Hacker News

For now, it's still possible to crack consoles and extract the games from disk. However, we are probably approaching an era where encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked.

However, the flip side is that so many games are built using common game engines, and receive multi-platform releases. So there's a broader surface area for potential preservation. Maybe the PS6 version is permanently dead, but the PC version lives on.

Though you have a physical copy of the game, I don't discount a future where a console refuses to load a physical copy of the game because DRM impedes it. Much like when short-lived TLS certificates expire on their own, even by being offline.

Physical copies of games have in the EULA that the game is licensed to you, so theoretically they could still disable it.

Precedent? BlackBerry phones refused to connect to WiFi if you didn't pay for your mobile data plan. It became a 2G brick.

I own a Nintendo Switch, and I've noticed that in the Nintendo store, old games regularly go on sale for in the ballpark of 80% off. Does that happen in the PS store?

Yeah, and Sony agrees it is stupid... they don't want a used games market.

You've illustrated exactly why Sony is getting rid of physical media.

Money.

This is what happens when you have a market controlled heavily by one player - they use that to their own advantage.

> To illustrate why this is stupid, I will furnish two links to purchase Dark Souls 3 (PS4, 2016)

> Ebay, to buy: $11 + shipping[0]

> PS Store, to rent: $60[1]

Yeah, Sony is stupid to be leaving money on the table like that. Lucky for us, we live in a market system that we can trust to optimize for maximum consumer benefit (like Sony is doing here). It's our revealed choice that we want to pay more for old games.

It's sadly not stupid from their perspective

You don't even need to go used. Discs constantly drop in price even new.

Yes stupid for shareholders and until the EU comes in and saves the day again this will continue.

There's something to be said for creating a near monopoly and also having the ability to digitally revoke someones right to use something they purchased legally, which we'll see more of.

Regulations are needed to protect us.

The PC burners/readers are disappearing. We had like ASUS, LG and Pioneer manufacturing. Pioneer had thrown in the towel last year (they were heads above the best in quality). I think ASUS might be gone as well. LG's drives are super hit or miss and I wouldn't be surprised if they give it up eventually.

This is probably due to the fact that they relied on Intel SGX security which has been busted wide open and itself been discontinued by Intel so instead of redesigning the security model, just depreciate the entire format on PC.

I don't think there is that much of a market left for set top players either.

Of all the companies you'd think are committed to the format, it would be Sony right?

Well they currently list one model of set top player on their website and it is the same design since at least the pandemic(when I bought my player). The SKu has changed since then but after looking at the differences, the only design update they have done in those ~6 years is upgraded menu software and removing built-in smart or networking features.

8K hasn't taken off as far as I know but eventually it might and right now there is no transition path to that for physical media.

> With this news, I have to wonder how much longer bluray will live.

I hope that physical media sticks around. DVDs and Blu-rays often include something that digital releases don't: director's commentaries, "making of" featurettes, and other extras.

For me, it adds a whole new layer of fun to movies I already like.

I can't imagine content owners wanting the physical media to continue any longer than they can get away with. The control they have from digital only must make them feel so powerful. At least as long as everyone continues to buy into their DRM systems.

I've recently looked into purchasing a dedicated 4K Blu-ray player to start building a disc collection again. I'm assuming there's some pretty decent deals in the used bins now. One by one, I keep canceling my streaming subscriptions. At some point, that physical media will be the only thing left. Makes me feel like a prepper of a different sort

Collecting is going strong, though. My husband collects physical media, and media books, including a booklet and a nice cover, sell very well. As are special editions of more mainstream movies. Give people something extra and they will gladly buy it. I'd have expected them to go down that path, sell nice steelbooks, media books with an included art book and so on. Add a blu ray with interviews about the development process and so on. I'd pay good money for that and others would as well. Even if they sell the console only with an external disk drive.

I think blu-ray will live for quite a while, but will be a bit like vinyl; there will be a consistent, niche market.

I saw my first Dolby Vision Blu-ray and immediately started a Blu-Ray collection. The Blu-ray player on the PS5 is fine, but a nice dedicated player from Sony blows it away.

I would pay for my favorite albums on Blu-ray too. I wish more artists released their entire discography on a really well produced Blu-ray. NIN would be perfect for this. So many Halos, so many videos, all in release order. A real release of Purest Feeling?

Even if Sony keeps a token factory or two open to produce blu-rays, I'd imagine we'll see fewer and fewer new releases. Maybe we'll only see them as part of collector's sets that have enough margin to afford a cut of the more limited supply.

This feels like the beginning of the death spiral for blu-ray. Sales aren't going to go up enough for it to be worth it keep factories going, much less spin up new ones.

I honestly doubt they'll stop. Sony is a Japanese company, and they seem to still enjoy buying blurays

They won't be releasing new Blu Rays for decades. Outside of collectors, why would they? Unless there is a hidden market for the discs elsewhere it's not worth it

Counter-argument: I have a Steam account associated with a day 1 purchase of Half Life 2 (so, 25 years or so). Every game I've ever purchased is still available for me to download, while I lost probably 50% or more of my physical games collection.

If I'm renting those games, it sure seems like a good deal.

I do appreciate that console online market places have not historically been as well managed as Steam.

But also, GoG exists: you can buy a PC game and get a DRM-free download that you can play offline and store forever.

I'm guessing you know this already, but I thought it's worth saying - some Switch 2 carts only contain a game key and not the actual game.

https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...

GOG will let you download the offline installer for every game they sell, IIRC.

What about PC gaming? There are stores that sell you the game and it's yours to keep

they weren't happy about people reselling their games for 5 dollars each, when they could charge 75 dollars to each of those people instead

> There will always be modding and ways to play game dumps

There won't because advances in defensive cybersecurity have made it so that software exploits are extremely rare (if they exist at all), and modern chips contain hardware defenses against electrical attacks like voltage glitching.

"The side-effect most people didn't consider is that you never really own a digital copy."

I understand that this is the reality we live in, but I don't know how we have accepted it.

And also quality.

I wouldn't think that the copy of some movie Netflix is streaming to me will be 60-100GB over the duration of the movie. Not to mention when their services have issues and you're watching 5-10 minutes of low quality content until it settles and snaps up to full (streaming) quality.

> And the most relevant part is that you cannot transfer/sell a digital copy.

EU or any other gov can pass a law to allow that and we'll have the option.

It's a weird trajectory to see because with the music industry people have started catching on and either support sites that offer more durable forms of ownership or have straight up reverted to physical ownership.

I remember joke “you will own nothing and will be happy”, it is less of a joke now.

Closing the online store for older systems simultaneously with announcing the dropping of physical media leaves an interesting question for the future. Even if you’ve never bought an online PS3 or Vita game, you’ll still be able to use the systems for physical games. Presumably once the PS6 store is gone, any console is just an ornament if you don’t have access to an account with games already purchased (and how long will the download servers stay up anyway? What is the foreseeable future?).

Shit, they tried a while ago with a lot of pushback. I hope they don't. I love my vita, and while realistically anybody playing one nowadays has it hacked and can get games from wherever they please, it sucks that the only official way is going the way of the dodo

This is why I will not be buying a PlayStation 6. I've had my Steam account for 20 years (21 come October) and I can still download every single thing I've ever bought there. Why should I invest in buying PS6 games when they're gonna be made obsolete by Sony?

My thought as well. "Great" timing.

Why would anyone “buy” movies from PlayStation. That’s not their business, I would never have expected them to be in it for the long haul, just like MS did a rug pull on this a few years ago didn’t they?

Why would physical copies matter for this? All physical games have to be signed by Sony anyways so it's not like a third-party can produce them.

Rockstar has already announced there's no disk for GTA 6, if you buy a physical copy it's just a download code.

Microsoft just tried a generation too early. They could have gotten away with it this gen, and assuming 2028 will be start of next gen it looks like next gen it will go over without a fight.

Sony wouldn’t see any benefit from switching to game key discs. Nintendo introduced them to save on manufacturing costs, but game key discs wouldn’t give Sony any additional market or reduce costs any; they’d only shrink the physical market further.

In Brazil we have some websites that do this with old console games. Like this one: https://oldgame.com.br/

Ok great don't buy them in digital form so Sony learns a lesson?

I wonder if that's because there's a downward price pressure on physical inventory because it needs to get liquidated to free up physical space for new inventory.

I personally see no reason to buy anything more than a PS4. I have a PS3 and it plays all the same kinds of games I'd want to play on a 4 or 5, with similar graphical fidelity. I have a 4, but only really have used it to play a remake of a game I can already play on the 3. I also have a vita which is used for indie games since that thing has nearly every indie game you'd ever want to play available (either officially or via homebrew)

At this point it’s a pretty small portion.

Last quarter 85% of all game sales were digital.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-just-reported-a-new-r...

PS4 is a great system, but I feel it may be my last Sony console. Steam Deck/Steam Machine will probably become the king of the household, as I don't see video games ever really leaving my life.

The PS5 is great. We have a PS5 and PS5 Pro, both with disk drives (internal or external). But I really hate this policy. My brother comes over regularly to watch my pets, and he can simply bring a couple of his PS5 games over and play them rather than rebuying them and digitally downloading them. This breaks the in-person social aspect of gaming and game sharing that we've become accustomed to for decades.

When buying a gaming console, I imagine folks think more about the upfront cost ($600 for PS5 vs $1,050 for steam machine) as opposed to the total cost of ownership.

The steam machine may be cheaper in the long run once you consider:

* Playing PlayStation games online costs $11/month.

* PlayStation games tend to be more expensive than steam games.

> That will put them in direct competition with Steam, though. Suddenly their cheaper console will result in way higher cost for the lifetime of the console.

...funny that so many people were complaining about the recent Steam Machine not being worth it compared to just getting a PS5; maybe now it's not that bad of a deal after all, huh?

I don't think this is really comparable at all. Sony is trying to kill off the used game market in hope of being able to coerce people into paying more. Steam is basically one giant used game market in that you get stuff constantly for 50-90% off.

And pirating stuff off Steam is generally extremely trivial, so it's a largely coercion-free business-customer relationship, and I think that's a large part of why they're doing so well. People like to support businesses that treat them well. And for those that don't? Well I think there's a reason that video game piracy is plummeting, while film/media/streaming piracy is surging.

> They want this even more than they want $100 games

Killing the secondary market for games hasten how soon they can sell $100 games.

steam games don't have discs either

the real problem here isn't lack of plastic circles

Steam normalized the loss of resale rights on PC long before the consoles caught up. Younger people don't even realize it's a right that prior generations gave up.

To solve what exactly? Sure you will punish Sony but that won't bring optical media back. We need to accept and move on with the times.

We will own the games we purchase digitally if we change the laws to say that we own them. We've reached the point where politicians are talking about this issue, and I suppose support for copyright reform will only continue to grow.

TBH, 100% offline gaming has been problematic since day-one patches became the norm in the PS3 era. Sure, you might be play version 1.0 of the game from the disc, but often the experience was pretty compromised without the patch, often very buggy, or sometimes even features missing.

And the PS5 is meant to be able to play digitally downloaded while disconnected (at least the ones you own, not the PS+ games). It's just the implementation is little buggy, it sometimes breaks for some people and you get a bunch of vocal people complaining about how it doesn't work.

So IMO, you aren't losing much there. The digital-only experience isn't that different from needing to have internet to download a day-one patch.

It's the used game sales that are the biggest loss from this move.

>We won't own games anymore

Some of us do because we only buy from non-DRM encumbered platforms like GoG.

Don't buy games on steam, windows store, apple store, etc.

Stop giving companies money for something you don't own.

> I'm curious whether Nintendo will be following the same path.

Probably, they're already heavily invested in digital-only games, e.g. virtual console, or selling game boxes with just a download code.

But this goes back years already, physical copies of their games have remained expensive for ages. Relatively modern and/or very common "everyone has these" games like various pokemon games going for full price to 2-3x that.

Unlike Steam keys, there are no ways to distribute Playstation keys outside of Playstation platform. By removing retailers and second hand markets, what exactly would make Sony or any other publishers to continue offering any deep discounts on their products on a closed platform, especially when their biggest competitor Xbox has dropped the ball heavily.

I constantly rotate physical games for my PS5.

I'm in the UK, and CeX is a great shop to trade in a game for store credit once I'm finished with it, then pickup whatever I want to play next. Most of the time I can completely cover the cost of the next game with the credit received from the trade, or use some store credit leftover from a previous visit!

When a Sony studio Insomniac Games were hacked and a lot of internal documents were leaked, there were statistics for Sony's first party titles and their sales stats and what the split was between physical and digital sales[0] and for some of the titles, they sold mostly physical compared to digital. Apologies for poor quality, couldn't find a better image

[0] - https://imgur.com/lDhRmUh

Due to the steam sales and deep discounting its easy to buy games on steam for much cheaper then the consoles. For console where a game may be £60 for several years, buying physical means you can resell. For anyone with a budget, it makes a huge difference on how many games you can play.

Because if they don't offer this used virtual marketplace, everyone has to buy new games directly from them.

A used game market provides downwards pressure on new games.

Why would someone ever buy new, if that was the case?

I’m not sure if Sony has been pushing their video disc formats with PlayStations for a while. PS4 Pro was the “4K” upgrade over PS4, but didn’t support UHD Blu-Ray. And there’s been a disc drive-less PS5 since launch.

Stuff like Blu-Ray seems to be becoming a Laserdisc like enthusiasts niche system, I don’t think it’s been a big thing for Sony for a while.

Sony won a whole console generation on not being knobheads (as much as MS).

For me: resale value and being able to buy used games for cheap.

One reason is control. You control the physical media. You can sell it, you can buy used games, let people borrow them, etc.

This affects less people, but there are also many who like collecting them. Physical objects are nice, especially if you've been keeping all your old games for old consoles.

Which also ties into control of course: you can still play your games, even if the companies that made them and the console no longer exist, buy old games from retro shops, buy new games for old consoles from new indie devs, etc.

Because Sony and all digital publishers with the exception of GOG are lying thieves. This is just another step in getting rid of ownership, and we are too naive and passive to stand up against it. Physical copies are a must to retain any sense of ownership over purchased games. If this is done, it must be forbidden to show "Purchase" on playstation store as that implies ownership,which it will never be. Also just look at the parallel issue that happened exactly these days with Sony deleting purchased movies from libraries. The same will happen with games. This is legalized theft.

If the console is diskless, it will be the last console I ever buy from that company. Sucks to say that about Sony but this is an incredibly out of touch move, that will always linger in the back of gamers minds that it could be tried again in the future if rolled back.

Disc consoles are superior in nearly every way:

- Disc consoles also have a hard drive, best of both worlds.

- You own the physical game. You don't own the digital version, just a license to it, which can be revoked, and deleted.

- You can trade games in 2 seconds.

- People can collect and play hundreds of games over the years on an moments notice, not waiting to download something. Games do try to compete to have the most of the players time, but it's not how all gamers play.

- Patches are normal for all games, and patches are usually smaller sizes than the entire game.

- Vintage is kind of popular now. None of those vintage systems, the original PS1/2/3/4 or Nintendos would be able to be experienced easily or at all if the physical media still didn't exist and survive. Digital platforms disappear when the system is EOL. Emulators can help, but it's a specialty and niche crowd. Handing a Nintendo to kids is something else.

There are almost no new physical releases on PC, sadly. I’ve been collecting older games on CD and DVD.

> middle finger to second hand and physical stores

They've seen the writing on the wall for at least a decade; that's why GameStop has more shelf space for Funko Pops than for games.

Ironic that you mention MS because also ironically, around the PS4 launch there was a lot of brouhaha about MS not allowing transfering games, while for the PS4 launch video they showed how easy it is to transfer games (just hand over a disk).

I hate it. I hate digital only games. I get that the numbers and reality are against my wishes but that doesn't make it any better. I want to unpack my console from storage in 20 years and play the games I bought for it even if the company or servers no longer exist.

It will probably have one for backwards compatibility with ps4 and ps5 disc games

to be fair, the "awkward snap-on disc drive" on ps5 isn't really awkward -- it's a one time install and is now indistinguishable from a built-in drive.

Nearly all of the people who sell third party physical carts and media are also selling digital versions as well, which sell in much greater numbers.

The physicality is a novelty, much like vinyl records. It’s a market sure, but not a significant one that calls for a paradigm shift.

How do you purchase or download a game without a server or account?

Lol, no

They're Blu-Ray discs.

The unfortunate thing is that there actually already is a government mechanism for this, in the US at least, but it's been lobbied against by the industry [0]. So like, there already is a way to do this, the same way that libraries are allowed to preserve copies of every book, but the video game industry blocks it from happening.

[0] https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/u-s-copyright-office-...

They aren't competing with Steam. The console market is a closed cabal where console makers sell the machine at a loss and make up for it with locked down software where publishers pay a significant proportion of the sales to the console maker, who controls supply and dealflow with private contracts.

They might lose, but it's nothing like PC.

Oh man, I had forgotten about GTA 6 releasing on Playstation earlier than PC's. So all the hype around GTA 6 and the fact that people have been waiting for so long would drive up the demand of newer playstations and with all the 4 changes that I talked about in one of my other comments[0]

> No physical disc + shutting down online stores + deleting movies from customers accounts + dynamic pricing.

This basically becomes a sunk cost fallacy, both in buying the games or subscription models.

Because there are people who want a game so badly and want to play on release date and that game has partnered up with a console company that they will only release (first) on some consoles with the 4 factors discussed above. It leads to an incredible sunk-cost fallacy which somewhat capitalizes on the fact of the hype of the game and they are looking for any and every ways to capitalize on it for as long as possible.

I imagine some Playstation subscription yearly discount might also happen near the launch of GTA 6 so that they could tie users up to an yearly subscription perhaps.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48746439

Voting with wallet works, unless there is a cartel there. Which probably is. Similar as with Samsung's RAM

> A digital delivery world does not teach the same way as children learning to put a DVD into a player, hitting play, and understanding how things get somewhere.

What did putting a disc in disc reader thought you?

> This is surprising because Sony obsessed over the isolation it was creating when it released the walkman.

And they have the only online storefront on PlayStation, therefore 2nd-hand market is gone. So what is surprising here?

It’s not corporate speak - they have hard data in digital vs physical sales that they report on every quarter:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/sony-just-reported-a-new-r...

> If buying isn't ownership, then pirating isn't stealing.

You're not buying a game, you're buying a license to play the game. If you don't agree with the terms, don't buy that license, but that doesn't mean you're entitled to commit copyright infringement.

If I buy a movie ticket, that means I get to watch the movie once. That's the agreement.

But those are still digital-only platforms, with a chance of them disappearing. Epic is the biggest risk there, I think.

GoG is an interesting case though, it has loads of games that by and large were available on physical media, but because said physical media is either gone, broken, or in the hands of collectors, getting a physical copy of those games is difficult now. Them being a digital platform re-enables people to play these games.

It's important to note that that vendor specific computer is 1) cheaper then a PC that can play equivalent games, and 2) much more reliable (i never have to mess with drivers, updates just work, etc...)

> unless you have the disc

Is that really enough? AFAIK many PC games with SecuROM won't ever work without crack, as that entire DRM is incompatible with modern OSes.

There is a simply countermeasure.

Don’t buy their consoles and games

There are a ton of amazing games that people still enjoy today that would be essentially impossible to get ahold if they were only available through DRM'd digital downloads. I agree the physical media is more of a nostalgia thing in principle, but a) that doesn't make people's enjoyment of that part invalid, and b) it's not a like-for-like, because digital downloads on the whole do not allow the resale that physical media does, nor apart from some notable exceptions do they even guarantee continued access to the game. I feel like what you're saying here is implying that there is no value at all in older games and you would rather people stop enjoying them.

I agree with most of this, which is why emulation is generally better unless you specifically want to operate/show off a museum.

Maybe things will be like the Nintendo BS-X where people will reverse engineer consoles with games downloaded to extract the game from it.

That being said I do have a physical Atari 2600 with a few games. Astroblast with paddles is still a fun game today, and Video Olympics (the Atari VCS version of Pong) is extremely fun to bring out at parties.

Replace 'games' with 'books' in your comment. Would you feel the same way?

>There’s no mythical third act where you go through some library of physical CDs and reminisce about an old ass game.

Huh? You won't replay every game, sure, but once in a while you'll find a game that you keep coming back to even many years after first playing it. The last time I played Pokémon Red all the way through was only a few years ago. I have permanent Deus Ex, Crysis, FEAR, and Duke Nukem 3D installations on my hard drive, so I can run them for a bit whenever I feel like. Maybe once you put down a game you never pick it again, but don't assume what is true of you is true of everybody.