it broked the Valve server ffs).
People have this illusion than pirates are there to fight big corpo or some moral bullshit, people are in piracy to get free stuff, some people would like to, sometimes, take his money to help the devs, because a lot of people using pirate products are fucking broke or live in places where such expenses would make no sense due the prices of some games
just thought I should chime in here, as another first world country gamer. Go ahead and pirate the fuck outta games, they were made to be played. Anyone genuinely mad about pirating is someone who deluded themselves into believing they're currently a down-on-their-luck future billionaire.
Games are better when more people enjoy them, and the only way to do that is by lowering the barrier to entry. It's the same with manga, anime and most of the other "booms" that have occurred since the start of the 2000's. They were all started by piracy, or in the case of AI, legitimatized theft. Only real difference is who's doing the stealing, the 'poors' or the currently billion dollar companies.
You are morally obligated to pirate whatever the fuck you want until you can purchase it, if you want, or until the product comes to you (i.e., it's priced reasonably for your region, and the service/product brought to you is of acceptable quality).
I'll keep taking my free samples and paying for what I deem worth my money
I agree with the indies. If you look at the last crash a golden age followed.
Can't wait for the servers to crash cuz everyone tries downloading their copy of the game at the same time lol
Steam has been fine with this for years.
Didn't Silksong crash those servers less than a year ago from everyone downloading it? You think GTA 6 will be LESS popular?
If people buy GTA 6 without a disk, particularly after Sony just deleted people's purchased movies without a refund, then they deserve whatever fate awaits them.
After YEARS of architecture.
Let's not pretend they did it right in the first 10 years.
Perhaps if people stopped buying those shitty anti-consumer consoles, but people never change, and after all, "iTs jUsT A GAme bRo ahaha" - player that bought fifa every year for the full price
I don't understand how anyone that plays online games would buy a PS or an Xbox. Paid online is so dumb.
It likely would have died out if it was JUST online as a sole benefit. People often forget Xbox Live pushed the online experience forward before we had things like Discord. Now, to stay competitive they offer free games and other benefits.
sheeple, put simply
buying a console is trading literally EVERY aspect of your experience for convenience.
I swear people in the future will trade their first born in just for convenience.
People do change. But they have to start from somewhere.
You can convince a 20 year old on a budget not to buy a PS6 by showing them a PC rig at 1/4 the cost with a better catalog. But you're not going to convince an 8 year old who wants parents to buy it because a guy in a TMNT costume did a TikTok dance telling him to buy it. That's just 8 year olds for you.
There are folks with more disposable income than sense. And $80/year to get the players you're familiar with on the roster, when you've got a decent job and a couple of roommates to play with, simply isn't a big deal. At the same time, you get older and you have less free time and suddenly you're not playing soccer video games anymore because you don't recognize the players. And then maybe you end up going back to the old FIFA titles because you're nostalgic for your youth.
But this idea that people just mechanically buy all new FIFA titles forever really neglects how people get old and stop playing the games at all. And the industry has to bring in new younger people with billions of dollars in saturation advertisement if they want to keep churning out titles.
It's 2060
All consoles are digital-only, legally-required to verify your identity, and locked-down
But Linux still exists! In adapting, it's now hyper-optimized for thin-client corporate workstation terminals, the only computers still made. Distributions are shared via illegal mesh networks or person-to-person on physical media
Gamers can simulate operating a "grocery store", something that used to exist back before the States collapsed
UK has pushing that stuff for over a year.
As there is no way for the NSA/CIA/FBI/PTA to monitor what's on a flash drive in your pocket, such physical media will be made illegal. Possession of physical computer storage media that is not permanently connected to the internet will be grounds for arrest and reeducation.
not quite the same, but in Hungary you had* to pay an extra tax on writeable CDs because it was assumed that you're buying them for piracy 🫠 iirc the tax went to support the music and film industry
(* maybe still have to, but I haven't lived there in more than a decade)
US kind of had that in the '90s. CDRs designated as music disc's cost extra because we were all criminal scum pirating non-stop. However, if it was a data disc, there was no surcharge.
There was no difference between the two except the packaging.
I'm old enough to remember when it was impossible to get your hands on a CD-Burner, because the industry didn't want people to use discs with 650MB capacity to store and transfer files between systems. I suppose we could see some kind of return to non-writeable media, but I'm not holding my breath. Data transfer is the entire backbone of the modern internet. If anything, flash drives will simply go out of fashion because we'll have even more data-dense and rapid transfer alternatives in another five or ten years.
Or, you could take control of your life back from the corpos by any means necessary.
That's a very nice way to console yourself.
PC only, bro. No consoles for us.
They each cost $80. Yeah you wish they were so cheap...
If PS goes all digital and Xbox follows with their closed ecosystem, $100 is the minimum they will charge.
I think this is a bit optimistic, no way they won't invent some new way to monetise it even more by 2029
I'm kinda old and have had a couple of Nintendos but never anything PS or Xbox. I've been a PC gamer since PC games existed.
I've been balls in my ass kinda guy since before balls had been to be as in ass could can does, which is why I'm a Mormon Occultist now, so I understand exactly as you do say it
Smells like toast in here too...
Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord n savior, Jesus Christ? I know how he did his sorcery, being a dog and sorcerer myself.
Second-hand games for older consoles exist...
For how much longer though? Older consoles and games are no longer being made and each year fewer and fewer will be available.
Emulation my friend.
I doubt most console gamers have enough of the know-how nor the desire to figure out how to emulate.
And before you say it’s easy: yes, for many that is often the case. But for an even greater amount of people all they want to do is install the game on their platform of choice and play. Too many hoops to jump through and the casual/technologically unmotivated audience loses motivation. And the minimum amount of hoops before that ends up being the case is smaller than you and I would probably hope for.
Plus things like emulating seem to be age bound. My niece could maybe figure it out. My nephew can barely use a computer. He can install anything. And will, no matter what it is or from where. He will also then never uninstall it cause he doesn’t know how. Tech literacy seems to be dying. Not just email and a browser. But actually doing nerdy things and knowing how to do things like emulate or rotate a pdf.
You're not wrong but that can be rectified. Back in the day, like half the population knew how to use Napster and then KaZaa and then Limewire and among those who didn't, enough people did that they just asked a friend
Or PC games being far more backwards compatible in general.
Emulators, too
Don't forget fucking Secure Boot! Locked me out of one of my favorite games, Battlefield 1, all in the name of "anti-cheat"!
Fuck that noise
let them crash and burn.
It's downstream of a bunch of retail game shops - GameStop, Newegg, Toys'R'Us, RadioShack - all going tits up over the last ten years. Giving up on physical media isn't some Machiavellian business play. It's a response to their historical vendors dying out.
Unless Sony starts opening up their own mall kiosks, they won't have anywhere to sell physical copies outside Amazon or Walmart. And there's a reason you don't want these two to be your primary retail pipeline.
it's 2043
523 days into the war
Found your PS6
It boots
Games won't play, requires internet
Internet has been down since the dawn of the war
Want to shoot yourself in the head
But you lost your Yubikey to unlock the safety
fuck sony
"They each cost 80$" is the only unrealistic part of this. I reckon it'll be higher.
Yeah and the chucklefucks will still buy it.
Well your options are boycott or privacy
Hey you leave the wireless controllers out of this, dammit!
It's ok, you can only run it for ten minutes anyway before your power is cut for datacentre usage
>chaika face in 2k26
haha too cheap
I will not be buying a PS6. Next gen will be PC (and maybe Nintendo) for me.
If Nintendo keeps making games I like and their console isn't outrageously expensive, I'll get the next one. It's not due until like 2032, so MAYBE prices will be better. If not, I'll use my old stuff until it falls apart.
I thought switch 2 games were also essentially Download only? Like you got a cartridge but it was just a means to download the game, rather than the game itself
Most non-first party ones are, though I'd be getting those on PC rather than Switch 2. And even though game key cards suck, having a tradeable license for the duration of that game's shop server is better than having none at all.
you guys ever get tired of being victims?
You ever get tired of companies continual slide towards anti consumer practices? Or do you just enjoy taking it?
what continual slide towards anti-consumer practices?
Steam is WAY better than DVD's and physical media just like Spotify is WAY better than CD's and tape cassettes
Not all of us live in the 90's and can remember how shit those media formats are
Steam is one company and is the exception to the rule. Steam also can’t run on consoles and not everyone wants to build a PC, has the time, or the know how. Plus with part prices these days building something may be too costly. Gotta consider the average consumer, and I have the feeling that the kind of person who uses federated social media is more technically aware than most.
No one is forcing you to buy the next Play Station. There are plenty of better options you can choose from.
You act like other manufacturers won’t follow suit in an attempt to squeeze more money out of consumers in the hunt for ever increasing profits.
PCs and GOG are right there. The high seas also tend to solve all off Steam's issues pretty quick.
Of course it will happen, but still no one is forcing you. It's up to you to decide how much you can tolerate. At one point you have to decide that it's enough and you wont buy anymore and if it means you can't participate in that hobby then yes you wont participate in it and find a new hobby.
The meme is accurate, but it still is a luxury product and quitting it is always an option.
I've quit multiple things just because the price rose over some predetermined limit.
If you want physical disks just pirate and make them yourself. You'll save lots of money and won't have to support these shitty companies making such a decision.
All I'm trying to say is you have options and don't have to let them make you believe you dont. I don't like them doing this either but I don't get a say just like you.
Thats not really possible at this point with the triple A games. Not unless you copy them to physical dedicated SSDs. The games are so unoptimised and bloated these days, you are forced to believe that a digital download is the solution - unless you use a bunch of bluray disks, but thats just annoying.
Physical disk or disk image, functionally the same thing.
Don't buy a console if you don't want a console experience then
if that attempt is shown to be unsuccessful (because of people being angry, complaining and refusing to give sony money), they might not follow suit
Yeah, the PS5 is my last console. I don't get why you're getting downvoted.
As a PC gamer, I just cannot understand the level of overreacting happening about discs no longer being provided.
Oh no! Not the optical media!
Consoles have exclusive digital marketplaces for their games. At least physical games provided a veil of competition. I don’t particularly like that PC games are effectively digital only now but I can still choose where I buy my game I don’t really own.
The root issue for me is Sony has deleted content you bought. That's a big fuck you.
Valve has not. They unlist, but you can always get it.
That’s not entirely true. Valve has removed games from user libraries, most commonly MMO games post server shutdown (which tbf is more of a stop killing games issue) but also on a handful of occasions there have been legal disputes (removing all content from digital homicide) and what appears to be error but still never corrected (people who got agony unrated as a free bonus, though people who actually purchased did not lose access)
This is an issue inherent to only being able to buy “licensed” content. There are no good guys here unless they allow you to archive the installation media (eg gog) and either do not use drm or commit to removing/breaking drm if the validation servers ever need to be turned off. Physical media isn’t necessary, but that much is
While Valve is objectively better and more insulated from anti-consumer policies as a privately held company with good ownership...
I still have reservations about having my eggs in one basket with Valve, though I have a substantial Steam library. Someday Gabe will retire and/or the competition will stop shooting itself in the foot. As a result, the current customer friendly behavior may shift and then all bets are off.
If that were to come to pass, I think we'd see a huge jump in 🏴☠️ 🦜
Because when your ToS states you're purchasing a license to play the game instead of the actual game itself, physical media becomes important.
What can you do if your favorite game is removed from your account? You have the option to pirate it. But console owners don't without jailbreaking. Which gets harder and harder each generation.
Furthermore, ToS can be changed at any time, and the fines Sony will pay for a ToS violation doesn't give you your game back. So a physical disk is a way to avoid random ToS changes.
The reason why you don't (usually) see content completely removed from PC is because they know you can and will just pirate it if they take it away from you.
I don't see what octopi have to do with anything hear