Sony still seems especially bad about this. They fought for decades to have the dominant physical media format, from Betamax, to Minidiscs, to Memory sticks. They would eventually win with Blurays by selling the PS3 at a huge loss and now they want to abandon physical media?
The PS3 was released nearly 20 years ago and no media standard lasts forever. I think if you told them back then that the PS3 strategy would result in their media format being dominant for two decades, they wouldn’t have said “ah well forget it, it’s not worth it.”
Bluray is starting to show it’s age. The decision is really between creating a new physical media format or just going 100% digital. From a purely technological perspective digital makes a lot more sense.
The real problem is about trust and licenses. We don’t trust a company when they announce plans to go 100% digital on the same week the break access to people’s movies in their digital library. And they could set up a digital system that would allow you to sell your license to someone else, so you could give or sell your copy of the game to someone else. But we know that while that’s technologically possible, they aren’t going to do that.
So it’s not a problem from a technology perspective, but it sucks for the consumer because of how they will implement the technology.
I don’t want games that aren’t going to end up in my attic within the decade, so that I can rediscover them in another half decade, and spend several hours trying to boot the legacy hardware to play them.
That whole experience of actually owning your stuff is gone, if you go digital. It’s not just the theoretical risk that they turn the server off. It’s the constant dependency on Sony servers, licenses, accounts, and digital catalog. Those dependancies precede even being able to look at what titles you own.
Do you remember finding your old WII as a kid? Jailbreaking it years after it became irrelevant, and showing your dad that you loaded all his favorite childhood games onto it for him? Contra, Russian Attack, … my son will never have that experience.
So it’s mostly sentimentality? That’s just the way it goes with tech, you have to get used to new ways of doing things.
Why I remember as a kid getting pop and chips at the gas station when my parents stopped there to fill up. If I get an EV my children won’t ever have that experience.
I don’t think sentimentality is a valid reason to stick with old technology.
The concerns about Sony supporting the servers long term and the fact that it’s unlikely people will be able to sell or give away their games, those are valid concerns. Sentimentality over technology is silly to me.
There’s always going to be capacity limitations, they’re bulky compared to an SD card, they can get scratched and who know if some discs will eventually suffer from disc rot as happened with DVDs.
For better or for worse (mostly worse) most games require patches now, so you’ll need an internet connection if you don’t want to be stuck playing the buggy initial release of a game.
Sony still seems especially bad about this. They fought for decades to have the dominant physical media format, from Betamax, to Minidiscs, to Memory sticks. They would eventually win with Blurays by selling the PS3 at a huge loss and now they want to abandon physical media?
The PS3 was released nearly 20 years ago and no media standard lasts forever. I think if you told them back then that the PS3 strategy would result in their media format being dominant for two decades, they wouldn’t have said “ah well forget it, it’s not worth it.”
Bluray is starting to show it’s age. The decision is really between creating a new physical media format or just going 100% digital. From a purely technological perspective digital makes a lot more sense.
The real problem is about trust and licenses. We don’t trust a company when they announce plans to go 100% digital on the same week the break access to people’s movies in their digital library. And they could set up a digital system that would allow you to sell your license to someone else, so you could give or sell your copy of the game to someone else. But we know that while that’s technologically possible, they aren’t going to do that.
So it’s not a problem from a technology perspective, but it sucks for the consumer because of how they will implement the technology.
I don’t want games that aren’t going to end up in my attic within the decade, so that I can rediscover them in another half decade, and spend several hours trying to boot the legacy hardware to play them.
That whole experience of actually owning your stuff is gone, if you go digital. It’s not just the theoretical risk that they turn the server off. It’s the constant dependency on Sony servers, licenses, accounts, and digital catalog. Those dependancies precede even being able to look at what titles you own.
Do you remember finding your old WII as a kid? Jailbreaking it years after it became irrelevant, and showing your dad that you loaded all his favorite childhood games onto it for him? Contra, Russian Attack, … my son will never have that experience.
So it’s mostly sentimentality? That’s just the way it goes with tech, you have to get used to new ways of doing things.
Why I remember as a kid getting pop and chips at the gas station when my parents stopped there to fill up. If I get an EV my children won’t ever have that experience.
I don’t think sentimentality is a valid reason to stick with old technology.
The concerns about Sony supporting the servers long term and the fact that it’s unlikely people will be able to sell or give away their games, those are valid concerns. Sentimentality over technology is silly to me.
How?
There’s always going to be capacity limitations, they’re bulky compared to an SD card, they can get scratched and who know if some discs will eventually suffer from disc rot as happened with DVDs.
For better or for worse (mostly worse) most games require patches now, so you’ll need an internet connection if you don’t want to be stuck playing the buggy initial release of a game.