There is more than one benefit to ending physical media.

1. The end of the resale market
2. The end of paying for physical distribution.
3. Pushing users toward online gaming so that they can pay for microtransactions.
4. Live service games and seasons that require subscriptions.
5. The sale of hardware that will allow them to charge more for consoles/Harddrives.
6. Game streaming (which requires an internet connection, and allows them to gather information about users).
7. Game streaming that requires a whole separate online subscription.

If you thought it was just about the resale market I have some public landmarks for sale.

It’s funny because originally I didn’t understand how it was different and when it was explained to me in a factual way I did understand and changed my view and people really don’t like that.

Humans offloading the decisions to a bot that’s trained on bad decisions?

Is the hilarious thing to follow suit and announce the end of them offering physical disks?

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/xbox-is-reportedly-considering-dropping-disc-drives-as-it-tests-new-feature-that-lets-players-digitize-physical-games

Counterargument:

The problems with Destiny 2 had to do with decisions made for shock factor/profitability that completely ignored what players actually enjoyed about the game.

AI does not have the ability to understand or make decisions about what players actually like. It is reliant on the parameters input by humans and those humans already have made a bunch of bad decisions that killed the game.

Ok. So let’s say for the sake of argument, you have Netflix. You pay for Netflix specifically for… I dunno, Top Gear. Suddenly without warning Netflix is forced to pull Top Gear from its streaming platform because the license to provide it to stream has lapsed or been otherwise ended. That’s basically what happened here except that they allowed you to pay per show or movie.

In this case what these customers paid for is the license to stream these digital items. Which (shitty though I agree it is) they agreed to when they made their purchases. But the fact is, Sony didn’t reach into people’s Harddrives and remove anything. What they did was remove these shows and movies from the digital streaming library of people who purchased it and the only reason they did is because otherwise they’d be sued if they didn’t.

So while I appreciate your outrage, I think it’s pretty important to note that the license holder (the entity that actually owns the ability to sell distribution rights for digital licenses to consumers) is the one who sets the terms, not the platform of distribution, and this happens so often that literally no digital media is safe except when you can download it DRM free (Google play music, band camp, GOG etc).

I don’t disagree that Sony is at fault for agreeing to that distribution agreement. That’s not anything like what I said. What I said was that they did it because they are required to by law.

In this particular case what they were selling wasn’t a licensed copy of a movie or show. They were selling a license to stream. When the contract ran out they had to pull it from the streaming platform.

Sony said that affected customers will lose the ability to stream titles including Outrage: Way of the Yakuza, Paddington, Paddington 2, Pan’s Labyrinth, Rambo 3, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas “due to our content licensing agreements.” As of September, Sony will remove any affected titles that UK users bought from their PlayStation library, per the notice.

The removal of digital media is also out of their hands. They agreed to a distribution contract. The entity that owns that media offered a conditional license in that distribution agreement. Now they are either choosing not to renew or choosing to cancel the agreement and legally Sony don’t have a choice except to be sued if they continue to allow people to access that digital content.

I agree it’s shitty. I agree that it’s a crazy thing to have happen when you’re dropping the news about doing away with physical media. But it’s still not really in their control.

This is not the first time and it will not be the last time. You have to hold Sony accountable (as consumers), and you have to hold the license holders accountable because they are just as liable. This will keep happening on pretty much every platform that doesn’t allow a DRM free downloadable copy of the media. It will happen again.

As an adult I finish more games. I have more patience and there’s a lot of things that are better today than when I was a kid (level scaling/difficulty scaling is definitely one, and so is the art).

But I miss storytelling. I miss game mechanics that worked really well but we’re based on the limitations of the hardware and software available at the time. I miss having to explore because there were no walkthroughs or guides or anything.

So I think perhaps gaming has gotten better, but my experience with gaming isn’t as good now as it was when I was a kid because I have something to compare it to and it can’t beat my nostalgia.

A comment I saw on another thread says that they will be working with the parliament to rework current law to include this, rather than relying on the commission. So yes.

Advertisements have changed a lot in my lifetime and I don’t keep good track of the why even though I recognize that there have been definite changes. Sorry for the confusion.

Yeah there is and you’re correct that I was mistaken to some extent but I’m not going to rehash it here. There’s a longer comment explaining that I made to the original user who responded to me that you can read if you’re interested but it’s… A lot.

So we sort of did but not for the reasons you’d think. Not for the reasons I thought at least.

Specifically there used to be a time when there was ad placement in movies and tv literally all the time. But more often than not now a days this doesn’t happen that way because companies that have trade marked logos or symbols don’t want to allow their products to be used without getting paid a licensing fee and companies that would use this kind of product placement don’t want to pay the licensing fee which is why in the late 80’s and early 90’s there was a rise in blurring logos and brand names in media. There’s also the risk of certain licensing agreements not being legitimate for certain markets which can lead to blurring of the same type or it’s newer counterpart which involves using stickers or off brand styling instead.

But also some other countries do ban it. China apparently instituted such a ban in 2011.

But anyway I got confused because around the same time there was a ban on certain products being allowed to advertise in movies and directly in tv shows (cigarettes/tabacco products, alcoholic beverage brands, guns etc). I was exhausted and wrong and that’s on me.

Didn’t we stop allowing overt advertising in movies and music videos for a reason?

I actually think this might also potentially have something to do with the lawsuit regarding potential gambling on the platform.

Because children absolutely could buy gift cards and use them to open loot boxes etc. Not positive but just throwing that out there.

I absolutely could be completely wrong about this.

No problem. I have ad blockers on ad blockers but I can see how it might be problematic for people on more locked down hardware.

It’s been the biggest mystery of the year: What video game publisher will have the guts to go up against Grand Theft Auto this November? An empty fall release date schedule left some major questions as players waited to see where anticipated games like Marvel’s Wolverine and Control Resonant would land. After today’s PlayStation State of Play, we finally have our answer to that question: No one. November remains wide open for GTA 6 as it appears that every major holiday video game will instead try to launch in September. Good luck to anyone trying to make that work, because September just became a 200 car pile-up.

Prior to Tuesday’s State of Play stream, we knew that a handful of major games were already planting their flag in September. Blood of the Dawnwalker recently announced a Sept. 3 launch. (Phantom Blade Zero had Sept. 9 locked down for a while before it was delayed to October.) The heavy hitters will continue on Sept. 15, which Sony has now claimed for Marvel’s Wolverine. Things will really heat up the following week, though. Tuesday’s State of Play stream revealed that Control Resonant will launch on Sept. 24, the same day as Silent Hill Townfall. Onimusha: Way of the Sword will drop one day later on Sept. 25. That’s three of the year’s most anticipated games landing in a two-day span.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve just narrowly avoided that disaster with an Oct. 2 release date, but it’s still flying too close for comfort. Deluxe Edition holders will get access to it on Sept. 28, so I’m counting that as a September release. The only game that seemed to get away from the dogpile was Rayman Legends Retold, but not by much: It will release on Oct. 1, which, look, if five bucks is eight bucks, that’s September.

That’s just scratching the surface, as a few other games are stuck in that crossfire, too. Dune: Awakening will come to PS5 on Sept. 22 with new content, and RPG-heads have Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter waiting for them on Sept. 17, and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 is on the menu for Sept. 17.

Keep in mind that today’s State of Play is only the beginning of what’s likely to be a busy week for release dates. A Summer Game Fest stream is scheduled for this Friday, which will most certainly fill out the rest of the fall release calendar. Considering how many games have steered clear of GTA 6’s Nov. 19 date already, you can assume that September is going to look a whole lot busier by the end of the week.

At this point, I’m starting to wonder if some of these games would stand a better chance in and around November. Does Silent Hill Townfall really have a significant enough audience crossover with Grand Theft Auto that it couldn’t launch a few weeks before it in time for Halloween? Would something like Rayman Legends Retold do just fine in early December considering that it’s targeting kids? Publishers are undoubtedly going to be asking questions like this when the dust clears this week. Don’t treat any September release dates that you learn about this week to be set in stone aside from those for the biggest games. This fall is going to be one messy game of musical chairs.

They lost their minds because Nintendo said:

Last week, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa told shareholders that the house of Mario had no current plans to raise the price of its $449.99 Switch 2.

Then they raised the price of the original switch and a bunch of the accessories.

Then the tariffs in the US were deemed to be illegal and they sued to get their money profit back and didn’t want to repay the price increase they passed along to their customers.

There’s also the fact that Nintendo was on a lot of people’s shit lists for their litigiousness and other anti-consumer crap they had done so people were already mad at them before they raised prices.

When you look at it that way, Sony (who were also on people’s shit lists for a laundry list of reasons) are no better in many’s eyes.

Also, this completely ignores how small a company Valve is in comparison to Nintendo and Sony. I think that’s the main problem actually. Valve isn’t a hardware power house and they can’t command the kind of sales contracts or parts/fab that Nintendo or Sony can. So they are less likely to be able to withstand raising prices on their hardware as a result. The fact that they have raised prices so late in comparison to their counterparts in the space is interesting even if you don’t find it laudable.

At the end of the day, the backlash that Sony and Nintendo faced wasn’t because of the price increase so much as it was because of all the other stuff.

Requiring proprietary hardware for $80+ games that almost never go on sale or have online subscription services that also keep going up, and then anti-consumer practices like (in Sony’s case) the whole have to have an account to play their games on PC and not wanting to issue refunds where a PS account wasn’t available but people bought the game and oh well we just won’t port our games to PC at all then, and so on.

Like. There’s way more to it than Valve good, Sony/Nintendo bad.

Yeah, I wonder if this will lead to a lot of the original Lenovo legion go’s selling out. They’ve basically been on perpetual sale for awhile now. They have somewhat better hardware so for people in the market who don’t mind installing Linux, they’d be a pretty good option.

Assuming the steam deck is even in stock in your region.