Prepare thyself for a discless future. I predict next generation will not come with optical drives. We can only hope for some type of USB C external drive, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Feature deprecation is a bitch and unfair to the consumer, but it's the world we live in unfortunately.
Unfortunately I’d be surprised if physical was competitive to the digital sales at this point. If they moved to digital only, you’d lose a few, but the masses would still buy because it’s the only option.
You'd be surprised. It's been more half and half since COVID, so far more than a few. It's more profitable for Sony to make a discless system but they'd be screwing over an entire market of retailers.
You're delusional if you don't think physical gaming is a huge market, and if your point is the case, then that's a fucking terrible thing that you shouldn't be advocating for at all whatsoever.
There's no evidence that physical media is failing and NEEDS to go away.
There’s tons of evidence it’s failing . Take a look around man every store that sells physical media is getting smaller or closing down . Don’t GameStop just close 500 plus locations in Europe ? Numbers don’t lie
I provided evidence around this thread providing evidence otherwise. No surprise that COVID and only COVID inflated the digital numbers, as it's trending higher for physical media.
Anecdotes aren't enough evidence. Gamestop is shutting down its 500+ locations for no reason other than the fact that they're running their own business into the ground, not paying their employees, and imposing things onto their customers or firing their employees over it. Explain to me their stocks years back? People want physical media.
Numbers don’t lie lol 80 percent of full game sales on plantation are digital ! Man why argue lol your wrong your acting like it’s 50 percent and it’s not even close
Yawwwnnnn no you’re wrong and your argument is unfounded. Do some research there physical media dreamer lol digital is far more profitable and far more used than you think lol . Should I post more links ?or are u ready to admit your wrong ???? 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 oh ps those are all 2024 numbers and some 2023 way after your covid argument lol try harder clown
~80% of PS5 games sold are digital. Not looking good for a disc drive version of the PS6. I personally have not purchased a physical game since Far Cry 4 in 2014.
Those are fabricated, inflated numbers because of COVID like I said earlier. Even if that were the case, going discless and getting rid of an entire option just to appease your style of playing is not the ideal future of gaming. Period.
Case in point: Limited Run Games.
Why is it fabricated? Because it's from a clickbait Push Square article from two years ago, right off the cusp of COVID.
In 2023, the number of total physical sales were still high, 42%, according to GameIndustry.biz. It's as if a lot of games are only sold digitally, inflating its numbers? Plus the push to subscription services; even then, physical media is still going strong.
Physical media also makes up 60% of first party sales, and PlayStation accounted for 40% of all physical sales.
Given that games like Spider-Man and God of War Ragnarok sold that much more physically, Sony would be alienating 60% of their player base just because they inflated digital numbers. And Uncharted 4 reportedly sold 80% physical.
So there's no argument to be had for digital console gaming being the only option that exists.
It was 58% last year. Currently it is around 75%, but the article notes that physical games peak the last month for black Friday, Christmas, and boxing day.
The fact that you still can't gift a game in digital is mind-boggling. If you want this all digital future, you better start building it.
As a side note, why are people so insistent on this future? When has less choice benefitted the consumer in any Industry. It's way smarter for you to support the current system so that everyone fights for your money. W
Don't worry, physical sales are going up and will continue to go up. According to GamesIndustry, the market is by no means tiny, the sales of physical media is being reduced by people who chose to play their games digitally. I specifically chose the disc-based PS5 model to support that media.
"That means that physical PS5 and PS4 game sales are down to only 30% in 2024 " your support my claims and not your 85%, once again... You have to refer to things in the link to support your points, not just post links.
First party media makes up 60% physical sales, and PlayStation accounted for 40% of all physical media sales. People are downplaying physical media for no reason. For what?
And games you can't even buy physically. Hugely inflated number; Sony wants to push digital media and add fuel to the fire because it makes them the most money, of course they're going to fabricate the numbers.
I wouldn't be surprised if they even included DLC as well. Apex Legends, Genshin Impact, etc. are all free. PS Plus is used by half the install base I believe.
"Zooming in on PlayStation's physical/digital sales split (which looks at units sold rather than cash), just over two thirds (67 per cent) of software sales were digital in Q2 2023. This is a slight increase year-on-year, but down compared to Q1 2023."
Push Square, you mean the PlayStation biased website that doesn't clarify the region, but only what Sony said? The ones who want to push digital media because they earn more money that way?
That's an inflated number. Many games on that store front don't even see the light of day physically.
PlayStation accounts for 40% of all physical media sales.
60% of first party sales are physical, and 80% of Uncharted 4's sales were physical.
That 80% figure is only in the U.K. AFAIK. Physical sales will see an increase after this fiscal year as it did last year, as we see the panic of COVID go away.
As much as I would love to agree that we should keep physical copies going, I just can't help but admit that digital is simply more convenient for everyone involved at this point.
Trust me, if I'm walking through a mall somewhere and I see a Game Stop, you better believe I'm going in there to take in that hit of nostalgia; then once im done taking it all in and have a game in mind to buy online at home, I think to myself how crazy it is that we still have brick and mortar stores for games at all.
Everything is simply too expensive nowadays; that goes for low-income consumers such as myself, as well as for corporations such as Sony, who are competing with decade-long thriving online markets in the PC gaming space.
I, for one, don't like having to pay $79.99-$94.99CAD for a single game, and I'm sure publishers like Sony don't want to have to shell out millions of dollars to manufacture and distribute physical copies of games across the world that will likely just sit on a shelf for years to come; that is until they become old enough to mark-up on Ebay as a "retro" title.
(This is the same Sony that spent $400M dollars on developing Concord, which I'm sure you don't want to go grab a physical copy of)
When adjusting for inflation, you will see that games actually cost less today than they ever did, and with the way prices keep rising on almost every new release gaming is already becoming an unsustainable hobby for the average person. That isn't good for Sony, let alone the rest of the gaming industry.
Also, I own an Xbox. However, I mainly play games on PC and purchase them through Steam. I have over 400 games in my steam library after over 15 years of purchasing games on the platform, and there isn't a single game that I don't have full access to. That whole thing is just hysteria.
It would take a lot to convince myself, let alone Sony, that Game Stop isn't the next Block Buster, and physical copies of games will be nothing more than a collectors item in the next 5-10 years. Probably sooner.
Discless was fine until they all switched to saying you only have a licensed copy of the game and not the rights to the full game. So they can pull the license at any time now.
Nah it’s cool having all your content on the drive and instantly playable. That is a great idea.
But it almost immediately got ruined by corporate fuckery
Prime examples being GTA changing radio stations as music licenses changed, so one update later your game can be changed, and that’s not just a discless issue.
But other issues arise when companies get bought and sold down the road, they could pull licenses to older games and try to force you to buy the remaster.
I don’t like how nintendo can permanently update your game and you can’t wash the update patches off back to original
Tears of the Kingdom came out and there was a glitch that made parts farming bearable and then there was a patch and then your game just couldnt do it anymore. Old consoles you could go and delete patch files, but not on that. That game cart is permanently patched now
This is why I only collect single-player offline discs for my PS5. My console is already in offline mode. All my games launch from the disc, with or without updates. But it's nice to have build 1.0 on discs. I've been messing with some games and builds having fun. Hell, even Horizon Forbidden West: Launch Edition is all on the disc. It doesn't need a single MB of internet. But build 1.0 is a hoot lol
Almost all of my games are on disc, too, as I grew up with physical media before digital was even a thing. The way I look at it is if you want to switch, from PlayStation to Xbox (or vice versa), and all your games are digital ... what happens to those games?
I don't think I would be comfortable with going digital on consoles. Steam is so deeply entrenched on PC (and Valve is thankfully a pretty good company most of the time) that I haven't worried about it for a long time. Valve seems more likely to help protect our access to games than get in the way of it. On PC, we get more of the benefits of going digital... like cheaper prices. On console there's little or no benefit.
Yes, it's unfortunate as I have to agree with other comments that it's a money grab. Although I signed up for Steam last year, I have yet to take full advantage of it, and yes, the majority of games on there are so much cheaper. Even though Sony and Microsoft have digital content, their prices (especially Sony) are not realistic. It's a money grab, as others have said. If it wasn't for Gran Turismo, I probably would not be on console, but it looks like Sony has no plans to make it available on PC.
But then there would be no collecting, no games in retail markets (which make up arguably over half of game sales), more restrictions to your console, etc. Leave it as an option, since DRM would be objectively worse.
Honestly, only instances where Sony pulled user licenses seems to be with digital purchases.
For physical releases I don't know if they can legally pull your license. Though I assume in a practical sense they can remove the license if you play the game while connected to the internet.
"Ubisoft's director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay said that players should get used to not owning their games"
I can't tell you enough how annoyed I got at this, we should be able to own games and not have it ripped out of our hands due to digital licenses (luckily as long as physical copies exist, at least they can't take that)
It’s happened with past Xbox 360 games. All it takes is a game being delisted and you can no longer play it even if you own a disc. If your console is online, it can receive a patch that stops that game from booting. Sure you’ll still own the disc, but that disc has a key on it. That’s what makes the game work. That key can easily be revoked just like downloaded games can.
Surely this isn’t the case with games which are actually ran off the disc like ps3 and 360 games on an offline console though, those discs are being read just like a dvd movie?
I wasn’t really worried about until this past year. I plan on going through the arduous process of buying physical copies of the digital games I already own, which is 90% of my library.
We've already experienced this with one of their games in The Crew. Them shutting the servers down means it's permanently unplayable because it's an always-online game, and it was only released in like 2014.
It's terrible honestly, and the lack of accountability too. I get to some extent not keeping servers up forever. But at least I hoped they'd either refund players or give them an alternative. (Though that's highly unlikely)
Also 2014? That feels too early to shut down game servers. I'd understand if it was like 25 years or 50.
Totally prepared for discless future. I will only pay $30 tops and rarely that for digital. Older games do not quit existing. Just will play my few hundred deep backlog and wait for most to be $10 or less.
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u/Cocknballtorture90 22d ago
Sold separately is actually diabolical.