Sony’s problems are twofold:
- They are charging an absurd amount of money for a game console
- They are selling a game console that has practically no first party games for it.
If they had plenty of the latter, they could weather this. But there are still games releasing for the PS4, and they have had 1, maybe 2 PS5 releases that would qualify as first party this year (that don’t bubble down to PC).
Jesus christ, Nintendo is gonna win it all aren’t they?
Is it better to buy a ps4?
PS4 is superior in every way but power. Small, cheap and high availability, huge game library. PS4 will stay relevant this entire. gen
Or a PS5. The comparisons between PS5 and PS5 Pro are nearly impossible to notice.
Nintendo is going to continue to eat everybody’s lunch with decisions like this one
Price Has No Limits™
PayStation ∆◯╳☐
It would be so funny if the EU decided Sony was a gatekeeper on the consoles without disc drives and forced them to allow 3rd party app store on them.
Hey, a guy can dream.
What the EU actually needs to do is to spearhead and help find everyone a way to actually “own” digital things. I think I’d be fine with not having a disk drive if I could buy my game, not be reliant on servers to download it in the future, trade my games with friends, and choose to sell it when I felt like it.
We need to find a way to get back (most of) the benefits of physical media without actually having to go back to it.
“If a game needs a server and the official servers shut down, the protocols have to be released to the public”. I think it would be a good starting point.
Imo, the term “buy” for all goods should pass some sort of litmus test. Eg:
does the product being sold have the same properties as a brick?
- can the product be resold privately?
- can the product be lent to another user temporarily?
- would the product still perform its function when the manufacturer stops supporting it?
- would the product still perform its function if the manufacturer ceased to exist.
if the product does not pass all these tests, the customer is not buying. Consider using terms such as ‘rent’ or ‘lease’ or ‘subscription’
I hate that that’s even a possibility lol
Physical media or full rejection. Fuck you business school zombies squeezing blood from rocks
Pointless if the discs still need to talk to the server before you can use them.
Fuck that noise too.
I understand if you don’t have the CD they can remove your access to it arbritarily like when they lose the license but
Nobody ever complains about Steam and they have a similar policy of no physical media going back decades. I have hundreds of gamed accumulated on Steam and no game of mine has ever been removed.
I bought the cheaper Xbox last year to play Overcooked with my girlfriend and it has no physical media. I just download and play games no problem. I actually find it more convenient not to have any physical games.
So I guess the question is- what is the reason for the strong rejection of the digital version? It is the natural evolution of these things.
Valve has the reputation to back it up. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo’s reputations make all digital game libraries a guessing game for when they give up and shut it down.
It’s all good until they pull the content you thought you bought. I also prefer the convenience of downloaded games, but if it’s a game I really like, I buy the physical version.
They could still remove it if they wanted to.
For example push an update so your console can’t read certain games when they lose license. Or simply break backwards compatibility in specific ways.
I guess the games I really like are all digital. Games like Slay the Spire, Rimworld, Balatro, etc. I know that the data is sitting there in my hard drive. I can copy it, move it, delete it, etc whenever I want.
I honestly haven’t included a disc reader in my PC builds for over a decade. I guess on Xbox it’s different because Microsoft has more control. But again, if they wanted to take away the games they could do it either way.
If that’s main reason, I don’t see the point of continuing disc use
I think the steam deck is genuinely the only console worth buying these days.
I REALLY want Sony to release a handheld that can run PS1, PS2 and PS3 games 🥺
So…steamdeck lol
That’s the Steam Deck.
Wait can it run ps3 emulators?
Double wait are ps3 emulators working now? I remember pscx2 or whatever being buggy as shit.
TLDR I’m ancient in internet years
RPCS3 can run most PS3 games but Steam Deck may fall short in some of them. Recommended specs include 6 core CPU but Deck has 4.
It’s also worth noting that even Sony can’t be bothered to properly emulate the PS3, which has resulted in many PS3-era games being remade into either native PC versions, or PS4/5 titles.
While it’s true that there are still some PS3-exclusive games that aren’t available in other formats, many of them are, so most people can get pretty far without needing PS3 emulation.
I only bring that up for anyone that may think they need PS3 emulation, but maybe haven’t been made aware of newer remakes or native PC ports of the games they’re actually looking for.
Going by core count alone is a pretty shitty metric for CPU performance. The 4 core APU in the steam deck will outperform an 8 core bulldozer cpu by any metric
Except for power consumption and heat generation ;-) This is where Bulldozers were hot shit!
I’m gonna blow your mind by telling you there are already working PS4 and Xbox One emulators, although both only support a small number of games so far
PS3 and Xbox 360 can be emulated very well by a modern PC, the majority of games work without glitches
PS4 is actually easier to emulate than PS3, because former has regular x86 architecture, but latter has a very weird CELL/PowerPC architecture CPU.
PS3 is the trickiest. They had that weird Cell architecture which is more difficult to emulate than simply “less-powerful x86” emulation required for more-recent consoles.
I wouldn’t trust Sony to not fuck that up somehow like everything they do.
They’d give it a 2 hour battery 😂
Wow, just buy or build a comparable PC at that price point
remember when everyone was saying consoles where cheaper then pc and has more features
I think this piece of hardware is cheaper than a comparable PC, but longer term you’ll pay quite a bit more for games.
for that value just get a pc honestly not a locked down freebsd based console
No joke. A decent gaming pc can be built around that price and be used for so much more. Even cheaper if you hunt for used parts.
People who buy consoles do it for the “press a button to game”.
Not necessarily because they don’t understand pc’s, but because they don’t want the faff.For me, console gaming was for when my desktop rig was doing a video export or 3d render. It was when I wanted to sit on the couch and not be too invested in what I was playing with.
true and if you really want that console experience install smth like bazzite,holoiso,nobara home cinema edition (non immutable),etc and dualboot windows for app compatibility you can use playnite on windows to make it look like a ps5
That sounds like a lot of hassle for someone who doesn’t want hassle.
This is yet another nail in the coffin of physical media. Or, in other words games you actually own instead of long term lease.
It’s not like physical media makes any difference anyway these days.
Actual disk often gets just a glorified installer, and even if it includes the entire game you’re likely to have to activate it online anyway.
The “own your games” ship has sailed long ago, unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups.
The difference is the price of buying discs vs. buying from a digital store that has no competitors.
I’ve bought almost exclusively second-hand discs for my PS5, because they’re like half the price for the exact same content.
Sadly it’ll probably be just a matter of time before those will be phased out as well, one way or another.
Steam keys can be found dramatically cheaper than all of that.
They can, difference is a vast majority of people don’t want to buy/build a PC, or deal with a PC setup in general, they just want to press one button to make it work and sit on the couch. So the easy option for them is buying a console, it’s plug and play, while a PC requires quite some setup.
So we need Steam Box. Steam Deck just works 99% of the time. I can only complain about the desktop mode being buggy and non-steam games being a pain in the ass to install.
Then we return to the topic of not owning your games with Steam. Try installing non Steam games via the Heroic launcher and use Bazzite OS instead
Try getting non-playstation games on your Playstation. What about games from older Playstation? Can’t get most of those on there. And let’s not pretend you “own” Playstation games anymore when so many require online and patches anyways.
Steam is more value for money and improved services and support. I used to be a die hard Playstation fan but it got old being treated like shit.
unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups
Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer. I try to buy games there instead of Steam, purely for this reason.
Thing is, that’s not how it works on PlayStation. On PS5 you can download and play games without ever connecting to wifi. The whole glorified installer is mostly an Xbox thing ever since the XB1. I’d know since I own both and usually get discs to play my games.
unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups
or you straight up pirate it.
There’s not a lot of brave souls doing this as a passionate hobby any longer. Now it’s for the clout, to inject malware, or to receive monetary donations. Or all three!
I hope I am wrong, and we can get back to the passionate hobby, but it’s looking kinda grim from my point of view.
its always been for the clout in the scene. but ive been pirating shit for a couple of decades now, no malware so far.
If you have been doing it for a decade, then surely you’ve noticed the drop in active crackers…?
Is it possible for modern games to fit on a disk?
I think it would be an interesting change if brand new games had a hard limit on file size so they can fit on and play from an actual disk.
The issue isn’t the game engine, it’s the texture files.
If you don’t care what it looks like, you cut 80-90% or more from any modern game subbing low quality textures.
They still have to install.
Disks are too slow.
If they use a good, 12X bluray drive, it will be quicker to install from a disk than to download it unless you’re lucky enough to have a good fiber internet connection. Even then, the servers you download from will often be overloaded and slow on release day.
That’s not my point. Most games do install fine from the disk.
He’s talking about playing from the disk, too, and that’s a problem.
I remember thinking it was bs when half life 2 required a steam account and now everyone loves it.
For better or worse, the landscape has shifted since then. I can’t imagine people love Steam for being Steam, but rather for being the most consumer-friendly platform on PC.
Refunds? No questions asked if it’s within 2 weeks and 2 hours of playtime.
User reviews and ratings? Yes, and even comments on those reviews.
Community content? Steam discussions, guides, art, etc. Even mods with the workshop.
Bribes development studios for exclusivity deals? Nope! Devs can release games wherever the fuck they want.
Platform support? PC. Not just Windows, but going out of their way to make Linux a first class citizen. They even support Crapple despite its miniscule market share among PC gamers.
This in my opinion is one of the valid use cases of a blockchain/NFTs: they provide provable ownership of digital goods. This means that if implemented, in the future we could actually own games music movies ebooks etc. The only remaining step would be a decentralized torrent-like system that allows the users to download the licensed content that they own via their nft.
If you can’t modify it, sell it or know what the game software is even doing then calling that “ownership” would be rather lacking. I mean in terms of traditional ownership, not the modern definition: “page 69 of the EULA defines “purchasing” (the software) as a limited, non-transferable lease which can stop working at any time due to dependency on a proprietary server code we will never share I fucked your mom”.
I mean, I can actually own a bunch of stuff as long as it doesn’t have some sort of proprietary DRM bullshit attached to it.
The problem isn’t that there’s no way to obtain media in a non-bullshit way. The problem is that distributors don’t want to provide media in a non-bullshit way.
Sure, you can still own digital media, but you can’t sell or trade it like you can with a physical copy.
Meh. If life weren’t so focused on material gains and losses, I wouldn’t need to.
It would also mean potential losses for the distributors, as people are (supposedly) less likely to buy directly for them.
So, again, the problem isn’t the media, it’s the distributors.
How would that support “First Sale Doctrine”?
Or, in other words games you actually own
Newer games rarely have the entire game on the disc. Usually there’s mandatory patches that must be downloaded to play it. I’ve seen games where there’s only a few hundred MB on the disc while the whole game is maybe 15 or 20 GB.
This means you don’t really own the game, since if Sony (or Microsoft or whoever) take down the downloads for the game, you won’t actually be able to play it any more.
Essentially your choice is between a physical license key (the disc) plus a download of the game, or a digital license key plus a download of the game.
And now, the physical licence path is even less accessible. The thing with the physical licence key is it’s transferrable even if the actual data is stored elsewhere. It’s a thin veneer, I mean, Sony could gate access to this data to the first account/machine that activated it. So even this advantage is taken away.
Paystation
I stopped buying consoles after they wanted to charge me to use the internet. That’s not how this works.
So, 24 years ago? If so, I’m right there with you in the “getting old” camp.
To be fair, you could play free on PS2. Although you had to buy a weird adapter.
I see lots of people in this thread saying to go to the PC or the Steam Deck, but are we ignoring that both systems do not have a disc drive too?
I mean, aside from the disgusting price of the PS5 Pro not having a disc drive is the biggest offender (and the reason why I am not even considering buying it, despite being a Sony user since the 1st unit).
Hey Sony, I love you but you trolling?
Uhhh. Maybe I’m a little TOO far from the console crowd but I’m going to say this anyways.
Who tf cares? I’m a PC gamer and I’ve been without a disk drive since 2009.
I will happily admit it is definitely a different situation. For one, this would essentially give Sony a monopoly on games. Which would mean that they would never lower prices and gamers have no one to go to other than them. You know what I’m talking about, all the same shit that Nintendo has been doing for years.
I guess that I’m just curious how many people dislike this.
Actually the disk drives makes the console attractive, as you can snag cheap second hand games
Oh yeah, no doubt. One of the whole benefits of PC gaming is being able to snag games from other retailers. Honestly disk drive consoles have the advantage of being able to snag games from other users.
cant function as a dvd player as well as console if there isnt a disc drive
some people just have games on disc and without a disc drive they either have to buy the disc drive seperate or rebuy their game digitally
If I’m not mistaken it’s actually a Blu-ray player not just a dvd player. Mind you this is from memory not necessarily a fact, lol
It’s def a blu-ray player. In fact it’s not just that, it’s a 4k blu-ray player.
Huh. I, for some reason, didn’t realize the PS5 was 4k.
Oh, yes. In fact, I think it was a crime that the ps4 pro was not 4k.
Another big problem imo is also that you effectively lose ownership of your games. Inevitably, servers would be shut down and you wouldn’t be able to download the games that you own. And that’s if things go well. Some games could always just go away earlier as we’ve seen on other platforms. However, if you own the disk, then that’s that, you can play the game forever.
On steam, the same problem could technically happen, but I trust Steam significantly more. It’s very much in their best interest to keep growing their library of games and not stop supporting them. I still have games from 10+ years ago on it and I expect to keep them 10+ years from now.
Reminder that you can put in whatever you want in a PC. And that you can get a decent gaming machine for 1k (700+PS plus).
CD Drive? No problem. DVD? Of course. Another SSD? Get some random 50$ thing and throw it in there. Floppy? Harvest some old PC and voila.The real point is that you can upgrade it incrementally, you don’t have to throw it away, and upgrading will allow you to play all your old games from generation to generation without having to rebuy them for the latest Gen.
Depends how old you get. After 30 years some games just don’t work like they used to!
Thankfully we do have modern solutions for old fashioned problems now.
Even if you give a shit about upgrading, binding yourself to sony or whatever company.
Within limits though. E.g. If your mainboard only supports old CPUs that is a huge limiting factor and we saw MS messing with older CPUs just not being supported at all by Win 11.
Now i made the switch to Linux myself too and i am very happy, but for people who want to start somewhere, maybe starting with their own linux gaming PC is a bit much for the start.
I think that’s overkill, but a Steam Deck is on par with a PS5, but portable, and for a cheap dock and a ps5 controller you can play it like a console.
Linux has made such leaps though, have a container with lutris and vulkan and it can handle most basic gaming that doesn’t deal with modern AAA titles.
I mean i am fully in support of PC gaming and in particular Linux gaming. It is just not as easy to keep upgrading PCs component by component. Eventually there is limits, mostly from the mainboards limits.
Meh, gaming pc of theseus, you replace the mobo less often than a console Gen, more if you want.
The only problem with optical drives for PC is that most modern case no longer support them.
A surprising amount of Fractal Design’s cases do.
They make pull out cup holders to put in the CD rom rive slot. There are so many goofy fun things a computer can have in it.
Having a pull out cup holder seems insane to me, my personal rule is no drinks near my pc at all.
That said, I have a drawer in place of my cd drive that holds all my small peripherals (thumb drives, usb to sd card adapter, stuff like that) and it’s great.
I was just trying to say something absurd that I’ve seen being sold for PCs lol
I work in IT, the rule for me, closed lid drinks around PCs, no food or drinks in the server room. Unless you are me…the system/network engineer
LGR did a great video on crazy expansion slot PC accessories. One of them was a pull out ashtray with a push plug lighter like cars used to have. https://youtu.be/_ErL39wqO-c?si=zWyVR6m_LqE6SBE0
While this is true, consoles still manage to have a way more convenient experience. Its the only reason why they exist (today)
I think that’s mainly a relic from the past. I didn’t have compability or driver issues for a long time.
Once the PC is set up, it’s as comfortable as a console. Setting the PC up to console standards is reduced to installing steam.
Looks like you never played on a computer on a TV screen. The experience is plaged by pad connection problems (Bluetooth), windows popups, random no full screen issues, sound suddenly on the wrong channel, microphone not working, mouse cursor in the middle of the screen (often reset to the middle after launching the game, even when you are playing with a pad) and so on. You still need a keyboard and a mouse near your couch and there is always something. For sure iam still not paying the markup for a console, but i get why there is a big market.
What are you on about? I use my PC on my TV all the times and I don’t have a single issue you describe. I just have it connected with Hdmi. The TV even turns on and off automatic if function activate.
I’ve definitely had some of those issues. I won’t count an old issue where my GPU needed a special connection to attach audio to its DVI output (rare oddity). Some others:
- Most computers would need to swap default audio device between whatever you use at a desk, and the TV registered as an HDMI audio device.
- Bluetooth connections to arbitrary controllers have gotten better, but they had often needed manual enablement each time through mouse-based menus or a number of firmware updates to work with Windows/SteamOS.
- My Steam Deck, even in its current iteration, takes some time to recognize the connected TV and swap resolution.
- The mouse cursor issue can come up if you had to do any mouse-based option swapping, like that thing with audio devices.
I’ve definitely gotten it working and had a blast, but the number of button presses to get to starting the game can sometimes be hard to predict. Even when I had a computer dedicated to the TV (a long time ago when SteamOS was fledgling) it was pretty unreliable about having all the right updates and not needing a mouse.
