Most of the ''smart money'' is just in it for the short term. Get all the value possible out of their position and be the first out. The bagholders will be the same wallets with legs, us, who hold all that shit in our pension funds, IRAs and whatever.
We are very much in a post sustainability mindset when it comes to the investment market. Enshitification is just scrapping the bottom of the barrel to keep the numbers good for another quarter.
I'm starting to think consoles are cooked. The massive jumps in technology between console generations have turned into small incremental steps. The game quality has dropped (independent games and a few others are exceptions). PC's used to be slow to boot and load a game vs consoles and also required updates to download, but now PCs are quick and updates are mostly automatic. Consoles used to be nice to just turn on and play without thinking about all that other stuff, yet now they require downloads and updates as well. Loading times aren't much better either. Consoles used to also be very cheap compared to PCs, but now with the "next gen" being around $1000 the price difference isn't that huge anymore - especially when you factor in modular updates that can be done to a PC to cheaply extend it's life. One of the last hold outs for consoles were physical games and now they're taking that away too.
While I don't think that the next console generation will flop entirely, I do strongly suspect that it won't be as successful as previous ones have been and will lead to a shift where consoles are just cheap streaming boxes that support a subscription to a cloud gaming service, which will eventually be replaced by a single device that can connect to whichever services you want.
PC gaming will be similar for most AAA titles (and in fact will be one of the devices that can support these services), though indie devs will hold out until the requirement of owning a PC leaves only a tiny market.
That's an interesting take and I can see things moving in that direction. The problem for the console makers is at that point, anyone can make a dumb box to stream with very cheap hardware.
That means the fight will be over exclusives. It's going to look like streaming services, huh? $15/mo for PS network, $15/mo for Xbox network... Yuck. At that point I'll stick to indie games locally on PC.
Cyberpower. iBuyPower. Even Starforge. There's a bunch of builders out there to remove that "scariness."
It's a personal choice, but if they were willing to spend 5-10 minutes to download something like Bazzite and click the 10 total clicks to install it, you'd achieve a console-like experience too.
The information is out there, it's just not forcefed to you because of a massive marketing budget.
As the original commenter said, pricing of next gen consoles will be $1000+. Which puts pricing into PC ballpark.
I said there are system integrators, always have been, to buy a prebuilt system.
So "too much" both fiscally and laboriously aren't true anymore.
And I mentioned it, but choosing Bazzite is a locked down system. Installing it takes about 10 clicks of your mouse.
They could ask a friend. Or google it.
How braindead do you think people are? If they talk to anyone they'll easily come across these ideas. Linux just jumped from 4% desktop usage to over 10%. So people aren't completely gone. Enough friction and they'll look for alternatives.
If they play sports games I can't help them though. They're already on life support.
I built my first PC 6 years ago, before PS5 was released.
My PC can still play new release AAA games at high quality graphics and probably will for a number of years still.. when it starts to slack a couple hundred $ and it will be good as new.
Was pricey up front but in the end better quality, more choice, and longer lasting.
Me too. AM4 platform. Just upgraded the CPU to a 5800X3D and will get a 5070 TI (maybe super?) soon. This old machine will out perform a PS6 and I can use it as a regular PC as well. The price difference (assuming I would have purchased a PS5/pro and will have purchased a PS6) is minimal especially if you consider (which you have) the higher quality gaming experience.
Digital isnt the worst thing, but how "ownership" is controlled can be. I wouldn't blame Sony for the move but their method is garbage, and their past practices with digital ownership is too.
GoG on the other hand knows how it should be done. I have tons of games from them on a thumb drive. I've never actually needed to use it, but its nice to know I can. Major kudos to them.
That said, most of my games are owned on steam, which still has DRM, but at least I can play those games on a 20 year old PC, a modern one, a box in my living room, or on a multitude of hand helds. With Sony you are tied to a specific console and thats that. Good fucking luck when they stop selling that console.
No. It's impossible to sell a game DRM-free on Steam. They always require a connection to Valve's servers to install, regardless of what the publisher wants. GOG lets you download the installer as a file that you can use wherever or whenever you want.
I mean yes... kind of. You can go to your library in gog and download (slowly speed-limited and broken into 4 gb chunks for some damn reason) which means no client needed.
But steam does have games that are DRM free after that first install. Ones that you can copy directly out of the folder and put them anywhere and run. Steam no longer needed.
I always thought it was legacy support for FAT file systems. If one was so inclined, you could break a large file down into chunks yourself using a compression tool.
Ehh, pretty sure they know what they're talking about, they just have what I consider a really bad take about it, and present it as absolute fact. Because yes, you need a connection to steam to "install" a game from steam, whereas you can predownload a GOG game and then not need a connection to install. Which doesn't really matter to most people, since they don't care about having the game use an official installer, as opposed to either an unofficial one or just archived game files, but it is a difference.
Then they're being deliberately obtuse to make a point. Valve treats downloading and installing as the same thing so needing a connection to "install" a steam game is functionally no different than needing a connection to "download" the installer from GOG and then installing the game. Once Steam has installed the game and it has no actual DRM you can just copy it wherever you like. GOG gives a much better package for storing your games but that doesn't mean what Steam does is DRM.
I guess it’s the right place to ask even if it’s not really related to Sony and my move away from them.
I download and install my GOG games through Heroic and then move them to a hard drive after I’m finished enjoying them.
If GOG one day disappears, will I still be able to play the games that way or do I really have to separately download the offline installers which are separated in many files?
GOG games DO NOT HAVE DRM to play. That's their store's unique value proposition. So if you still have that machine with that OS all working you can keep on playing those games forever even if GOG no longer exists. In practice in my experience of over 3 decades as a gamer, you'll start having problems soon enough even if you refrain from updating that machine's OS, as the OS version stops being supported as do the apps in it (for example, somebody from my family had Windows 8 until recently and eventually Google mail stopped supporting his browser version and there was no newer version of the browser that still supported Windows 8 - btw that person now has Linux) plus eventually even the machine hardware fails. Point being that an installed game is generally locked to the machine it has been installed in and the OS in it, since during installation it has probably configured a bunch of stuff in places like the registry (it's not as bad in modern Linux were you can probably get away with just moving the entire home directory and hope for the best, but in Windows it's still pretty bad). So you're better off backing up the offline installers.
I don't used Heroic but I do use Lutris and the latter has an option to save the game installer when it downloads it from GOG during a direct "install from GOG", so emaybe Heroic has it too. Given that the files Lutris lists as downloading when I "install from GOG" seem to be chunked just like the offline installer ones from my account page in GOG, I bet those files are the offline installer ones.
Realistically, you'll always be able to download the offline installers from the high seas anyway.
will I still be able to play the games that way
Most of them will probably work, but there's no real guarantee. Depends on whether the installers dumped critical files into your system / user folders.
I believe Steam games, even in offline mode, can only be run on systems where you have installed Steam and logged into it. If you copy the game files to a disc and give it to a friend, they would not be able to play it.
You're wrong. It depends on whether drm is enabled. If it is not, then the game files on the disc would work. It is the publisher's choice whether to enable drm.
I'm reluctant to buy any digital games on anything but Steam at this point, and that's because Valve has begrudingly earned my trust over 20 years of use. I do wonder what plans are in place for the point at which Gabe isn't around to steer Valve.
I have zero confidence in any other game related corporation to have a long term view in mind, and especially not one in which the platform is designed to be consumer friendly.
Putting your trust on any company is already a mistake. The only correct answer is GoG, or other similar DRM free distributions. You don't have to trust them, because it doesn't matter what they might pivot to: you still have your downloaded games, and they still work without any connectivity.
Also, when you end up passing away, guess what happens to your steam library? You cannot pass it on to anyone else.
Idk bought 3 games on Steam just the other day and all three came with pop up when I went to install them to let me know that I was only License to use them.
While I bought 3 games on GOG same day and they only asked if I wanted to donate to their fund to keep games DRM free and letting me know that I own all my games I purchased.
Valve might be going to shit.
Is there anyway to backup our games purchased on Steam?
It's a license to own a copy of the game because you're not buying the actual game.
A license is ownership. That's how all software has always worked, same as music and movies.
What remains to be seen is if courts will enforce the ownership in the light of the anti-consumer practices by publishers and developers removing people's access to that which they have purchased.
This is a great video explaining everything from the guy who started Stop Killing Games.
I think if the license is revocable, then you never really own even a copy.
I only fully trust licenses that use wording like:
"All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met. "
(from GPLv3)
"Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of
this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual,
worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable
copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of,
publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the
Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form."
(from ApacheV2)
Is there anyway to backup our games purchased on Steam?
Yes, you can copy the install folders and saves for them. Some can be modified to run without Steam fairly easily, some will need more involved cracks. Generally it's easier to just redownload the whole game cracked and move your save files over.
You could use something like SteamAutoCracker (SAC) or Goldberg, both are available on Github. A lot of smaller indie games don't have any DRM, so you can play them without steam or on another computer once you've copied the files. For games that have 3rd party DRM like denuvo, you're better off just downloading a cracked version of a game if it exists, since that DRM is borderline impossible to remove on your own
You want the Goldberg Emulator, which is basically a replacement for the steam_api DLL that lets you play those games offline.
Mind you, not all games using Steam DRM will work with it, but many if not most will by just replacing the game's steam_api DLL with the one from the emulator.
Alternatively, just prefer GOG over Steam for games available on both stores and make sure you download the offline installers from GOG and back them up - GOG itself is not entirely immune to the kind of legal shenanigans that would force them to delist a game from their store and remove them from a buyer's games collection but, unlike Steam, their setup makes it impossible for such legal orders to stop you from playing that game if you already have the offline installer.
The PS5 probably won't see any noticeable decrease in game sales, because pretty much everyone who wants one already has one, but I'll be interested to see if gamers call Sony's bluff for the PS6 or not.
It doesn't even have to be a morals-based boycott like Harry Potter.
Practically, just as an amoral consooomer, there's no reason to purchase a non-upgradable, barely-customizable gaming device which is confined to Playstation's walled garden when you could buy an upgradable, highly customizable gaming device that you can do whatever you want with.
My primary console since my teenage years has always been a Playstation. That will change probably before the PS6 even comes out. I have a PS5, I probably won't sell it just in case of any interesting exclusives. (Lmao, I know, magical thinking, considering there are still only 6 such games, none of which appeal to me enough to buy them). I'm planning to get a PC and buy everything I can on there instead.
Some reminders of Playstation's bullshit other than just physical media:
Removed the ability for you to back up your PS5 game saves to USB, forcing you to buy PS+ or risk losing your save data permanently if something goes wrong.
Discontinued free multiplayer services, ostensibly to improve the security of their network after North Korea hacked their shit for releasing a movie about assassinating Kim Jong Un (or Kim Jong Il, I don't remember). Morally, idgaf about mocking North Korea, but economically, I do give a fuck about paying a corporation $80 per year to cover their operating expenses for doing so.
Discontinued most forms of customization. PS3 and PSP could install full-on user-made themes, or you could make your own, even customizing things like the sound the interface makes when you scroll through it. Now you literally cannot even set a proper background.
Refused to manufacture their controllers with hall effect joysticks (which prevent controllers from developing stick drift). Both ridiculously-expensive PS5 controllers I bought developed stick drift, and I'm not particularly rough with them or anything, not at all prone to gamer rage lol. I bought a third-party controller (SZ-5005B) with hall effect joysticks and haven't had any issues since.
I'm sure there's tons more too. Also the PS5 interface just generally sucks shit, like sometimes my Media Gallery is on my homepage and sometimes it's not despite me not changing any settings, or just other stupid design choices.
We'll see. Boycotting a $1000+ digital only console will be easier than boycotting a $70 game. Will millions buy it? Of course. But shareholders don't just want SOME of the money, they want ALL of the money. It needs to sell many tens of millions.
I think a lot less people care about consoles now. People are moving over to mobile, not necessarily solely Android or iOS, but stuff like Switch or Steamdeck.
Nintendo churns out the same slop franchises year after year and aggressively sues anyone for anything.
Sony (somehow) believes that investors are what give their company value, not customers, and certainly not employees. They're abandoning physical media and not backing down on their anti-consumer practices that only continue to get worse.
Microsoft has become the new EA, aggressively buying up every single schmedium-sized gaming studio they can get their hands on, mismanageing them all into the ground, then selling them off for parts to save their own asses while leaving talented studios to die on the vine. They're basically buying the right to scrap their competition and they'll get away with it because they have enterprise IT subscriptions to absorb the losses.
AAA gaming is dead. And greed killed it. I'll be playing indie PC games and emulators for the foreseeable future.
People just love stating their opinions as facts, and you can't really give entirely objective opinions about art. When people say this game was amazing/terrible because of some subjective opinion they usually mean I loved/hated this game because that's what I love/hate.
Slop has a long history as word used about art. Joeseph Cambell mentions it, people criticsed hollywood of it, publishers complained about it.
I remember those days using the term slop for lazy, uninspired, thowing anything that stuck on the wall, etc. AI is just a logical progression of the same term.
Slop has always had the meaning of low effort and non-artistic meant for mass production. It alludes to the vats of gray mush that would get fed to kids for lunch on an industrial scale. Or to the random mix of pig feed.
Statements like these sure as shit ain't gonna help your case. I've seen a few videos of the game and it looks just about the same as every other open world game - with mid graphics. Let me know when the game releases on pc and i can actually try it though.
They're painfully mediocre. The gameplay is straight out of Assassin's Creed 2 with some Skyrim sprinkles for good measure. Run to the tower, reveal the map, do the quest, check the box, go to the next one, maybe stumble across a cave with some minor loot. Snooze.
That's funny, because I would describe Breath of the Wild as the antithesis of the open world design, popularized by Ubisoft, that was most ubiquitous when BotW came out. You climb a tower and decide what's interesting by seeing it from the top of the tower, not because climbing the tower labeled it as a checklist item on your map. In fact, if you do all of the shrines visible from the top of the towers, you've only done about half of them, and late in the game, after stumbling across a few shrines by happenstance, you realize from the negative space on the map that anything you couldn't see from the top of the tower would tend to have a puzzle to solve that would reveal it.
And the Switch titles in all of those franchises range from some of, to the flat out worst, in their respective series.
TotK may as well be DLC for BotW, and Windwaker would have been more similar to those titles were it not for the technical limitations of the Gamecube.
They still can't seem to get Starfox right since 64 and even that was a reboot of the NES title. You're really gonna look at all those 3DS attempts to reboot the same NES game and tell me that's not slop?
Pokémon is seeing the worst quality of the whole franchise on Switch and apparently Pokémon Go was just to train military robots or some shit. You're really gonna look at 3DS models in a Switch game and tell me that's not slop, my opinion is just wrong?
Smash Ultimate's online play has 11, ELEVEN frames of input lag under ideal circumstances, the metagame has been busted since Steve, DLC characters are OP, patches were promised, then canceled, and support is over now. You're really gonna tell me that's acceptable, totally not slop, my opinion just sucks?
I hope you play Switch games forever, and I hope you love it.
some of, to the flat out worst, in their respective series.
TOTK/BOTW
Look mate, not everything you don’t personally like is “slop”.
And your other cases are pokemon (who's been accused of sinking since the 3DS days) and Smash's online. Not even the game, its netcode (which if we're being real is bad for 99% of Nintendo games). We don't need to invent reasons to hate Nintendo, okay.
TotK may as well be DLC for BotW, and Windwaker would have been more similar to those titles were it not for the technical limitations of the Gamecube.
You haven't played ToTK at all. And what is this weird statement about WW supposed to prove about how the Switch games are the worst? Are you suggesting WW would have been the "worst" Zelda game if the GC had the power of a console that came 15 years later?
This isn't even getting into how you're going to need to show your work for how Zelda 2, Skyward Sword, some of the mobile entries, and that CD-i game are all better games than BotW or TotK.
You're really gonna look at all those 3DS attempts to reboot the same NES game and tell me that's not slop?
Yes. Things aren't "slop" just because they're not great. Otherwise most things in existence are slop. You haven't thought this through.
Pokémon is seeing the worst quality of the whole franchise on Switch
You don't know much about Pokemon games if you think the recent entries are the worst received generations.
apparently Pokémon Go was just to train military robots or some shit.
Pokemon Go is notably not a Switch game.
You're really gonna look at 3DS models in a Switch game and tell me that's not slop, my opinion is just wrong?
Yes. An uninformed opinion that misuses terms is a wrongly derived opinion.
Smash Ultimate's online play has 11, ELEVEN frames of input lag under ideal circumstances, the metagame has been busted since Steve, DLC characters are OP, patches were promised, then canceled, and support is over now. You're really gonna tell me that's acceptable, totally not slop, my opinion just sucks?
Yes, the opinion of someone who forgot about Brawl isn't worth much.
I hope you play Switch games forever, and I hope you love it.
This does not hit the way you think it does. Most people don't have such an irrational hatred for the Switch that they've convinced themselves of a lot of untruths to justify their weird hatred.
Greed has been a problem in the AAA game space for a long time. It's just that before reliable Internet connections, it was harder to exploit people.
Before this, it was lootboxes and gambling mechanics, before that, it was microtransactions, balancing the game to incentivise spending money, and before that it was chopping bits off the game and selling it as DLC.
Prior to that, the worst we got was cheap sequels and shovelware.
It's all about maximizing shareholder value. Unfortunately, companies have come to the realization that happy customers are no longer the path to success. There is more value in capturing a market and then gutting services to squeeze those pennies out. Long term this can't be sustainable but here we are.
There's a whole wide world of AAA video games out there aside from those you mentioned. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was fantastic just last year; Metaphor: ReFantazio the year before that; Baldur's Gate 3 the year before that; Elden Ring the year before that. Plenty more still might be significantly smaller, but it would be difficult to count something like The Alters as indie; or Invincible VS or Screamer or Mouse: P.I. for Hire.
Indie doesn't mean "small and pixel art game". It means the studio is independent. Kingdom Come and BG3 were made by independent studios with little to no help from pubblishers (if any at all).
The rest you mentioned at max could be considered AA or simply A games IF there was a pubblisher behind them helping with development. What you said was a world of AAA games aside those mentioned is actually a world out there aside AAA games.
Kingdom Come is an Embracer joint; a subsidiary of Plaion. They're definitely not independent. Baldur's Gate 3 was self published but with a sizable investment from Tencent to fund its $100M budget. Valve is independent, but I don't think anyone would say Half-Life 3 is their most anticipated indie game.
The big games you mention here are what most would coin AA titles, AA is absolutely still able to hit homeruns at time.
But the AAA (biggest budget games) plays a bit too safe, I have a feeling GTA VI might be a banger. But that's an anomaly for a AAA game.
We need more innovative games, triple A's should be able to invent new things. Studios quite often does so, and then has it gutted by publishers/investors because it carries too high of a risk
I think that's just the Overton Window shift. If a game's budget is in 9 figures of USD to make, I don't see how you couldn't call it AAA. Even the likes of Elden Ring and Metaphor are similarly big, and they're probably only short of 9 figures USD by way of being made in Japan for a comparable amount of labor. There's a wide spread between GTA VI and the next-most-expensive games ever made. The AAA of yesteryear was made by a team the size of The Alters or even far smaller.
I've been years buying digital for PC but never did once on PS4, PS3 or XBOX 360, I mean what the point? The only reason to have a console was so that you can sell your discs once played or lending to friends.
Yes, Apple were the first to make PCs without floppy drives, and also the first to make them without optical drives. Mac users kept buying Macs; other PC manufacturers saw that people were willing to buy PCs without optical drives, so they copied Apple, and now you can't buy any PC software (including games) physically. This all happened in parallel with the rise of Steam, as Valve somehow got PC gamers to insist on DRM.
To be clear, there was no collusion or conspiracy going on, just people reading the market and finding ways to consolidate power and income.
Reading this and your other comment, this bit seems a bit disingenuous to me. Nobody is insisting on Steam in order to have DRM. Valve found a way to make Steam's DRM palatable to gamers, and from there even managed to make people have a preference for it as a distribution channel. You pointed out yourself, gamers were not happy about this with the initial roll out with Half-Life 2. Whether it was their own games, helping jumpstart the age of indie devs, or the other parts of Steam like the communities and chat, they did actually add stuff to the program that gamers found value in. Nobody should operate under the illusions that a corporation is their friend and will actually look out for their interests, but it doesn't help anyone to exaggerate making claims like "PC Gamers insist on DRM." Heck, one of the most common complaints I see about Steam is people complaining about it having DRM like Denuvo in some games, or requiring you to launch some publisher's launcher and sign in to one of their accounts to play a game when you're already signed in to the account in Steam you bought the game with.
Yeah, I have a copy of Half-Life: Blue Shift on CD somewhere, from before Steam was a thing.
Two things happened in parallel. This wasn't a conspiracy and there was no collusion, it was just businessmen making canny decisions which worked out. Fair warning, this post is longer than I expected.
In 1998, Apple released the iMac, the first PC without a floppy drive. In 2008, they released the MacBook Air, the first PC without an optical disc drive, for the sake of making it really really thin. A few subsequent Macs did have optical drives, but the last one was the MacBook Pro, released in 2012. On both occasions, people predicted that Apple was DOOMED, because who would want to buy a PC without basic hardware?
But people did. Some people depend on Mac-exclusive software, and come Apple fans are just cultists. In any case, removing components didn't adversely affect sales, and so other companies concluded they could make cheaper PCs by dropping floppy drives and optical drives, which they did. As such, you can't get a computer with a floppy drive at all any more; you can get one with an optical drive, but you have to know where to look and specifically ask for one.
Meanwhile, Valve were doing pretty well with Half-Life and its expansions. Releasing updates and patches was very much a fuck at the time, because Windows didn't have a package manager (and I'm not sure it has one even today). Valve's programmers started work on Steam initially as a way to distribute updates easily and automatically, but its potential as a DRM system quickly became apparent.
In 2004, Valve released their long-awaited and highly-anticipated new game, Half-Life 2 both physically and digitally... and all versions required Steam. No, you couldn't just put the DVD you owned into your PC, install the game, and play it. You needed to also install Valve's own DRM system, which would regularly call home, in order to play a copy of a game you physically own.
(Pedants and lawyers will say you only license, not own, the game on the DVD. This is true. However, you do own the DVD that the game is on. You don't own the game itself, but you do own that specific copy of it).
People hated this. PC gamers already found it intolerable that they had to have the CD in the drive to play games they owned as if it was a PlayStation, but having to register over the Internet? That was a bridge too far!... but this was Half-Life 2, and gamers™ will talk a big game about boycotting up until it's time to actually boycott. Everybody wanted to play Half-Life 2, because it's the sequel to one of the best, most influential games ever made, and it honestly really did live up to the hype. So they sucked it up, installed Steam, and had a blast with Half-Life 2. Steam also had a storefront grafted on top, allowing people to buy Valve's back catalogue through it, and would also serve as
The next year, Valve figured that hey, if they can sell their own games, why not those of other devs? So they started selling a selection of smaller games, and this is what really led to indie games becoming viable. Without the expense of packaging and distribution, smaller groups and solo devs were able to release smaller, cheaper, and more niche games and passion projects that didn't need to sell like gangbusters to make a profit without having to set up and maintain their own online shops. Steam became the standard vector for selling indie games, and over time, bigger and bigger games started being sold on Steam until it morphed from a major shop into infrastructure. It's no longer just a shop/DRM system, it's now The Thing That People Use For PC Games.
Just three years after Steam started selling third-party games, Apple started phasing out optical drives. Two years after the MacBook Air, Valve released Steam on Mac. As Steam grew and expanded, PCs with optical drives faded away, leaving PC gamers with no choice but to buy digitally, and that meant using Steam, which [https://www.xda-developers.com/valve-steam-monopoly-real-gamers-chose/](does have a monopoly in the PC gaming space).
And that is how the independent parallel actions of Apple and Valve killed physical PC gaming.
Phasing out the optical drive from laptops was just about inevitable regardless of what Apple did. It saved a lot on battery life, not just form factor. I might see digital distribution of music, not video games, as a bigger driver for removing the disc drive, too.
Of course Apple weren't thinking about video games. But they still dropped optical drives, which led to everyone else dropping optical drives, hence no more physical PC games.
Got fed u with the fucking stick drift and Sony's bullshit. Plugged my Rog ally that was taking dust to the TV, put bazzite on it. Now I can play what I want with a 20$ controller.
Did you know this is legally enforceable? The shareholders can sue a publicly company if it doesn't prioritize 'shareholder value'. For example a company that cut profit instead of doing layoffs.
It's not spoiled leadership, but a rotten ecosystem that breeds amphibian avarice as the dominant culture.
No, a company cannot be sued for failing to maximize shareholder value. The business judgment rule protects any company that wants to raise wages, refrain from layoffs, donate to charity, offer sick leave, etc. What they can’t do is not pursue profit at all. Now, will shareholders vote them out if they do those things? Maybe, but that’s a totally different mechanism than a lawsuit.
As I understand business judgement rule makes the assumption that the company did its decisions in good faith. It doesn't mean a shareholder derivative lawsuit can't happen. The shareholders can still sue, and there have been instances where it has been done, but in addition to suing the shareholders would then have to prove loss of profits alongside negligence or bad faith or whatever led to the loss of profits.
Realistically this shouldn't happen as it probably costs more to prove the company didn't make every penny of profit it could, but we live in weird times where things that shouldn't happen do happen so let's not count out the improbable.
Meh, most games are available on PC, and the exclusives that aren’t will come to emulators eventually. It’s worth paying extra for a PC that can run anything you like, including games, especially when you can install Linux and cut a ton of bullshit out of your life.
What would really grind Sony's gears is if everyone stops updating their system and waits for the PS5 Linux hacks to catch up to their firmware version. Then, they install Linux and get Steam working and only buy digital games from Steam and GOG, or emulate older games, on their Linux hacked PS5.
Ps5 emulation will happen, but not before a few years.
Still, it’s good as it means I’ll be able to fully leave that ecosystem that I used to love.
I guess Sony might lose a lot of money at one point if they don’t release their games on PC since a few former Playstation players are in the process of moving to PC and not coming back.
Don't underestimate the human spirit so much. There's already been inroads made on early firmware versions of the PS5 where the hacker was able to play GTA5 at full settings on his PS5. The PS4 has a great jailbreaking community now too. There's also been steps in getting PS5 emulsion off the ground. It's only a matter of time. Seriously, check it out. I hacked my PS4 earlier though month and I can watched a hacked YouTube with no ads, and emulate games using retro arch. It's pretty sweet.
The human spirit makes no difference when it comes to jailbreaking hardware.
I know all about the hacks that exist. None of them work on anything remotely close to current firmware, because the early firmware that was coming in hot with some exploits has long ago been patched - and you can’t downgrade.
Fiduciary responsibility or not, Sony is a big company with their fingers dipped in a lot of stuff, and decisions have a lot of inertia. The moment we learned they retooled some factories it was clear this has been in the making for a while and they will not back off. Sony (or at least the playstation division) is compromised and we need to focus on alternative solutions.
Sony didn’t really “double down”. The decision to wind down their physical games category was made years ago. Everything after the initial public announcement is to manage public relations.
Not sure many outside Japan realise but Sony are a conglomerate that dip their fingers into unrelated industries. This to them is clearly just a line through a smaller category on the balance sheet.
There’s a discussion to be had about ownership and physical games but i think that market is going to re-emerge in the future in perhaps a more bespoke way, like the resurgence of music vinyls.
To me, Sony seems to be interested in just managing the distribution of IP opposed to “gaming” itself. They’re not true custodians in that space or if they were, then they’re not now.
1 - because of Sony's requirements for printing physical discs, it requires permission and effort from Sony itself. A company cannot simply burn blurays for playstation games, they MUST engage Sony. This isn't interest in "just managing of the IP," this is specifically to increase profit by removing physical needs altogether (shipping, manufacturing, distribution, etc) as well as snuffing out the second hand market which, in theory, would drive more profit towards Sony, and finally it provides control. Access can be revoked, products become fluid, and the store can remove your access to older versions if a remake or remaster comes out that you would then have to buy on the new storefront. No new market can spring up with a resurgence in terms of Sony as Sony would have to allow it, being a closed console platform.
2 - they directly respond to shareholder questions around the backlash to the announcement, which they refer to as "various opinions." They did not retract their statement or change course and choose to push forward. How is that not doubling down?
"There are various reasons we made this decision, the biggest being that the digitalization of content overall has been progressing. That’s the big factor," he said. "It’s not just for PlayStation, but for all kinds of content; digitalization is progressing. And so, when we think about the future – and we put in a lot of thought and time, and we cautiously considered this – and we came to this conclusion, and we’re going to cautiously move this forward.
Tao added, "And to this decision, we have received various opinions and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forth those views to us."
i was referring to physical games as a whole and not necessarily tied to Playstation games or their discs.
They’ve been transitioning this specific manufacturing division since 2024. It can’t be a “double down” because they’re not going to revert two years of already re-trained staff and re-purposed equipment because of online forum talk.
Messages to shareholders like this is pretty standard. They’re basically saying:
decision is final
components manufacturing is more lucrative than disc manufacturing
we will distribute our IP
So they’re hedging their bets on what their future could be. If they lose out on gaming they’ll make back on microlenses.
Not saying don't do it, but it's a blip on the radar. As someone who works in tech, a week blackout looks like a bunch of people going on vacation. Especially during August, which is during many summer vacations.
Never buy a digital title for a console. If you need to buy digital, buy it on the open hardware platform.
If you really want to send a message, deleting your account or cancelling PS plus if you have it does more. That shows a decline in MoM retention.
Timed boycotts are an assimilation to corporate control. If the goal of a boycott is to affect change it must be indefinite as the change it wishes to bring about is required to end it.
No tangible amount of people are going to put their money where their mouth is. Gamers have time and time again shown that they can be screwed over. I mean look at the state of the big games now and games as a service taking over, people are happily paying $20+ for a skin in a game, something that used to come included with the game as an unlock.
It's not just gamers. All of these performative bucking of the norm lasts a few days then back to business as usual. People don't want to give up their comforts for lasting change.
Not saying you're wrong but the backlash to this Sony decision seems to have most gamers up in arms. Maybe even waking up a little bit. Maybe I'm too hopeful though.
If your friends agree, just spread the word, there's no need to spend on those skins when there's soooo many indie titles out there. Hours and hours of content to keep us busy and direct money away from Sony, Microsoft, etc.
I’ve already primarily moved to PC over the last year or so but this whole incident has opened my eyes to the jailbreak scene. I have a PS5 for the exclusives but they will no longer get a dime from me and I will not be buying any of their consoles going forward.
Nobody has explained how simply not using the console you already bought would affect their profits negatively at all. If anything, it will lower their server costs from the reduced bandwidth for a month.
Just stop buying anything from Sony until they get the message. No music, no games, no subscriptions, no movies, no media players or proprietary media (ie BluRay disks regardless of what they are for; even Xbox games), no hardware, etc.
As long as you keep using the console you're still in the walled garden: you're giving them data to harvest, being exposed to their ads, padding their MAU numbers... Server costs are negligible - it's what allows F2P to work as a monetization model.
I’m surprised that they haven’t brought up the negative environmental effect of producing compact discs and enclosures as an excuse. This decision is pure greed driven.
I was going to buy ps5 for gta6, but I’m not going to now. Will wait for pc release. Also not worth paying that much for a console that’s set to die in 2-3 years. (Ps6 is probably on the way)
I’m surprised that they haven’t brought up the negative environmental effect of producing compact discs and enclosures as an excuse.
They're still planning to release empty cases with codes in the box for retailers, so that tells you how much of a shit they give about that. Dunno if that will continue with PS6, though.
The closest I can think of are games distributed on cassette for 80's microcomputers like the C64 but I can't think of anything you'd call a "console" that accepted those.
The rumored price point for the ps6 is going to be about the same as the steam machine. People will be able to get their fix just as easily somewhere else.
I'm pro physical media, but real physical media, not not key cards, not code in a box, not requiring an always on connection, not full base game but DLC is a code.
I think all games should be able to work in perpetuity without any external validation or activation across it's entire life.
I have an exceptionally large game collection that includes even current generation console games - so PS5, Xbox Series and Switch 2.
There are still games on those platforms that are fully playable from the physical media with no download required to ensure it's playable to completion.
Switch 2 is unfortunately the biggest offender with key cards, but those are easily identifiable. Other consoles I just avoid specific publishers.
No Ubisoft, no Activision-Blizzard, no Bethesda, no Microsoft Game Studios and so on. It's very possible to find completely on disk playable games, a good example of this is Pragmata and the latest Resident Evil for PS5.
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If I were an investor, I'd be worried they aren't listening to the
wallets with legsconsumers.Most of the ''smart money'' is just in it for the short term. Get all the value possible out of their position and be the first out. The bagholders will be the same wallets with legs, us, who hold all that shit in our pension funds, IRAs and whatever.
We are very much in a post sustainability mindset when it comes to the investment market. Enshitification is just scrapping the bottom of the barrel to keep the numbers good for another quarter.
I'm starting to think consoles are cooked. The massive jumps in technology between console generations have turned into small incremental steps. The game quality has dropped (independent games and a few others are exceptions). PC's used to be slow to boot and load a game vs consoles and also required updates to download, but now PCs are quick and updates are mostly automatic. Consoles used to be nice to just turn on and play without thinking about all that other stuff, yet now they require downloads and updates as well. Loading times aren't much better either. Consoles used to also be very cheap compared to PCs, but now with the "next gen" being around $1000 the price difference isn't that huge anymore - especially when you factor in modular updates that can be done to a PC to cheaply extend it's life. One of the last hold outs for consoles were physical games and now they're taking that away too.
Not to forget obligatory subscriptions.
While I don't think that the next console generation will flop entirely, I do strongly suspect that it won't be as successful as previous ones have been and will lead to a shift where consoles are just cheap streaming boxes that support a subscription to a cloud gaming service, which will eventually be replaced by a single device that can connect to whichever services you want.
PC gaming will be similar for most AAA titles (and in fact will be one of the devices that can support these services), though indie devs will hold out until the requirement of owning a PC leaves only a tiny market.
That's an interesting take and I can see things moving in that direction. The problem for the console makers is at that point, anyone can make a dumb box to stream with very cheap hardware.
That means the fight will be over exclusives. It's going to look like streaming services, huh? $15/mo for PS network, $15/mo for Xbox network... Yuck. At that point I'll stick to indie games locally on PC.
I think you're underestimating the number of people who just don't want to take on the secondary hobby of building a PC in the first place.
Cyberpower. iBuyPower. Even Starforge. There's a bunch of builders out there to remove that "scariness."
It's a personal choice, but if they were willing to spend 5-10 minutes to download something like Bazzite and click the 10 total clicks to install it, you'd achieve a console-like experience too.
The information is out there, it's just not forcefed to you because of a massive marketing budget.
Considering building a PC is too much, how do you figure that they will week out Linux, choose a distro, and successfully install it.
I'm not sure if you ignored both but:
As the original commenter said, pricing of next gen consoles will be $1000+. Which puts pricing into PC ballpark.
I said there are system integrators, always have been, to buy a prebuilt system.
So "too much" both fiscally and laboriously aren't true anymore.
And I mentioned it, but choosing Bazzite is a locked down system. Installing it takes about 10 clicks of your mouse.
They could ask a friend. Or google it.
How braindead do you think people are? If they talk to anyone they'll easily come across these ideas. Linux just jumped from 4% desktop usage to over 10%. So people aren't completely gone. Enough friction and they'll look for alternatives.
If they play sports games I can't help them though. They're already on life support.
I built my first PC 6 years ago, before PS5 was released.
My PC can still play new release AAA games at high quality graphics and probably will for a number of years still.. when it starts to slack a couple hundred $ and it will be good as new.
Was pricey up front but in the end better quality, more choice, and longer lasting.
Me too. AM4 platform. Just upgraded the CPU to a 5800X3D and will get a 5070 TI (maybe super?) soon. This old machine will out perform a PS6 and I can use it as a regular PC as well. The price difference (assuming I would have purchased a PS5/pro and will have purchased a PS6) is minimal especially if you consider (which you have) the higher quality gaming experience.
Digital isnt the worst thing, but how "ownership" is controlled can be. I wouldn't blame Sony for the move but their method is garbage, and their past practices with digital ownership is too.
GoG on the other hand knows how it should be done. I have tons of games from them on a thumb drive. I've never actually needed to use it, but its nice to know I can. Major kudos to them.
That said, most of my games are owned on steam, which still has DRM, but at least I can play those games on a 20 year old PC, a modern one, a box in my living room, or on a multitude of hand helds. With Sony you are tied to a specific console and thats that. Good fucking luck when they stop selling that console.
DRM on Steam is up to the publisher.
Steam is DRM
Only if publisher wishes.
You can totally play games downloaded via Steam without launching the shop, if the game is DRM-free.
No. It's impossible to sell a game DRM-free on Steam. They always require a connection to Valve's servers to install, regardless of what the publisher wants. GOG lets you download the installer as a file that you can use wherever or whenever you want.
I mean yes... kind of. You can go to your library in gog and download (slowly speed-limited and broken into 4 gb chunks for some damn reason) which means no client needed.
But steam does have games that are DRM free after that first install. Ones that you can copy directly out of the folder and put them anywhere and run. Steam no longer needed.
There is a list here https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam although it suggests its about 600 games more that arent on the list yet.
The 4gb chunks is so you can put them on
Blu-rayDVD discs for storage. Back in the day large games came on multiple discs.Edit: Also it's probably more what the other guy said about format, fitting on a DVD is just a bonus.
I always thought it was legacy support for FAT file systems. If one was so inclined, you could break a large file down into chunks yourself using a compression tool.
That reason honestly makes a lot more sense than blu ray compatibility
You probably mean DVDs since they are 4.7gb. Bluray capacity is closer to 50gb per disk I think?
Yep I did, but the other guy is probably closer to the truth of it. Fitting on a DVD is just bonus.
We really need a c/confidentlyincorrect comm for people like you
Ehh, pretty sure they know what they're talking about, they just have what I consider a really bad take about it, and present it as absolute fact. Because yes, you need a connection to steam to "install" a game from steam, whereas you can predownload a GOG game and then not need a connection to install. Which doesn't really matter to most people, since they don't care about having the game use an official installer, as opposed to either an unofficial one or just archived game files, but it is a difference.
Then they're being deliberately obtuse to make a point. Valve treats downloading and installing as the same thing so needing a connection to "install" a steam game is functionally no different than needing a connection to "download" the installer from GOG and then installing the game. Once Steam has installed the game and it has no actual DRM you can just copy it wherever you like. GOG gives a much better package for storing your games but that doesn't mean what Steam does is DRM.
I guess it’s the right place to ask even if it’s not really related to Sony and my move away from them.
I download and install my GOG games through Heroic and then move them to a hard drive after I’m finished enjoying them.
If GOG one day disappears, will I still be able to play the games that way or do I really have to separately download the offline installers which are separated in many files?
Two things:
Realistically, you'll always be able to download the offline installers from the high seas anyway.
Most of them will probably work, but there's no real guarantee. Depends on whether the installers dumped critical files into your system / user folders.
I believe Steam games, even in offline mode, can only be run on systems where you have installed Steam and logged into it. If you copy the game files to a disc and give it to a friend, they would not be able to play it.
You're wrong. It depends on whether drm is enabled. If it is not, then the game files on the disc would work. It is the publisher's choice whether to enable drm.
As the other comment says, if they can explain how I can install a game from GOG without connecting to their servers, I'm happy to concede the point 😂
Well... That goes against the theory of economics, Sony will learn the hard way, like they did with memory stick.
I'm reluctant to buy any digital games on anything but Steam at this point, and that's because Valve has begrudingly earned my trust over 20 years of use. I do wonder what plans are in place for the point at which Gabe isn't around to steer Valve.
I have zero confidence in any other game related corporation to have a long term view in mind, and especially not one in which the platform is designed to be consumer friendly.
I would trust GOG too. At least as long as they let you download offline installers.
Putting your trust on any company is already a mistake. The only correct answer is GoG, or other similar DRM free distributions. You don't have to trust them, because it doesn't matter what they might pivot to: you still have your downloaded games, and they still work without any connectivity.
Also, when you end up passing away, guess what happens to your steam library? You cannot pass it on to anyone else.
Idk bought 3 games on Steam just the other day and all three came with pop up when I went to install them to let me know that I was only License to use them.
While I bought 3 games on GOG same day and they only asked if I wanted to donate to their fund to keep games DRM free and letting me know that I own all my games I purchased.
Valve might be going to shit.
Is there anyway to backup our games purchased on Steam?
It's a license to own a copy of the game because you're not buying the actual game.
A license is ownership. That's how all software has always worked, same as music and movies.
What remains to be seen is if courts will enforce the ownership in the light of the anti-consumer practices by publishers and developers removing people's access to that which they have purchased.
This is a great video explaining everything from the guy who started Stop Killing Games.
I think if the license is revocable, then you never really own even a copy.
I only fully trust licenses that use wording like: "All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met. " (from GPLv3) "Grant of Copyright License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare Derivative Works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute the Work and such Derivative Works in Source or Object form." (from ApacheV2)
Yes, you can copy the install folders and saves for them. Some can be modified to run without Steam fairly easily, some will need more involved cracks. Generally it's easier to just redownload the whole game cracked and move your save files over.
Do you or anyone have steps for those cracks. I definitely want to play and keep my games without needing Valve.
You could use something like SteamAutoCracker (SAC) or Goldberg, both are available on Github. A lot of smaller indie games don't have any DRM, so you can play them without steam or on another computer once you've copied the files. For games that have 3rd party DRM like denuvo, you're better off just downloading a cracked version of a game if it exists, since that DRM is borderline impossible to remove on your own
You can download installers from Fitgirl.
You want the Goldberg Emulator, which is basically a replacement for the steam_api DLL that lets you play those games offline.
Mind you, not all games using Steam DRM will work with it, but many if not most will by just replacing the game's steam_api DLL with the one from the emulator.
Alternatively, just prefer GOG over Steam for games available on both stores and make sure you download the offline installers from GOG and back them up - GOG itself is not entirely immune to the kind of legal shenanigans that would force them to delist a game from their store and remove them from a buyer's games collection but, unlike Steam, their setup makes it impossible for such legal orders to stop you from playing that game if you already have the offline installer.
I'm shocked
The PS5 probably won't see any noticeable decrease in game sales, because pretty much everyone who wants one already has one, but I'll be interested to see if gamers call Sony's bluff for the PS6 or not.
I don't have much faith in them turning down the PS6 if the calls to boycott Hogwarts Legacy is anything to go by.
It doesn't even have to be a morals-based boycott like Harry Potter.
Practically, just as an amoral consooomer, there's no reason to purchase a non-upgradable, barely-customizable gaming device which is confined to Playstation's walled garden when you could buy an upgradable, highly customizable gaming device that you can do whatever you want with.
My primary console since my teenage years has always been a Playstation. That will change probably before the PS6 even comes out. I have a PS5, I probably won't sell it just in case of any interesting exclusives. (Lmao, I know, magical thinking, considering there are still only 6 such games, none of which appeal to me enough to buy them). I'm planning to get a PC and buy everything I can on there instead.
Some reminders of Playstation's bullshit other than just physical media:
I'm sure there's tons more too. Also the PS5 interface just generally sucks shit, like sometimes my Media Gallery is on my homepage and sometimes it's not despite me not changing any settings, or just other stupid design choices.
We'll see. Boycotting a $1000+ digital only console will be easier than boycotting a $70 game. Will millions buy it? Of course. But shareholders don't just want SOME of the money, they want ALL of the money. It needs to sell many tens of millions.
I think a lot less people care about consoles now. People are moving over to mobile, not necessarily solely Android or iOS, but stuff like Switch or Steamdeck.
Nintendo churns out the same slop franchises year after year and aggressively sues anyone for anything.
Sony (somehow) believes that investors are what give their company value, not customers, and certainly not employees. They're abandoning physical media and not backing down on their anti-consumer practices that only continue to get worse.
Microsoft has become the new EA, aggressively buying up every single schmedium-sized gaming studio they can get their hands on, mismanageing them all into the ground, then selling them off for parts to save their own asses while leaving talented studios to die on the vine. They're basically buying the right to scrap their competition and they'll get away with it because they have enterprise IT subscriptions to absorb the losses.
AAA gaming is dead. And greed killed it. I'll be playing indie PC games and emulators for the foreseeable future.
looks at most highly rated video games of all time
Look mate, not everything you don't personally like is "slop".
Ive thought slop is ai specific. Looks like the word may be seeing a change in meaning.
People tend to use it to mean, "thing I don't like" far too often these days.
This is criticism slop
People just love stating their opinions as facts, and you can't really give entirely objective opinions about art. When people say this game was amazing/terrible because of some subjective opinion they usually mean I loved/hated this game because that's what I love/hate.
I'd argue boiling a thing down to "slop" is a lazy way to avoid saying why they didn't like it.
Slop slop
Slop has a long history as word used about art. Joeseph Cambell mentions it, people criticsed hollywood of it, publishers complained about it.
I remember those days using the term slop for lazy, uninspired, thowing anything that stuck on the wall, etc. AI is just a logical progression of the same term.
Slop has always had the meaning of low effort and non-artistic meant for mass production. It alludes to the vats of gray mush that would get fed to kids for lunch on an industrial scale. Or to the random mix of pig feed.
Popularity does not imply quality.
I've played the recent Zelda games. They're okay. But also disgustingly overrated.
Slop implies bare bones, generic, repetitive design, and thrown together quick. Say what you want about Zelda, but it has never been any of those.
op probably meant pokemon, which is pretty SLlop since SWSH.
And have you played Splatoon 3/Raiders, Metroid Dread/Prime 4, Kirby Air Riders, Donkey Kong Bananza, Rhythm Heaven Groove, etc?
The use of superlatives on a highly subjective statement also don't signify quality. If anything, their presence implies irrationality.
You're disgustingly overrated. Botw is the greatest game ever. You wouldn't know good game design if it kicked you in the ass.
Statements like these sure as shit ain't gonna help your case. I've seen a few videos of the game and it looks just about the same as every other open world game - with mid graphics. Let me know when the game releases on pc and i can actually try it though.
I played it on PC. Highly recommend.
Yeah i know about emulation, me not playing it is more about them fostering a closed platform.
They're painfully mediocre. The gameplay is straight out of Assassin's Creed 2 with some Skyrim sprinkles for good measure. Run to the tower, reveal the map, do the quest, check the box, go to the next one, maybe stumble across a cave with some minor loot. Snooze.
That's funny, because I would describe Breath of the Wild as the antithesis of the open world design, popularized by Ubisoft, that was most ubiquitous when BotW came out. You climb a tower and decide what's interesting by seeing it from the top of the tower, not because climbing the tower labeled it as a checklist item on your map. In fact, if you do all of the shrines visible from the top of the towers, you've only done about half of them, and late in the game, after stumbling across a few shrines by happenstance, you realize from the negative space on the map that anything you couldn't see from the top of the tower would tend to have a puzzle to solve that would reveal it.
And the Switch titles in all of those franchises range from some of, to the flat out worst, in their respective series.
TotK may as well be DLC for BotW, and Windwaker would have been more similar to those titles were it not for the technical limitations of the Gamecube.
They still can't seem to get Starfox right since 64 and even that was a reboot of the NES title. You're really gonna look at all those 3DS attempts to reboot the same NES game and tell me that's not slop?
Pokémon is seeing the worst quality of the whole franchise on Switch and apparently Pokémon Go was just to train military robots or some shit. You're really gonna look at 3DS models in a Switch game and tell me that's not slop, my opinion is just wrong?
Smash Ultimate's online play has 11, ELEVEN frames of input lag under ideal circumstances, the metagame has been busted since Steve, DLC characters are OP, patches were promised, then canceled, and support is over now. You're really gonna tell me that's acceptable, totally not slop, my opinion just sucks?
I hope you play Switch games forever, and I hope you love it.
Look mate, not everything you don’t personally like is “slop”.
And your other cases are pokemon (who's been accused of sinking since the 3DS days) and Smash's online. Not even the game, its netcode (which if we're being real is bad for 99% of Nintendo games). We don't need to invent reasons to hate Nintendo, okay.
You haven't played ToTK at all. And what is this weird statement about WW supposed to prove about how the Switch games are the worst? Are you suggesting WW would have been the "worst" Zelda game if the GC had the power of a console that came 15 years later?
This isn't even getting into how you're going to need to show your work for how Zelda 2, Skyward Sword, some of the mobile entries, and that CD-i game are all better games than BotW or TotK.
Yes. Things aren't "slop" just because they're not great. Otherwise most things in existence are slop. You haven't thought this through.
You don't know much about Pokemon games if you think the recent entries are the worst received generations.
Pokemon Go is notably not a Switch game.
Yes. An uninformed opinion that misuses terms is a wrongly derived opinion.
Yes, the opinion of someone who forgot about Brawl isn't worth much.
This does not hit the way you think it does. Most people don't have such an irrational hatred for the Switch that they've convinced themselves of a lot of untruths to justify their weird hatred.
Greed has been a problem in the AAA game space for a long time. It's just that before reliable Internet connections, it was harder to exploit people.
Before this, it was lootboxes and gambling mechanics, before that, it was microtransactions, balancing the game to incentivise spending money, and before that it was chopping bits off the game and selling it as DLC.
Prior to that, the worst we got was cheap sequels and shovelware.
It's all about maximizing shareholder value. Unfortunately, companies have come to the realization that happy customers are no longer the path to success. There is more value in capturing a market and then gutting services to squeeze those pennies out. Long term this can't be sustainable but here we are.
they will just end up putting mtx into everything.
There's a whole wide world of AAA video games out there aside from those you mentioned. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was fantastic just last year; Metaphor: ReFantazio the year before that; Baldur's Gate 3 the year before that; Elden Ring the year before that. Plenty more still might be significantly smaller, but it would be difficult to count something like The Alters as indie; or Invincible VS or Screamer or Mouse: P.I. for Hire.
Indie doesn't mean "small and pixel art game". It means the studio is independent. Kingdom Come and BG3 were made by independent studios with little to no help from pubblishers (if any at all).
The rest you mentioned at max could be considered AA or simply A games IF there was a pubblisher behind them helping with development. What you said was a world of AAA games aside those mentioned is actually a world out there aside AAA games.
Kingdom Come is an Embracer joint; a subsidiary of Plaion. They're definitely not independent. Baldur's Gate 3 was self published but with a sizable investment from Tencent to fund its $100M budget. Valve is independent, but I don't think anyone would say Half-Life 3 is their most anticipated indie game.
The big games you mention here are what most would coin AA titles, AA is absolutely still able to hit homeruns at time.
But the AAA (biggest budget games) plays a bit too safe, I have a feeling GTA VI might be a banger. But that's an anomaly for a AAA game.
We need more innovative games, triple A's should be able to invent new things. Studios quite often does so, and then has it gutted by publishers/investors because it carries too high of a risk
I think that's just the Overton Window shift. If a game's budget is in 9 figures of USD to make, I don't see how you couldn't call it AAA. Even the likes of Elden Ring and Metaphor are similarly big, and they're probably only short of 9 figures USD by way of being made in Japan for a comparable amount of labor. There's a wide spread between GTA VI and the next-most-expensive games ever made. The AAA of yesteryear was made by a team the size of The Alters or even far smaller.
And all of those are available on an open platform digitally if not available on physical media.
Maybe controversial, but I and most of my friends have said fuck GTA6. We'll wait to see what happens with the PC release.
they are lucky pokemon is sustaining nintendo directly and indirectly, even its mostly slop games. even the physical card game became kinda like slop.
luckily they wernt succesful against Palword, which is producing a better game than the consoles.
im never buying a sony title again.
Last Of Us 3 would be the only digital game I’d still buy for my PS5.
For the rest, no disc, no buy as I’m moving to Steam/Gog anyway.
"Last of us" :/
Every company that goes public stock shifts their priorities from customers to investors (extracting money).
I've been years buying digital for PC but never did once on PS4, PS3 or XBOX 360, I mean what the point? The only reason to have a console was so that you can sell your discs once played or lending to friends.
We used to be able to do that with PC games, too. But then Valve and Apple killed physical PC games.
Valve, sure. But this is a leap of such inscrutable logic that I have to hear more about it.
Didn't they stop manufacturing computers with CD/DVD drives a while ago? Perhaps that's what they're referring to.
Yes, Apple were the first to make PCs without floppy drives, and also the first to make them without optical drives. Mac users kept buying Macs; other PC manufacturers saw that people were willing to buy PCs without optical drives, so they copied Apple, and now you can't buy any PC software (including games) physically. This all happened in parallel with the rise of Steam, as Valve somehow got PC gamers to insist on DRM.
To be clear, there was no collusion or conspiracy going on, just people reading the market and finding ways to consolidate power and income.
EDIT: I said the same thing in a longer form further down
Reading this and your other comment, this bit seems a bit disingenuous to me. Nobody is insisting on Steam in order to have DRM. Valve found a way to make Steam's DRM palatable to gamers, and from there even managed to make people have a preference for it as a distribution channel. You pointed out yourself, gamers were not happy about this with the initial roll out with Half-Life 2. Whether it was their own games, helping jumpstart the age of indie devs, or the other parts of Steam like the communities and chat, they did actually add stuff to the program that gamers found value in. Nobody should operate under the illusions that a corporation is their friend and will actually look out for their interests, but it doesn't help anyone to exaggerate making claims like "PC Gamers insist on DRM." Heck, one of the most common complaints I see about Steam is people complaining about it having DRM like Denuvo in some games, or requiring you to launch some publisher's launcher and sign in to one of their accounts to play a game when you're already signed in to the account in Steam you bought the game with.
How did apple do it?
Besides steam offers a digital storefront, and I have seen their own games on physical. Its dofferemt when it is an open competitive market.
Yeah, I have a copy of Half-Life: Blue Shift on CD somewhere, from before Steam was a thing.
Two things happened in parallel. This wasn't a conspiracy and there was no collusion, it was just businessmen making canny decisions which worked out. Fair warning, this post is longer than I expected.
In 1998, Apple released the iMac, the first PC without a floppy drive. In 2008, they released the MacBook Air, the first PC without an optical disc drive, for the sake of making it really really thin. A few subsequent Macs did have optical drives, but the last one was the MacBook Pro, released in 2012. On both occasions, people predicted that Apple was DOOMED, because who would want to buy a PC without basic hardware?
But people did. Some people depend on Mac-exclusive software, and come Apple fans are just cultists. In any case, removing components didn't adversely affect sales, and so other companies concluded they could make cheaper PCs by dropping floppy drives and optical drives, which they did. As such, you can't get a computer with a floppy drive at all any more; you can get one with an optical drive, but you have to know where to look and specifically ask for one.
Meanwhile, Valve were doing pretty well with Half-Life and its expansions. Releasing updates and patches was very much a fuck at the time, because Windows didn't have a package manager (and I'm not sure it has one even today). Valve's programmers started work on Steam initially as a way to distribute updates easily and automatically, but its potential as a DRM system quickly became apparent.
In 2004, Valve released their long-awaited and highly-anticipated new game, Half-Life 2 both physically and digitally... and all versions required Steam. No, you couldn't just put the DVD you owned into your PC, install the game, and play it. You needed to also install Valve's own DRM system, which would regularly call home, in order to play a copy of a game you physically own.
(Pedants and lawyers will say you only license, not own, the game on the DVD. This is true. However, you do own the DVD that the game is on. You don't own the game itself, but you do own that specific copy of it).
People hated this. PC gamers already found it intolerable that they had to have the CD in the drive to play games they owned as if it was a PlayStation, but having to register over the Internet? That was a bridge too far!... but this was Half-Life 2, and gamers™ will talk a big game about boycotting up until it's time to actually boycott. Everybody wanted to play Half-Life 2, because it's the sequel to one of the best, most influential games ever made, and it honestly really did live up to the hype. So they sucked it up, installed Steam, and had a blast with Half-Life 2. Steam also had a storefront grafted on top, allowing people to buy Valve's back catalogue through it, and would also serve as
The next year, Valve figured that hey, if they can sell their own games, why not those of other devs? So they started selling a selection of smaller games, and this is what really led to indie games becoming viable. Without the expense of packaging and distribution, smaller groups and solo devs were able to release smaller, cheaper, and more niche games and passion projects that didn't need to sell like gangbusters to make a profit without having to set up and maintain their own online shops. Steam became the standard vector for selling indie games, and over time, bigger and bigger games started being sold on Steam until it morphed from a major shop into infrastructure. It's no longer just a shop/DRM system, it's now The Thing That People Use For PC Games.
Just three years after Steam started selling third-party games, Apple started phasing out optical drives. Two years after the MacBook Air, Valve released Steam on Mac. As Steam grew and expanded, PCs with optical drives faded away, leaving PC gamers with no choice but to buy digitally, and that meant using Steam, which [https://www.xda-developers.com/valve-steam-monopoly-real-gamers-chose/](does have a monopoly in the PC gaming space).
And that is how the independent parallel actions of Apple and Valve killed physical PC gaming.
Phasing out the optical drive from laptops was just about inevitable regardless of what Apple did. It saved a lot on battery life, not just form factor. I might see digital distribution of music, not video games, as a bigger driver for removing the disc drive, too.
Of course Apple weren't thinking about video games. But they still dropped optical drives, which led to everyone else dropping optical drives, hence no more physical PC games.
SD cards could have been a successor but it's no match for the ease of a good service over broadband internet
Got fed u with the fucking stick drift and Sony's bullshit. Plugged my Rog ally that was taking dust to the TV, put bazzite on it. Now I can play what I want with a 20$ controller.
Playstation can go to hell.
I haven't bought a physical game in years. But I also haven't owned a PS since 2 so fuck Playstation.
Did you know this is legally enforceable? The shareholders can sue a publicly company if it doesn't prioritize 'shareholder value'. For example a company that cut profit instead of doing layoffs.
It's not spoiled leadership, but a rotten ecosystem that breeds amphibian avarice as the dominant culture.
No, a company cannot be sued for failing to maximize shareholder value. The business judgment rule protects any company that wants to raise wages, refrain from layoffs, donate to charity, offer sick leave, etc. What they can’t do is not pursue profit at all. Now, will shareholders vote them out if they do those things? Maybe, but that’s a totally different mechanism than a lawsuit.
As I understand business judgement rule makes the assumption that the company did its decisions in good faith. It doesn't mean a shareholder derivative lawsuit can't happen. The shareholders can still sue, and there have been instances where it has been done, but in addition to suing the shareholders would then have to prove loss of profits alongside negligence or bad faith or whatever led to the loss of profits.
Realistically this shouldn't happen as it probably costs more to prove the company didn't make every penny of profit it could, but we live in weird times where things that shouldn't happen do happen so let's not count out the improbable.
Meh, most games are available on PC, and the exclusives that aren’t will come to emulators eventually. It’s worth paying extra for a PC that can run anything you like, including games, especially when you can install Linux and cut a ton of bullshit out of your life.
Guess Im done with Playstation moving forward.
https://kazeta.org/
don't need these shitty corporations and their walled platforms...
Love this project so much
First ive heard of it!
What would really grind Sony's gears is if everyone stops updating their system and waits for the PS5 Linux hacks to catch up to their firmware version. Then, they install Linux and get Steam working and only buy digital games from Steam and GOG, or emulate older games, on their Linux hacked PS5.
Even cracking it to play ps5 titles would be amazing. Otherwise, idk what I’m doing with it.
PS5 emulators I saw recently were able to get games to boot for the first time. So, getting there already!
Yeah but at around 1 fps per second.
Ps5 emulation will happen, but not before a few years.
Still, it’s good as it means I’ll be able to fully leave that ecosystem that I used to love.
I guess Sony might lose a lot of money at one point if they don’t release their games on PC since a few former Playstation players are in the process of moving to PC and not coming back.
Likely won’t happen. Consoles these days are getting almost impossible to jailbreak.
Don't underestimate the human spirit so much. There's already been inroads made on early firmware versions of the PS5 where the hacker was able to play GTA5 at full settings on his PS5. The PS4 has a great jailbreaking community now too. There's also been steps in getting PS5 emulsion off the ground. It's only a matter of time. Seriously, check it out. I hacked my PS4 earlier though month and I can watched a hacked YouTube with no ads, and emulate games using retro arch. It's pretty sweet.
The human spirit makes no difference when it comes to jailbreaking hardware.
I know all about the hacks that exist. None of them work on anything remotely close to current firmware, because the early firmware that was coming in hot with some exploits has long ago been patched - and you can’t downgrade.
Emulation is a different beast too.
Well this will be my last PlayStation. I only buy discs so I can trade them with my friends.
Fiduciary responsibility or not, Sony is a big company with their fingers dipped in a lot of stuff, and decisions have a lot of inertia. The moment we learned they retooled some factories it was clear this has been in the making for a while and they will not back off. Sony (or at least the playstation division) is compromised and we need to focus on alternative solutions.
"Fiduciary responsibility"
Thanks Milton Friedman!
Sony didn’t really “double down”. The decision to wind down their physical games category was made years ago. Everything after the initial public announcement is to manage public relations.
Not sure many outside Japan realise but Sony are a conglomerate that dip their fingers into unrelated industries. This to them is clearly just a line through a smaller category on the balance sheet.
There’s a discussion to be had about ownership and physical games but i think that market is going to re-emerge in the future in perhaps a more bespoke way, like the resurgence of music vinyls.
To me, Sony seems to be interested in just managing the distribution of IP opposed to “gaming” itself. They’re not true custodians in that space or if they were, then they’re not now.
2 clarifications:
1 - because of Sony's requirements for printing physical discs, it requires permission and effort from Sony itself. A company cannot simply burn blurays for playstation games, they MUST engage Sony. This isn't interest in "just managing of the IP," this is specifically to increase profit by removing physical needs altogether (shipping, manufacturing, distribution, etc) as well as snuffing out the second hand market which, in theory, would drive more profit towards Sony, and finally it provides control. Access can be revoked, products become fluid, and the store can remove your access to older versions if a remake or remaster comes out that you would then have to buy on the new storefront. No new market can spring up with a resurgence in terms of Sony as Sony would have to allow it, being a closed console platform.
2 - they directly respond to shareholder questions around the backlash to the announcement, which they refer to as "various opinions." They did not retract their statement or change course and choose to push forward. How is that not doubling down?
i was referring to physical games as a whole and not necessarily tied to Playstation games or their discs.
They’ve been transitioning this specific manufacturing division since 2024. It can’t be a “double down” because they’re not going to revert two years of already re-trained staff and re-purposed equipment because of online forum talk.
Messages to shareholders like this is pretty standard. They’re basically saying:
So they’re hedging their bets on what their future could be. If they lose out on gaming they’ll make back on microlenses.
whoops wong place
Stand-down August 23rd-30th. Want to send a fuck you to Sony? Fuck their profits, then they'll understand.
Not saying don't do it, but it's a blip on the radar. As someone who works in tech, a week blackout looks like a bunch of people going on vacation. Especially during August, which is during many summer vacations.
Never buy a digital title for a console. If you need to buy digital, buy it on the open hardware platform.
If you really want to send a message, deleting your account or cancelling PS plus if you have it does more. That shows a decline in MoM retention.
Timed boycotts are an assimilation to corporate control. If the goal of a boycott is to affect change it must be indefinite as the change it wishes to bring about is required to end it.
Do it this week, next week, the week after...
No tangible amount of people are going to put their money where their mouth is. Gamers have time and time again shown that they can be screwed over. I mean look at the state of the big games now and games as a service taking over, people are happily paying $20+ for a skin in a game, something that used to come included with the game as an unlock.
It's not just gamers. All of these performative bucking of the norm lasts a few days then back to business as usual. People don't want to give up their comforts for lasting change.
Not saying you're wrong but the backlash to this Sony decision seems to have most gamers up in arms. Maybe even waking up a little bit. Maybe I'm too hopeful though.
If your friends agree, just spread the word, there's no need to spend on those skins when there's soooo many indie titles out there. Hours and hours of content to keep us busy and direct money away from Sony, Microsoft, etc.
Get some drm free games on GoG.
I’ve already primarily moved to PC over the last year or so but this whole incident has opened my eyes to the jailbreak scene. I have a PS5 for the exclusives but they will no longer get a dime from me and I will not be buying any of their consoles going forward.
🤝
Most playstation gamers. Most gamers do not use playstation. It's a small drop and most won't care. Unfortunately, of course.
I don't play on modern consoles and I don't buy skins. I preach it, but everyone can make their own decisions.
You are 100% right, there's so many good indie games out there to enjoy. I hope more people avoid predatory models and buy the good stuff instead.
Nobody has explained how simply not using the console you already bought would affect their profits negatively at all. If anything, it will lower their server costs from the reduced bandwidth for a month.
Just stop buying anything from Sony until they get the message. No music, no games, no subscriptions, no movies, no media players or proprietary media (ie BluRay disks regardless of what they are for; even Xbox games), no hardware, etc.
As long as you keep using the console you're still in the walled garden: you're giving them data to harvest, being exposed to their ads, padding their MAU numbers... Server costs are negligible - it's what allows F2P to work as a monetization model.
^ now that's a boycott
Gave it a go this week. Did some Gardening made a friend :
At least someone likes my cauliflower 👍
Felt pretty okay with it tbh. Will give it another go on the 23rd.
This game looks boring. Graphics are weak. How much XP did you get for the bird friending quest?
Edit: shit, that’s not a bird, is it? Well, don’t I look foolish now?
That just strengthens your claim that the graphics are weak.
I’m surprised that they haven’t brought up the negative environmental effect of producing compact discs and enclosures as an excuse. This decision is pure greed driven.
I was going to buy ps5 for gta6, but I’m not going to now. Will wait for pc release. Also not worth paying that much for a console that’s set to die in 2-3 years. (Ps6 is probably on the way)
They're still planning to release empty cases with codes in the box for retailers, so that tells you how much of a shit they give about that. Dunno if that will continue with PS6, though.
Found a PS5 slim at a cashies for $350USD with an exploitable firmware, so it looks like I'll be able to play GTA VI without giving either a dime!
I mean, probably more sane to just wait for the PC release but there's also the fun of jailbreaking the consoles.
I'm just waiting for a better, more permanent jailbreak to use before I jump into that
Are there analog console titles?
Pinball?
I can't think of any.
The closest I can think of are games distributed on cassette for 80's microcomputers like the C64 but I can't think of anything you'd call a "console" that accepted those.
guess they are "too big to fail" huh
They know you won't leave, you're all junkies at this point.
The rumored price point for the ps6 is going to be about the same as the steam machine. People will be able to get their fix just as easily somewhere else.
I'm curious what PlayStation fans would think about changing from a disc plus download, like it is now, to a cartridge like Switch uses?
I think it would be a thousand times easier to get Sony on board with that idea.
What difference would it make?
I'm struggling to understand what this would achieve as well. They're objectively more expensive to manufacture.
Well there's an argument that plays right into their hands. Nothing at all is even cheaper.
Whose side are you on here, anyway?
I'm pro physical media, but real physical media, not not key cards, not code in a box, not requiring an always on connection, not full base game but DLC is a code.
I think all games should be able to work in perpetuity without any external validation or activation across it's entire life.
Hope that clears things up.
If that's the case then I hate to tell you that the war left without you, like 15-20 years ago. And we, consumers, lost.
There is/was a time that game size was way bigger than media could conveniently handle. I think we are or will be past that soonish.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I just think all the outrage could be better applied.
I have an exceptionally large game collection that includes even current generation console games - so PS5, Xbox Series and Switch 2.
There are still games on those platforms that are fully playable from the physical media with no download required to ensure it's playable to completion.
Switch 2 is unfortunately the biggest offender with key cards, but those are easily identifiable. Other consoles I just avoid specific publishers.
No Ubisoft, no Activision-Blizzard, no Bethesda, no Microsoft Game Studios and so on. It's very possible to find completely on disk playable games, a good example of this is Pragmata and the latest Resident Evil for PS5.
Sony does love its proprietary parts lock-in. Having a cart that doesn't work on anything else would appeal to that urge.
I'm mostly curious if this is about having a physical copy of the game or something else.
What about something completely new? Not cartridge, not a disc. Something that hasn't been invented. Maybe something like a PSP memory stick.
And they're Sony, this is lemmy. Nothing here is going to make a difference.