I hate it as much as the next person here, but it was always inevitable. It was never a question of if, but when.
I know a lot of people look at physical media from a preservation angle, but in an era where games have a long tail of post-release updates and DLC, I’m not so sure they even serve that purpose anymore. If I want to replay my old games in 50 years, in many cases I probably don’t just want to play the 1.0 that’s on the disc. If I’m still dependent on the availability of a third-party download server to get the remaining data, do discs even still matter all that much?
I’ve been downvoted en masse for saying that physical media doesn’t last forever, and that many of my PS1/2/3 physical copies no longer work due to labels peeling off and disc rot. It doesn’t happen apparently.
Physical media isn’t what people should want - it’s emulation. Physical media only works as long as there’s original hardware to play it on, and it’s getting harder and harder to get working original hardware.
I don’t care about playing the game on original hardware, I care about being able to play it on readily and easily available hardware.
Also Blu-ray players/drives need regular updates for the encryption keys, it’s why the PS3 gets updates every couple years still. Sony will stop updating them some day.
I hate it as much as the next person here, but it was always inevitable. It was never a question of if, but when.
I know a lot of people look at physical media from a preservation angle, but in an era where games have a long tail of post-release updates and DLC, I’m not so sure they even serve that purpose anymore. If I want to replay my old games in 50 years, in many cases I probably don’t just want to play the 1.0 that’s on the disc. If I’m still dependent on the availability of a third-party download server to get the remaining data, do discs even still matter all that much?
And don’t forget bitrot. The modern bluerays are scarecrow and wind chime material in like 2-3 decades after manufacturing.
I’ve been downvoted en masse for saying that physical media doesn’t last forever, and that many of my PS1/2/3 physical copies no longer work due to labels peeling off and disc rot. It doesn’t happen apparently.
Physical media isn’t what people should want - it’s emulation. Physical media only works as long as there’s original hardware to play it on, and it’s getting harder and harder to get working original hardware.
I don’t care about playing the game on original hardware, I care about being able to play it on readily and easily available hardware.
Also Blu-ray players/drives need regular updates for the encryption keys, it’s why the PS3 gets updates every couple years still. Sony will stop updating them some day.