I don’t care to hear about the tribulations of peasants
End of an era for just about everything. Streaming is all enshitified. The job market is shit. Democracy is falling apart. Decades of progress being undone. It’s just the way it will be until people get sick of all this shit and start doing things differently and move on. All the great old companies are dead. Either turned to zombie brands or run by zombies. I remember how excited I was to buy my first Sony Trinitron, my first walkman, my Sony component stereo, first PlayStation.
They are also lobbying to make hosting your own videogame server illegal: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/esa-bafflingly-declares-private-minecraft-servers-illegal-in-stop-killing-games-hearing-we-consider-it-piracy-we-have-lawsuits/
Sony is part of ESA.
So is Microsoft who owns Minecraft who definitely presents private servers as dangerous (which for children may very well be true).
Having the possibility to setup a server allowed me to setup one for my sons and I. I’d rather have that then them going online…
You would think that’s what every parent would prefer…
Both because it’s more safe and secure. Plus I have very fond memories of LAN parties and without private servers and local multiplayer kids won’t be able to experience that :(
Don’t worry, they’ll still be able to drink a bunch of cough syrup and think they’re really hanging out chatting with random people on forums and Pink Floyd and Abe Lincoln, and then get genuinely lost in a game for what seems like eternity but can only ever be vaguely recalled later.
So are bicycles and kitchen knives. Ffs
That was kind of my point?
That just because it’s “dangerous” for children doesn’t justify banning it wholesale. Sorry I wasn’t more clear.
Yet Microsoft allows people access to host a private server while also putting up scary warnings for kids telling them to stick to the “safe” realms servers or whatever (are they even still called Realms? fuck if I know). On the one hand, it’s good they haven’t removed it entirely, on the other hand, it seems like that may be their eventual long-term goal with how they treat the private server ecosystem.
I also think Discord and Roblox contributed to people not knowing what the fuck “server” actually means anymore.
To reduce costs on printing and to reflect Sony’s vision, they are dropping the L from the name of the console.
They’re not dropping it, they’re hoping you take it.
But leave them with the L.
By not including the extra plastic L on the console, Sony realized it could save 7 cents per console.
You joke but that’s why stick drift is an issue now.
lol
definitely end of an era.
I’m not buying a console without physical media.Sony can kill the second hand market if they want, but that was the last thing that differentiated them from Steam. Good bye Playstation, i’ll remember you fondly.
Rest in piss
I can’t speak to market trends, but I can say this 100% makes my PS5 my last Sony console. I’ve bought every one, and the only reason I continue to buy them is so I can collect exclusives on disc for my collection.
A digital only console is just a bad, expensive gaming PC. I already have a good expensive gaming PC, so I’ll just buy games digitally there.
Yep. Same. I’ve been a PlayStation guy since my teens and could start buying my own stuff. If that’s the move they want to go with then I have zero issues in dropping them as a whole.
After the recent Sony is deleting your movies you bought crap, I decided I’m never buying a digital game from them ever again. So sounds like it’s my last as well. And I was already 90% digital.
Especially seeing as they tried to do the same thing before and reversed course due to the backlash, but I guess they just don’t care anymore.
While I applaud your decision, the market has spoken - 85%+ of all console game sales are digital. The overwhelming majority of people don’t care about physical games, especially in a time when the physical copies don’t even contain the full game due to storage constraints.
I’ve been digital-only since the day they made all games available digitally on the Xbox 360, because I don’t trade or re-sell games, ever, and I much prefer the benefits of digital. Most people are like me these days. It sucks for the people that aren’t, but they’re going to have to just move on or abandon their hobby.
I do buy digital and have for decades, but primarily for PC. I don’t for console because that’s the last thing I wanted a console for. I have no intention of abandoning the hobby, but this is my last reason to buy a PlayStation. They offer nothing that isn’t done better on a gaming PC.
I saw the 85% stat they are pushing. I honestly don’t believe it. I strongly believe they are pumping that number up by counting PlayStation Plus redemptions and smaller games in that total. I would be much more interested to see what the actual Physical vs. Digital sales are for a single new release title on day one. I would guess the split is much closer to 70/30. That might be higher in markets where internet access is less robust. This will also piss off retailers and distributors, which now are expected to sell low-margin consoles without high margin games. They chose such a far off date in purpose, to see the feedback and test the waters. I doubt this will come to fruition. Physical media is seeing a resurgence as trust for these companies to maintain services is at an all time low.
On that note, companies need to be careful taking industry wide trends and extrapolating from them with no nuance. That’s why I worded my first comment carefully. I am not anti-Digital at all, but I buy a console for collecting exclusives. I have hundreds of digital Steam games and some digital PS5 games. You know how many digital PS6 games I’ll have? Zero, because I won’t own one. Like backwards compatibility, the benefit of it can’t be quantified by how much time people use it vs. cost of development. Physical media is a draw, even if it is not always taken advantage of. I’m not boycotting, I’m genuinely no longer interested.
This is the kind of decision that looks great on a balance sheet when you have no competition. But when your hardcore audience stops buying, collectors that buy extra releases and collectors editions stop collecting, retailers stop pushing because they can only sell one low margin box, and your competitors see your weakness and double down on it, it might not turn out so great.
The 85% stat isn’t a lie - it’s in their own financials that they release to shareholders, and they’re actually one of publishers with the least digital uptake. Xbox, Ubisoft, EA, etc all also release these figures and they’re higher. You can go to Sonys investor relations portal and check the figures out for yourself.
Physical media is not making a resurgence. It’s getting lower and lower every single year.
Sony will not abandon this plan because they have no reason to. It won’t affect their sales at all.
Also we don’t know how this will affect retail yet, that all depends on if they allow retailers to sell below the PS Store prices.
I didn’t say it was a lie, I said I think it’s inflated the way I already explained. Also, the fact that they are lower than other publishers indicates they will see a bigger impact from this than others.
Physical media is making a resurgence in other areas. Vinyl, DVD, 4K BluRay. Not a big one, but it’s on a backswing. I’m not doubting video games are lower every year because they are still in their initial era.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on the impact. I think the knock-on effect will be bigger than they anticipate. Obviously they agree with you that it won’t impact anything. I think it will, for all the reasons I just went over. It’s not a 1:1 relationship between sale and impact. When people don’t have the console because it doesn’t attract them, they can’t make any sales. So they won’t lose one sale from me, they’ll lose the console sale and dozens of physical and digital games.
This is exactly what Microsoft went through with cutting BC, trying to kill physical media, and trying to play their dominant hand and we all know how that worked out. Turns out it’s more than the sum of its parts. Sony might succeed, it’s a different era. But it certainly gives a lot of weak spots for competitors to target.
It’s not inflated. They’re not counting PS Plus downloads or anything else, unless you’re accusing them of lying to shareholders and breaking many laws.
The amount of people leaving physical media is not being outpaced by those picking it up.
When did Microsoft try to cut BC?
As I’ve explained in other comments, Microsoft was actually the most pro-consumer with their “all digital” plans. They were doing “physical as digital”, with the benefits of physical and digital.
If buying does not equal owning something, piracy can’t equal theft. At this rate, what’s the point of consoles?
A funny anecdote from outside gaming land:
Sony mirrorless cameras, even MEGA expensive ones, have this quirk where they can’t film 30P HEVC video.
The A6700 for instance, can record 24, 30, 60 h.264, but only 24 or 60 h.265. The A7C II is particularly handicapped, with only 24 h.265.
The $7000 A1 flagship is the same. It doesn’t make any sense; all their hardware supports it.
Why?
Well, people kept asking Sony, and someone finally got a response:
Hello, Sony’s commitment to customer satisfaction is our top priority. The reason for that is that we determined the current product specifications from our analyses of target users and available technologies. For XAVC HS, we envision users enjoying HLG movies by connecting the camera to an HDR (HLG) compatible BRAVIA TV over HDMI, and 60p is what we view as the default setting for playback with it. To record movies in higher quality in 4K/30p, we would recommend selecting XAVC S and XAVC S-I, 10-bit 4:2:2 sampling, either Long GoP and All-I codec. Could you tell us how creators such as yourself want to use HEVC at 30p so we can provide feedback to our design team?
I found that oddly enlightening.
“Well, it’s not optimal for a BRAVIA TV over HDMI, so why would users want this? Why is it worth it for us to waste half a kilobyte for this option in the UI?” Sony cannot fathom anything outside that.
It makes that whole list in OP’s post make total sense. It’s not even cynicism on their part; with that mindset, what would they need a disk player for? What value is Bluepoint is a business review?
They literally cannot understand why PlayStation users would want any of those things. It’s outside the domain.
Could you tell us how creators such as yourself want to use HEVC at 30p so we can provide feedback to our design team?
I just want to fucking choose what I want without having to provide a “user story”!! I HATE uber-market-optimized software and products, give me fucking settings instead of trying to guess for me!
I am jacks complete lack of surprise…
This should be expected from the people who brought us memory sticks and betamax
Essentially suits who don’t and have never gamed making decisions on gaming. They have no idea what the players want and don’t actually care because caring costs money.
Can anyone come up with a single example of an industry that’s not getting simultaneously worse (and/or smaller), and more expensive?
I don’t understand why anyone would choose to buy a console after this. The only draws of consoles was the turnkey hardware, which you can generally get with Proton now, and access to physical games, which won’t be a thing soon. Now it’s just a locked-down PC with a DRM storefront that makes you pay a subscription to pay online games and which may or may not have backwards compatibility from system to system.
Maybe that’s just the PC gamer in me talking. Are there any advantages to console anymore? Like, a single benefit?
So, this means mandatory proprietary hardware just to play the four or five true permanent exclusives that will be on the PS6 throughout its entire lifetime, given that everything else will eventually come to PC, and you don’t actually own any of your digital content, meaning that they can revoke your access to your purchases without notice at any point if they choose to do so.
People will still buy it though, that’s the saddest part.
Good thing Sony’s first party output is easy to ignore. Just go watch Wolverine and all the rest of their games on YouTube since they’re basically interactive movies.
Right, the only PS5 exclusive I would love to have on PC is Astro Bot.
They’ve already said they’ve stopped porting to PC
They have but others have not. GTA will come to PC. GoW Faye likely wont.
I’d rather wait and emulate the next spiderman and Wolverine game tbh.
Actually, the 2026 strategy and business environment report from Sony simply removed the line “Will continue its efforts to deploy its first-party titles to multiple platforms such as PC” from their priorities list, but did not outright state that they won’t port games to PC anymore, as many journalists misinterpreted, the report simply states that it isn’t a priority anymore due to mitigated revenue. The main concern within the report seems to be that near simultaneous releases on PC are effectively cannibalizing PS5 hardware sales, so you might still expect PC releases but further down the line compared to the current 1-2 years window, maybe previous generation games released on PC, not current generation.
Don’t give me hope, I’d already given up on playing Ghost of Yotei
For now, yes. But these companies change their strategies all the fucking time. As soon as they see their “only on Playstation” strategy is not giving them the expected return, I am sure they’re gonna backflip, again.
Microsoft and Sony (and pretty much any other big corporation in the game business) are not reliable in the slightest - the only difference between them right now is the amount of power they have.
I find it both amusing and shocking that we still have ‘fanboys’ up to this day, when these companies themselves can’t even maintain a solid long term strategy. All they care about is making maximum profit at the cost of literally everything else, so their ‘promises’ hold no weight at all.
It warms my heart to see that EVERY comment on Sony’s blog post about it is negative. Hope the decision ends up biting Sony in the ass, but even if not, at least people weren’t silent about it.
EDIT: and they’re being yelled at everywhere else on the internet that people can post as well. Good.
Yeah, that’s the end of PlayStation for me. Hopefully someone else will come out with something decent.
The entire reason I’ve ever bought consoles and games was because I could get used games at a bargain and also sell my old consoles and game collections when I’m done with them. I can’t imagine that I’m the only person who looked at it this way.
Now console producers pull shit like this when they can’t even claim to be more user friendly than PC because SteamOS is a real competitor.
Well I guess it was good while it lasted, at least until the last few years when greed fully took over. Microsoft is already on it’s last leg and Sony and Nintendo are going to follow eventually.
Not really end of an era, you’re just witnessing a monopoly forming since Xbox is pretty much dead in the water. I guess it’s technically a duopoly since Nintendo is fine, but Nintendo kinda does its own thing without regard to what others do. Basically, with Xbox out of the picture, Sony is free to do whatever it wants.
