Probably not so much COVID and instead trying to coordinate 27 different outsourced studios. Why not just make it mostly inhouse like before??? If we’re talking scale issues; why introduce these by aiming for deluge of samey procedurally generated worlds instead of the one quality handmade world you’re already known for?
That’s pretty obvious from the planet surface and travel system. Apparently virtually every pixel of a planet surface is another procedurally generated map, but the UI and gameplay make them hard to access and not really useful anyway.
I hope I am wrong but I see the next generation as completely discless specially if this current generation discless versions sold good enough. The only exception could be Nintendo.
Of course they might require some deals with stores or just sell themselves the consoles online… Because the stores want to sell games, they might still sell peripherals and redeemable cards for money or maybe CD keys… No idea tough, but if the benefits fall they might say “Nah I am not selling your console if games aren’t sold here”.
What needs to happen is regulation. Pro-consumer governing bodies (which don’t exist in the US, but the EU has been on a roll) mandating the right to transfer a digital license.
As for the stores, Xbox offers GameStop a small percentage of the revenue from every digital game purchased on a console sold by GameStop. That feels like a healthy compromise for an all-digital business model.
mandating the right to transfer a digital license.
Even for the EU that is not an easy thing to deal with in practice. First they would need to outright ban practices where you rent your license for an unspecified time instead of owning it. (this is how it is with everything in mobile app stores, Steam, Epic etc…) And transfer of digital licenses in general is a very hard nut to crack. How do you simply prove who the license owner is? What about accounts being tied to licenses? (Imagine the EU asking software companies that all products above the value of €25 must be sold with a hardware key to run them & if the key is damaged they are mandated to replace it at the manufacturing cost of said hardware key, or use a central EU ran entity to handle these keys that the companies would need to buy from them. Pretty far fetched, isn’t it?)
Decades of lenient legislation made all this night impossible untangle…
i’m not sure if you understood my comment. The issue is that they sell you software for the full price, but there is a fine print on there somewhere that clearly states that they can remove your access at any time due to a variety of reasons. For example I have lost games due to Apple policies forced the dev to remove them from the app store and then I could not reinstall them anymore.
And transfer of digital licenses in general is a very hard nut to crack. How do you simply prove who the license owner is? What about accounts being tied to licenses?
Another big problem is that the digital license must be transferrable even if the original digital store is deactivated.
The above seems to be the only legitimate use case of Blockchain to me, but the chain must be operated by the state to ensure digital licenses continue to be transferrable
As I understand it, most disc copies of games today aren’t viable in the first place. Either all of the game data is not on the disc and some needs to be downloaded anyway, or the game copy on the disc is in such a shit state that you wouldn’t want to play that specific copy.
Discs don’t really protect us in the sense of ownership. It’s still reliant on the same backend to enable it in most practical senses.
Sure, but it’s really weird that we are relying and want to rely on disks to be the license basically, because the data storage part is quite useless, at least when your connection is faster than your blue-ray drive. (plus you can directly download the patched game)
Not often I get to say this, but I completely agree. I HATE the walled garden that is the PS store. 90 usd for FIFA? 130 usd for some random GOLD edition of a ubisoft game? No way. Let me pick those up dirt cheap two months later at a retailer who is having a sale, or from someone who has played it and is ready to sell it onwards.
I mean, maybe disk drives are outdated, but being unable to buy used games or give your old game to a friend is garbage (but great for profits of the console manufacturers and game studios). Not to mention that as long as it’s a digital download, you don’t own the game - you lease it at a flat rate.
Limiting the options and ownership rights of the consumer for profit is bad.
Not to mention that as long as it’s a digital download, you don’t own the game - you lease it at a flat rate.
not true all the time. Plenty of games once you have the files are easily able to run. KSP is one such example. I can just copy the KSP folder to any computer and play the game.
Its the devs choice to require things like Steam to validate the game etc.
That’s fair. It often is the case though, and I think many people don’t consider that as being a problem because it just doesn’t occur to them.
I think Valve is an example of a company that does it well, since you can download the game if Steam were ever to go under, etc. and you can add non-steam games to steam. It’s almost unavoidable that they do it well, though, since steam is running on PCs (mostly).
But Nintendo does it badly. If Nintendo decides to stop supporting Switch downloads, my digital content will vanish (unless I root my switch, etc. but then I may as well just pirate everything). But, at least nintendo has a card reader for their games - if they got rid of it, I’d never truly own any Switch game and would also be forced to pay massively inflated priced for re-released old games, crappy switch ports, or Nintendo titles which almost never decrease in price or go on sale.
One of my biggest annoyance is when you have multiple switches on a family account. If you use cartridges local co-op (or whatever it is called) requires two copies of the game (a cartridge in each). If you have the downloaded versions/digital download, then any device on the Nintendo account (ie: 2 switches for kids on a family account) can play against each other locally.
I don’t think you can cache/save a cartridge to a device to be able to do their local play feature (ie via ad-hoc connections in a car)
This article is about consoles, not PCs. Good luck copying your console game to another folder on the HD.
Even disk-based games on newer consoles often don’t include the full game; in many cases they’re just an installer, really, which then requires downloading the bulk of the files from the net.
PS4 console data you can back up Backing up your data regularly is a great way to ensure that important data is saved. You can back up the following types of data saved to a USB drive.
Games and apps
Saved data
Screenshots and video clips
Settings
All user data saved on your PS4 console (excluding trophies) is included in the backup data. When you restore your backup data, your PS4 console is reset, and all data saved on your console is erased. If you want to return data without restoring your console, use USB extended storage or cloud storage.
I tried copying game data when we were replacing our PS4 hard drive, but it just caused a lot of problems (with games having to “verify” the installation when launched, which was a very lengthy process, probably longer than just re-downloading it would have been; I don’t know what it was actually doing). We were able to preserve save data, though.
For me, this was because the PS4 uses USB 2.0 that caps out at 480 Mbps. It was basically doing checksums of the backup files vs the restored and it just took time, even when the backups I had it running on were a sata SSD.
Funny enough that was already possible on the PS3, so it's a matter of control rather than technological limitation. They use the excuse of "technological progress" to close the walled garden even more.
Even disk-based games on newer consoles often don’t include the full game
That's pretty rare despite being constantly mentioned in this thread. I can think of a few that are strictly multiplayer games or the Master Chief Collection which is just a huge net installer disc.
Otherwise games still become gold and are playable start to finish off disc. Switch games on the other hand have quite a few that require a download.
Other games i know that do this are factorio (you are able to download the game as a zip, and it doesnt stop you from making as many copies as you desire)
That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. They want to sell you digital version specifically because you can’t resell them. It could easily be solved by creating a digital marketplace, and even turn a profit for the publishers by taking a cut of resales.
With how games work these days, having just the disk is pretty much useless if the publisher decides to delist or discontinue the game from platform, because:
patches and updates don’t come with disk form anymore.
many games that requires online authentication to play won’t be available to keep playing if their account service is down.
games go on sale with steady rate most of the time(except nintendo), for bargain bin deals you would probably find the game on humble bundle or gog.
you often have the good games that release “better” remake version over and over anyway. Note, I know people sometimes prefer the original version, but not everyone is on the same page and it hugely depending on the dev/publisher for the newer version.
Now let’s describe the cons:
in many countries, breaking DRM is illegal. So even if all you want to do archive, you can’t make a decrypted copy. That’s why homebrew etc provides the key/dumper for you to do such at your own risk. IMO, it’s safer(INAL) to download pirated iso/rom compare to doing your own dump. And, archiver actually tried to keep a post patch version before store is closed down(see wiiu store close example), the disk version is not a viable option anymore for archiver.
storage up keep, physical things require storage space. I still have like 3 large shipping box for my older gen(ps3/GC/Wii/X360 games) I will probably donate them to library or something and keep the only ones I wanted to keep.
console part cost, the BD drives are often first point of failure, then HDMI connectors. Cause well, moving parts are easier to break and harder to QA. PS5’s 2 versions gives a good example how the disk affects the look, weight, etc. Not to mention, they are a lot slower then SSD and you are required to install all that anyway.
developer/publisher/platform see nothing for used game sales. It sounds like huge shill talk but let’s be honest, they want to make a living, if you are not supporting your favorite developer they will have to offset the cost by doing shit you all won’t like. ie, mtx, subscription service, selling analytic data, selling the studio to shit publisher that push worth practice, platform raise price to meet target projection. Buy/sell used game only helps that service owner(gamestop/ebgame/bestbuy, not the community.)
did I mention switching disc just to play game is a PITA, and if your case is the modern garbage version, remember those plastic break down more easily and you would have to buy new case to hold your disc.
environment waste for all the manufacturing, packaging and shipping. It’s honestly not worth that in modern era if you give a fuck about how future generation will live.
This sounds like a console user problem. PCs haven’t had disc drives for years and the games are far cheaper. Yes, there’s no second-hand market, but with steam sales, humble bundles, and all the freebies I post in !freegames it’s not really become the corpo hellscape we feared.
Also technically you don’t own games on disc either, it’s just much harder for the publisher to come round your house and snap your copy!
If only that was what he was saying. He doesn’t care whether they’re dependent on servers. The vast majority of physical games sold today are already nothing more than an entitlement and some of the game files, with the rest being downloaded after you insert the disc. He’s only concerned with Gamestop getting their cut, both in new game sales and especially in their bread-and-butter trade-in market.
Of course making money is his motive, but that does that matter?
Digital distribution only means you can’t give (or sell) your games to someone else. So with digital only the copyright holders of the video games make more money. Once it’s all digital only, next step is to require a connection to a server for them to work, so then they can shut it down to force you to buy a new console and re-buy all the old games you want to play again. What are you going to do if the decide to go that way? It’s either stop playing video games altogether, or go along with whatever scheme they feel like coming up with when they enshittify themselves like every other company inevitably does.
A physical copy means more options for the consumer, why should we care how much of the pie this corporation or that corporation makes off of it? In fact corporations in general make even more money from non-transferable digital distribution.
Given that MS have put a lot of work into making your digital 360 titles work on Series s/x and even upgrading some of them, I don’t think that’s a concern with all publishers.
I’m not sure why you’re trying to convince me of the merits of physical media? I did not, and do not, disagree. It’s a more flexible option, and more options is always better for the consumer. But the reality is that physical media, in its current iteration, doesn’t offer all that much protection. The only universal benefit of physical media is the ability to regift or resell. It’s a great benefit, but it hardly liberates consumers from dependence on servers.
As for my original point, it simply read to me as if this person was giving the GameStop exec credit for something he did not say. I wanted to make sure his comments were seen in an accurate light.
So we should reject an ally that has a shared goal simply because their motives aren’t pure enough?
It’s the old Stephen Fry quote “it’s more important to be effective than it is to be right.” We shouldn’t care so much about whether or not someone has the right reason for trying to affect a positive result. Gamestop’s motives are irrelevant, the effect of their actions are what matters.
Ok, but “It would be great if people had to buy more of the thing” is not an accurate summary either. Putting a CD drive on a console does not mean you have to buy physical media.
This is also true. With DRM, I feel like we’re missing out on a lot of property rights that should be remediated. I’m not sure what all could be done for zero day patches, though. Maybe we go back to the Windows XP days and distribute update packages via CD as well. TBH, though- if we have the ability to directly access the storage medium of a console and we are able to remove DRM, there’s no reason to make a disc drive mandatory
He is obviously biased by his business interests, but frankly he is ultimately correct. Once consoles are digital only, console players will lose the last form of control they have over anything they own.
They're all digital only now. There's no reason, at all, to have optical drives in consoles. With the advent of direct nvme to video memory you have to load content to the nvme anyway because spinning g plastic sucks soooo much. Today SD is actually cheaper per gb than Blu-ray.
Want to purchase a physical copy? Buy it on a SD card and get a $10 usb SD card reader, which will be compatible with every console anyway.
My prediction will be that the next gen (PS6) will go 100% download only, get shat on then start up a service with gamestop or someone to distro encrypted game installs onto WHATEVER usb media you bring in.
Just checked Amazon prizes for the first best SD card and Bluray disc. This is a lie. Discs are still less than half the prize.
And you didn't take into consideration that it's much cheaper and faster to press the data onto the disc than writing on an SD card when you do that in great numbers.
30 second search at 100gb (modern AAA games and the biggest Bluray)
Bluray is $10 a disc, microsd is $8 and you get 128gb and can get bigger media, which doesn't exist for Bluray.
That doesn't account for mass production, fewer people care about physical media with every passing year.
Physical media will still exist, but it won't be optical. Opticals advantages over cart just don't exist anymore. You don't include a $80+ part on the bom when less than 5% of your users want it and that 5% can get a bog standard usb device that can be had for $10
Its incredibly niave to think it costs Sony, co-developer of blu-ray, 10$ to press a game onto a blu-ray disc. Its probably costs a dollar or less to manufacturer a disc by bow. They can sell blurray movies for $9.99 and still profit.
It will definitely be cheaper for Sony to stick with optical discs next gen if they don't drop the drive entirely.
Nobody said it was. It's a medium to get games from a brick and mortar store to install onto the nvme on the console you can't play modern games directly from Bluray either.
You should check prices on the 2GB SD cards not the high end ones because the disks usually contain that much or less. Most AAA games only have the game INSTALLER on the disk, and still require you to download the game in order to play it.
You are mixing having your own physical copy with needing to run games straight from the disk. Nevermind that there's no reason that games couldn't be sold on faster cartridges, you can still have a physical media that can install a game into the console. Offline, without relying on an online service that will inevitably close eventually.
As it is, with disks and cartridges, they can't make it so absolutely every game must check with their online services. They have to make sure grandma in the boonies can make little Timmy's game work right out of the box. Without them, there's nothing stopping them. They could even straight up say that "no game could be expected to last more than 10 years", and I see enough people that already seem ready to fall for that. Nevermind that to this day there's people playing the nearly 40 year old Super Mario Bros.
I literally just replied to you about this and I don't know where you are getting it from. Games may ask for updates but games that are unplayable without downloads are very much the exception.
You don't need CDs for that, and CDs don't prevent that.
As the other user pointed out, most CDs don't even have a playable form of the game on them anymore. You usually need additional updates to actually play the game (or in the case of those steam installs, the CD doesn't even have a bare minimum on it)
Technically you can own a game as a digital install too, just they won't deliver it that way.
Every single game I bought up to the PS4 could be played without any downloads.
But they still couldn't be played directly from the disk, which is part of the point of the comment you replied to. Every single game I have for PS3 requires it to be installed onto the console in order to play it.
This is why I edited my last comment to say explicitly "played without any download" rather than "run from the disk", the comment I replied to was missing my point. I couldn't care less if the disk goes spinny or not, this is not about storage technology, it's about control over the games you buy. The point is owning games without being bound to online services, which a disk that can be installed directly does perfectly fine.
gamespot.com
Aktywne