Price Has No Limits™
PayStation ∆◯╳☐
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.
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.
Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer.
Note that this is a major selling point for GOG and available on most of their library, but unlike their early days, not everything is DRM-free.
Piracy is the only way, clearly capitalism doesn’t give and inch.
Nor a funk
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.
If you wait for a good sale, digital is sometimes cheap or cheaper. I just go with whatever is cheapest at any given moment.
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.
You’re right. But, all this good stuff is to obfuscate the central fact that you don’t own the property you bought. Sure, Valve has claimed that should they go away, as their last act, they’ll provide the ability for users to own their purchases, but who actually believes them?
For $700 they could at least throw in a 4k Blu-ray player.
Then again, I ponied up extra for the disc version of the original ps5 for that exact reason, only to find out the media player software is a giant piece of garbage that was clearly given no effort. So I can’t say I’m too surprised.
Sony doesn’t put much effort into most things.
I’m glad some companies are going full media and the younger Gen is buying physical media. It’s creating a counter culture that smart companies are using to their advantage.
It does if you rent
I’ve been using gamefly for a while, I can’t rent digital only games
Sure you can. wink wink 🏴☠️
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.
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.
Absolutely. It just depends a lot on the game of course. A blueray disk can contain over 100 GB. But a game could be split over several disks too. It was rather common to do that with CDs on the original PlayStation.
A lot of Xbox 360 games came on multiple discs
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.
Maybe someone could do the numbers and see if a memory (USB, SD*, …) can be cheaper than a BR for this case.
Maybe but look what happened to Stellar Blade
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…?
you can still pirate games without getting malware, even if a little late.
Yeah. Piracy is alive-and-well. You can even acquire and play PS5 games right now if you wanted to.
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.
How would that support “First Sale Doctrine”?
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.
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”.
You could sell the NFT and lose access to the game just like a disc
You wouldn’t be able to modify it as the nft would just allow you to download (edit and run) the game.
Edit: But allowing people to freely resale their digital copies would be a big win for people. No gatekeepers just like with discs
As long as the network exists
If it’s a networked game, but there’s no reason a offline game shouldn’t work other than incompetence.
Also since the NFT is the DRM the game could be available for download outside of the publishers purview, such as a public torrent site.
But if the game has to call home every time it starts and there is no server your game won’t work. StarCraft can be played offline, as it was created, but you need to connect to play because Blizzard.
One big “advantage” (for the companies) of NFTs is that the emitter can take a commission or fee every time the NFT is sold. This can kind of alleviate their fears of people buying from each other instead of buying a new copy. I think that’s a fair middle ground for owning a fully digital copy, between physical copy that companies don’t want and digital copy that consumers don’t want.
How can they force that and not also force a fee to move it to a different wallet you own?
People change wallets all the time and putting a fee on that would be inexcusable
Without knowing why people change their wallets, it’s hard to nail down a solution. But, perhaps a smart contract wallet whose access is controlled by an underlying wallet that can be swapped out may help. In any case, all transfers or smart contract execution attracts a fee. Even sending money between wallets.
How would an NFT help in any way? We’re not lacking the means to prove you bought the game. We’re lacking companies willing to sell you games and laws that prevent companies from saying “buy” when they mean “rent”. If we got to a place where torrenting software you’ve bought in the past is legal, we don’t need NFTs to accomplish it…
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.
Some enterprise software used to (or maybe still do) use USB dongles for licensing… I’m honestly wondering if games are going to move that way too. Given the fact that practically every game needs a launch day patch, why even have a DVD/Blu-Ray if instead you could just have smaller, more reliable USB dongles? I suspect that in the next generation or two of game consoles, we’ll no longer see discs at all.
Death by a thousand cuts
IDK. Between the price tag and lack of the disc drive IDK how many people are gonna buy this thing. It’s probably just for people who HAVE to have the highest graphics, to keep them from getting a gaming PC until the PS6 is ready for them.
I’m not sure. If that is their strategy they’re dancing on a razor. I mean, the market is pretty slim. Basically, you can get a pretty sweet gaming PC for the price they’re offering. And if you project the amount of games you’ll get and estimate the price differential with prices of the same games on a PC you might be able to uprate the specs a few times. I would say that a PS5 with a reasonable amount of games is probably worth a similar amount to a $1k PC.
More anti-consumer stuff from corporate bigwigs
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 🥺
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’ve had good experiences emulating PS2 on my Steam Deck. PS3 I haven’t gotten anything to run well enough that I’d call it enjoyable. Some don’t run at all
To be fair, PS2 emulation is still not that great, but I guess it’s due to sheer amount of games for that system. Last summer I decided to check the PS2 emulation after 10 year break and 2 out of 3 games I tested didn’t work properly. Granted, those are kinda niche games (Transformers (2004) and Free Running), but compatibility still needs work. Hardware requirements are decently low for the games that do work, though.
So…steamdeck lol
Vita can Run 99% of PS1 games “natively” and has a bunch of PS2 ports (some through PSP). Not PS3 though.
I wouldn’t trust Sony to not fuck that up somehow like everything they do.
They’d give it a 2 hour battery 😂
To be honest my steam Deck doesn’t go that far beyond 4h either on a single charge when I lower all the settings.
Playing witcher 2 at decent FPS only gives me 2 hours on the original steam deck
That’s the one drag for me about the PS5 contrllers, the battery life before recharging. The PS3 controller did great, but the PS5 ones have so many features built in they die to quick for my liking.
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’
The gatekeeper legislation sets minimums for revenue before you’re counted as a gatekeeper, and all the game consoles are too small a market to count.
I hate that that’s even a possibility lol
One big reason people still play on consoles to this day is because they own a physical copy of their games and can play on their consoles even offline.
Sometimes
I couldn’t play Baldur’s Gate 3, a single-player game, when my internet went out. That pissed me right off.
Yeah that’s what I meant by sometimes
Its becoming a trend where game companies are now making single player games require a internet connection just to play. I saw some games on Steam where single player games come with anti-cheat, like wtf.
Becoming a trend? This has been a regular frustration in gaming since the PS3 generation.
If you pirated it you could have played it offline though. Paying customers get a worse experience than pirates
Could you give more details? On which platform did this happen?
Xbox series X. I couldn’t sign in to my profile, so the game wouldn’t load because I bought it electronically and it’s tied to my user. I sent them a little love letter for that.
Generally this works just fine if the console you are using is set to your “home console”. That’s what the home console toggle is for. I could see this being an issue if you have multiple consoles in your house, or you are game sharing with another profile.
I didn’t know this was a thing… I’ll look into that setting, thanks.
That’s weird, I could.
Couch co-op is also a big thing that I want but fewer and fewer games offer it.
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.
Unfortunately, physical media for gaming died when always-online DRM was normalized. It doesn’t matter if you have a game on a disc when you have to phone home every time to use it. The corporation may still block your access.
One more step in ensuring no one owns anything. Lease or rent are your options.
That’s fine, I’ll just get better at sailing.
That’s why your favorite letter is R.
Lease and rent, or piracy.
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 got a Steam Deck because it’s a little computer. I can put my own OS on it, that’s awesome. The marketing page was talking about DIY repairs and offering spare parts, too.
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.
I was using the same board and CPU I started with back in 2016 up until last year. My bottleneck wasnt even the CPU it was the fucken RAM.
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.
You’re doing something wrong. I’ve been playing PC games on my couch for a decade and haven’t had any of those issues.
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.
I’ve checked it, and yes. Also some of the lower-end of Be Quiet!.
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
In what universe do you live? Ps plus is $80, not $300
So you use your PC or console for only a year?
I can use it as long as I like. Ps plus just gives you 3 “free” games a month and let’s you play online with games that require ps plus. Imo the three games a month for six bucks and change is already worth it. And you keep those games for as long as you have your account, even if you don’t renew your subscription. You can also just get games that don’t require an online component, though those are becoming harder to find.
Eh, on PC you can keep your games forever as long as you don’t lose the drive they’re stored on. And you don’t need to pay extra to access online features.
And you can play any generation of games going back to pong.
You definitely lose access to your “free” games if you don’t have PS+ anymore.
If we’re talking raw capabilities… Piracy is subscriptionless and grants you access to virtually 99% of all games from all time and across all consoles. I’m going to say that PC is the clear winner here…
I’m not justifying console vs PC. I’m just pointing out that the $300 on the original comment I replied to for ps plus is insane. $80 a year for a positively moderated, optimized gaming experience the vast majority of the time is worth the money imo.
I’m just pointing out that the $300 on the original comment I replied to for ps plus is insane.
And you justify the value of it based on the 3 “free” games a month. To which I’m arguing against. $80 a year for the life of the console will almost certainly be more than $300. With console generations lasting nearly 5 years on average each that’s actually $400 in subscriptions, keep in mind that generations have been getting longer, and seventh and eighth gen consoles lasted for 8 and 7 years respectively… So closer to $600 in cost.
I’m not justifying console vs PC.
But that’s the context of the whole thread…
positively moderated, optimized gaming experience
bwuahahahah. Sure. Cause console lobbies aren’t filled with kids screaming racial slurs. And it’s so positively moderated that all your data including credit cards leak (https://firewalltimes.com/sony-data-breach-timeline/).
Floppy drives connect to the PC via ATA. I don’t have that connector in my computer
Do you mean IDE? I’m confident your PC has S-ATA.
There’s IDE to SATA cards available for eight bucks.
It was standardized as ATA, some people calling it PATA or IDE to distinguish it from the newer SATA standard
But I remembered wrong, it was a similar IDC connector for the floppies with a different amount of pins
There’s always some a usb-converter for 10$ around.
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?
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.
But it’s only 39.99 a month (conditions apply)!?!!
Nintendo is going to continue to eat everybody’s lunch with decisions like this one
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.
Paystation
They don’t want you to own* physical media anymore.
I mean, I don’t want to either. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I love physical media. That way they can’t take it away!
I’ll scratch it or lose it, and if I don’t, I’ll have a pile of plastic crap I don’t want. I’m not really worried about digital media being taken away, and I could find it again if need be.
Not a console user, but can you actually still play games from a disc without an sony account and internet connection?
I honestly am not sure. My most recent console is a switch from 6 years ago, before that is a ps3. I may be running on out of date info.
Yar har
Hoist the jolly roger!
