The death of physical media is upon us!

[RAMROD 117,957]

55 minutes ago, Versace said:

If Xbox is smart this is their moment to shine. All they need to do is commit to providing physical. 

 

51 minutes ago, gagzus said:

the woman who seems to be running Xbox now has got a lot of good going for her, even making Gears of War an Xbox exclusive for the first time in over a decade. And not for a limited time either; entirely.
 

I highly doubt. They're the first one that stepped into this pool with their game pass by the way.

Their current basic consoles are offered in disc less form.

[NemoMyName 2,334]

Also knowing Sony, they will use this to inflate their games sales numbers 

 

[nATAH 57,877]

1 hour ago, RAMROD said:

Also, this also will make gaming becoming non affordable hobby anymore for many.

With physicals, there are after market where people can buy pre-loved game disc for cheap. Or borrowing from library for free. That practice will extinct and everyone will have to buy at full price at their online shop now.

also isn't Sony experimenting with dynamic pricing too? the industry is going to collapse

[StarstruckIllusion 53,656]

I know they don’t care about how devastating this is to consumers… but doing this:

- As there’s a storage crisis (Xbox just discontinued their newest 2TB console)

- As there’s a RAM crisis (every tech is going up bc of AI)

- Just THIS WEEK they removed 500 movies their customers PAID for…

Totally bat **** crazy. Worst move they’ve made in decades 

Edited July 1 by StarstruckIllusion

[gagzus 24,757]

9 minutes ago, StarstruckIllusion said:

I know they don’t care about how devastating this is to consumers… but going this:

- As there’s a storage crisis (Xbox just discontinued their newest 2TB console)

- As there’s a RAM crisis (every tech is going up bc of AI)

- Just THIS WEEK they removed 500 movies their customers PAID for…

Totally bat **** crazy. Worst move they’ve made in decades 

 

another thing we're forgetting too is; Sony owns the rights to Blu-Ray production which means they will inevitably put Blu-Ray out of production entirely. There's been rumours of a Sony focused streaming service (like Disney+) could be coming by 2030 too, where they'd have all their movies and the movies from the companies they own under it.

[gagzus 24,757]

27 minutes ago, nATAH said:

also isn't Sony experimenting with dynamic pricing too? the industry is going to collapse

Yes in the Playstation Store. Different customers are offered different prices and discounts on things depending on what they are trying to push to them. For example they see you like RPGs and an RPG game company authorised it; they can offer you a specific price for a limited time. But not another person. So you could get a game on sale at $50 and your friend could have to pay $60. They're testing it out in Europe and Japan currently on 150 games (mostly AAA titles). They cannot put games above RRP though. Some people have reported discounts of up to 27.8% off titles with the lowest being 1.5% off.

Your offer changes based on your purchase history, and store activity. The less active you are in buying on the store; the better deals you get. The study showed that the 27.8% was for people who have NEVER used the store, and the 1.5%" was for people who use it multiple times a month.
 

Edited July 1 by gagzus

[BrandyFinest 949]

[imogen2133 679]

I don't like this at all, this all happened because of the rise in streaming services becoming more popular obviously and it is all just a big plan to take more and more power out of the hands of the consumer and place it into the hands of the companies. I have also seen this with the rise of "walking simulator games" or games where there are less options for what you can do/for how you interact with the game so they end up being more like movies or theme park rides that are meant to be experienced in a very specific way, a good example would be that recent game Mixtape. It is all just getting worse with console and game prices going up, console storage space being taken up by games more frequently and now this. Also if you don't actually own the content you buy then you are essentially buying nothing and so I don't see the big issue with piracy here (I have dabbled in some of that recently due to all of this).  I have also started buying more physical versions of things I can access digitally (like music and movies) because of all of this and especially because the idea that content you access/purchase can just be taken from you so quickly is quite scary. The only way this could change at this point is if everyone stopped "buying" the new games that come out and just boycott the companies (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) and maybe that could help steer us back towards physical media being an option but I don't see that happening anytime soon unfortunately. 

[Jill 31,812]

2 hours ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

I see where you’re coming from with the obsolescence argument, but I also think this comparison both misses that, even if DVDs become an obsolete format, if you own the player, you can still play the media and is also a format you could rip from, so even if you didn’t have a player, you could still maintain fairly unrestricted access to the media itself on a personal server. 

For one thing, the average consumer doesn't have access to those tools. Second, while you can technically still do that with a VHS, for example, it becomes harder over time, because 1. physical media is still subject to the elements if it's not stored properly, 2. tools to rip it are becoming increasingly inaccessible (and are also subject to the elements), and above all, 3. the quality is much lower than what you get from digital. Just like what happened with VHS, newer formats and possibilities will eventually only be available digitally due to physical limitations.

Edited July 1 by Jill

[gagzus 24,757]

2 minutes ago, imogen2133 said:

I don't like this at all, this all happened because of the rise in streaming services becoming more popular obviously and it is all just a big plan to take more and more power out of the hands of the consumer and place it into the hands of the companies. I have also seen this with the rise of "walking simulator games" or games where there are less options for what you can do/for how you interact with the game so they end up being more like movies or theme park rides that are meant to be experienced in a very specific way, a good example would be that recent game Mixtape. It is all just getting worse with console and game prices going up, console storage space being taken up by games more frequently and now this. Also if you don't actually own the content you buy then you are essentially buying nothing and so I don't see the big issue with piracy here (I have dabbled in some of that recently due to all of this).  I have also started buying more physical versions of things I can access digitally (like music and movies) because of all of this and especially because the idea that content you access/purchase can just be taken from you so quickly is quite scary. The only way this could change at this point is if everyone stopped "buying" the new games that come out and just boycott the companies (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) and maybe that could help steer us back towards physical media being an option but I don't see that happening anytime soon unfortunately. 

I’ve personally made a big move back to physical media over the last year, I’ve stopped my magazine subscriptions online and now buy physical ones again. I’ve bought second hand movies because I got sick of my favourite movies licences expiring and being taken off streaming. Plus needing to pay for multiple streaming sites because companies are cutting off their content behind a paywall (which is why I think people tried blocking the Netflix acquisition of Paramount). 

i think eventually when everything becomes “you must buy or rent this digitally and we decide when you can and can’t watch” people will hopefully turn back to physical media. Sony’s already doing it with movies on PlayStation store, and they’ve also started investing implementing Cosm Immersive Theatres into cinemas across the US as a starting point to monetise on making movies more expensive in cinemas.

[EART HL I NG 1,556]

Rebuilding my cd collection is now further justified 

[Ladle Ghoulash 55,280]

10 minutes ago, Jill said:

the average consumer doesn't have access to those tools.

The ability to rip a DVD or a BluRay isn’t particularly cost prohibitive lol. You could argue that most wouldn’t  care enough to do it, but it’s certainly not particularly expensive or even all that difficult, so I don’t really see the access angle here.

Edited July 1 by Ladle Ghoulash

[Jill 31,812]

2 minutes ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

The ability to rip a DVD or a BluRay isn’t particularly cost prohibitive lol. You could argue that most wouldn’t  care enough to do it, but it’s certainly not particularly expensive or even all that difficult, so I don’t really see the access angle here.

I'm not necessarily talking about costs, I'm talking about the know-how and the purpose of it. The relation between the energy it takes and the product it produces will eventually be prohibitive imo

Edited July 1 by Jill

[SleepingSun 1,543]

First physical money, now physical media... Are physical bodies next? 

[imogen2133 679]

2 minutes ago, SleepingSun said:

First physical money, now physical media... Are physical bodies next? 

Next we will have digital food and drink, put $10 in your fridge  and it puts an image of water on the front of it that you pretend to drink as it plays sounds of water being consumed