Games are a luxury good that need to thread a fine needle.
With roughly fifty years of back catalog to draw from, free engines, and endless other distractors, a $250 game would need to be an epoch-defining masterpiece - or have true AGI baked in - to get my attention.
Then again, I’m not the target demographic: I built my own retro console from office e-waste and play retro games, older AAA and indies.
in the short term? It doesnt benefit them at all. it may actually hurt them.
in the long term? Bandwidth is cheap. especially at the scale that companies like Sony, Steam, Microsoft, etc, use it. So sell 6 million copies of a game, 10 extra bucks of profit thanks to no physical media/boxes/shipping/etc, per game… Thats 60 million dollars in free money.
Plus, because you no longer own anything, they no longer have to invest in storage to keep old games up and running. So as new games release, they delete old games from their servers and from your accounts, So thats less investment they have to make in infrastructure, which is again more free money for them.
I wager Sony would love the day when people pay 100 dollars for a game that gets deleted in 6 months, that they have to rebuy again at full price to play again.
Cause remember, with no physical media, you have nothing but sony’s closed garden marketplace to buy games… Which means no competition for sony, which means no incentive for sales, no lower prices (not that 70+ dollars is a low price for a game 🙄 ), no nothing but take what sony offers you, and liking it.
I wager Sony would love the day when people pay 100 dollars for a game that gets deleted in 6 months, that they have to rebuy again at full price to play again.
Oh, you wanted to play [AAA game] that you already bought and paid for? Too bad, it’s shut down and gone. But you can buy the almost-identical sequel [AAA game 2] for just $90!
I worked for the major streaming company when the service was launched in Japan. Sony (among others) said that streaming would never take off in Japan because Japanese consumers are too tied to physical media. This was probably 2014. It’s probably been the slowest place in the world to change, but it has changed. Sony understands the consumer preference for digital media as well as anyone. They just know that resistance and opposition will fade over time.
They are a fairly adaptable company (as Japanese tech companies go), and if they get it wrong, they will pivot, but there is nothing pro-consumer about the company. They didn’t put Blu-ray players in PS3s because it was good for consumers, they did it because it was good for Sony’s entertainment business. And people often forget that part of the Blu-ray spec was mandatory internet connectivity so that the content licensor could revoke content licenses. We haven’t “owned” physical media since DVDs.
This is the company that brought you Memory Stick after all. They’ve been anti-consumer ever since the Walkman was a huge success. It benefits Sony by making people buy more copies of the same thing. You might not buy any, but if the optimization is right, enough people will.
I take personal offense (on Sony’s behalf). How could you possibly frame innovation and progress as anti-consumer behavior? The reality is that the industrial mega-corp is providing the services and products consumers actually want. If they didn’t capitalism would be sure to punish them and they’d die an economical death. Children’s entertainment is funded via their parents and neither child nor parent is choosing to buy physical media. You can’t blame Sony for holding on to stock that no one wants to buy. ‘Gamers’ can have their emotional outburst, but things will continue as normal and they’ll have forgotten about it after nap time.
You are just a guy. There are millions more that will not care and won’t even know any of this ever took place. There were leaked conversations where Sony talked about their fanbase as brainless cattle, too.
gamers on the whole moan and groan and whine and bitch about every misdead, but the second the new shiny comes out they are out there en-masse rewarding these companies with billions and billions and billions of dollars (a great example will be GTA6, which I almost guarantee will bring in at least 2 billion dollars within its first week)
and as long as the idiot masses keep doing that, we have no recourse and no hope.
You’re not wrong… but “othering” people is no way to lift them out of the muck. Causes classic back fire effect. I say present the alternative case clearly and succinctly. If still finger in ears well, wish them luck and go separate ways.
I’m purely pulling this firmly out of my ass. While I genuinely doubt they have any intention or plans at this point, I assume being able to tell investors “oh we can pull the plug and walk away from these legacy costs at any time” is a plus in someone’s column somewhere. Of course the issue is that what is possible to save money often becomes reality.
does anyone know why Sony is so intent on ensuring that I never become a console gamer and give them money?
like how does this benefit them?
… For everyone one of “us” on this thread, there’s 10,000 that will shrug and conform.
You and I are not the target demographic. Clearly - look at where we’re having this conversation :)
Ipso facto we need to make sure that we support those that support us (Indie devs, FOSS etc). Let Sony do Sony things.
Untio the first 250 USD game hits the market and it’s a choice between homelesness, starving and getting a digital product you don’t own.
The smaller the customer base, the less money they rake in.
Sony’s history of security breaches also doesn’t give much confidence. Games like Concord and Marathon also prove nobody is too big to fail.
Games are a luxury good that need to thread a fine needle.
With roughly fifty years of back catalog to draw from, free engines, and endless other distractors, a $250 game would need to be an epoch-defining masterpiece - or have true AGI baked in - to get my attention.
Then again, I’m not the target demographic: I built my own retro console from office e-waste and play retro games, older AAA and indies.
in the short term? It doesnt benefit them at all. it may actually hurt them.
in the long term? Bandwidth is cheap. especially at the scale that companies like Sony, Steam, Microsoft, etc, use it. So sell 6 million copies of a game, 10 extra bucks of profit thanks to no physical media/boxes/shipping/etc, per game… Thats 60 million dollars in free money.
Plus, because you no longer own anything, they no longer have to invest in storage to keep old games up and running. So as new games release, they delete old games from their servers and from your accounts, So thats less investment they have to make in infrastructure, which is again more free money for them.
I wager Sony would love the day when people pay 100 dollars for a game that gets deleted in 6 months, that they have to rebuy again at full price to play again.
Cause remember, with no physical media, you have nothing but sony’s closed garden marketplace to buy games… Which means no competition for sony, which means no incentive for sales, no lower prices (not that 70+ dollars is a low price for a game 🙄 ), no nothing but take what sony offers you, and liking it.
Oh, you wanted to play [AAA game] that you already bought and paid for? Too bad, it’s shut down and gone. But you can buy the almost-identical sequel [AAA game 2] for just $90!
This will also affect history badly. Entire games will be lost to history forever.
Yeah, by the time copyright finally expires, it will be impossible to find a copy of it anymore.
I worked for the major streaming company when the service was launched in Japan. Sony (among others) said that streaming would never take off in Japan because Japanese consumers are too tied to physical media. This was probably 2014. It’s probably been the slowest place in the world to change, but it has changed. Sony understands the consumer preference for digital media as well as anyone. They just know that resistance and opposition will fade over time.
They are a fairly adaptable company (as Japanese tech companies go), and if they get it wrong, they will pivot, but there is nothing pro-consumer about the company. They didn’t put Blu-ray players in PS3s because it was good for consumers, they did it because it was good for Sony’s entertainment business. And people often forget that part of the Blu-ray spec was mandatory internet connectivity so that the content licensor could revoke content licenses. We haven’t “owned” physical media since DVDs.
This is the company that brought you Memory Stick after all. They’ve been anti-consumer ever since the Walkman was a huge success. It benefits Sony by making people buy more copies of the same thing. You might not buy any, but if the optimization is right, enough people will.
I take personal offense (on Sony’s behalf). How could you possibly frame innovation and progress as anti-consumer behavior? The reality is that the industrial mega-corp is providing the services and products consumers actually want. If they didn’t capitalism would be sure to punish them and they’d die an economical death. Children’s entertainment is funded via their parents and neither child nor parent is choosing to buy physical media. You can’t blame Sony for holding on to stock that no one wants to buy. ‘Gamers’ can have their emotional outburst, but things will continue as normal and they’ll have forgotten about it after nap time.
You are just a guy. There are millions more that will not care and won’t even know any of this ever took place. There were leaked conversations where Sony talked about their fanbase as brainless cattle, too.
because their fanbase are brainless cattle.
because gamers are brainless myopic cattle.
gamers on the whole moan and groan and whine and bitch about every misdead, but the second the new shiny comes out they are out there en-masse rewarding these companies with billions and billions and billions of dollars (a great example will be GTA6, which I almost guarantee will bring in at least 2 billion dollars within its first week)
and as long as the idiot masses keep doing that, we have no recourse and no hope.
You’re not wrong… but “othering” people is no way to lift them out of the muck. Causes classic back fire effect. I say present the alternative case clearly and succinctly. If still finger in ears well, wish them luck and go separate ways.
I’m purely pulling this firmly out of my ass. While I genuinely doubt they have any intention or plans at this point, I assume being able to tell investors “oh we can pull the plug and walk away from these legacy costs at any time” is a plus in someone’s column somewhere. Of course the issue is that what is possible to save money often becomes reality.