I’m assuming it’s to make sure there’s not long waits to try them. Giving a set number of tokens to visitors means they can roughly control the amount of time someone spends with those games. One person can’t just buy 100 coins and spend all day on the same game.
Could have just done a ticketing system reserved in advance with fixed time blocks, though. But then your museum tour is on a schedule.
That’s the same conclusion I arrived at, but wasn’t 100% sure. Since the act of downloading a game and the act of obtaining/transferring licenses both require the console to be online, I couldn’t see what difference there would be to the user experience compared to before, even if the order it does those steps in is switched.
I am trying to think of scenarios where this will screw with normal users because companies never do moves like this unless they’re after some sort of grift.
But I am not seeing it at present. Maybe I’m just too tired and my brain isn’t working, but if a game is downloaded digitally and the license comes with it, there’s effectively no difference. Take it offline, you still have the license, no issues.
The only potential impact I can think of is if you have two users on a console that is the home console for neither person, and both of them bought the same game digitally. User 1 downloads the game, the license comes with it, and they take the console offline. User 2 then uses the console, tries to play the game they own, and gets a license error because the console is offline and doesn’t know they own it and therefore it can only be played by the person who downloaded it. But I think that’s how it works already, since User 2 would still need the console to be online to import their licenses.
It really is like a feudal system. There’s a reason why the HBO series Succession is framed like the politics between a lord, his heirs, and his vassals.
Chasing the “best version” is a fool’s errand, though. Unless you’re buying top-of-the-line hardware every cycle, you’ll never have the best. And even then, there are games that seem to target future hardware by having settings so high not even top-end PCs can max them out comfortably, and other games that are just so badly optimized they’ll randomly decide they hate some feature of your setup and tank the performance, too.
Everyone has their threshold for what looks good enough, and they upgrade when they reach that point. I used my last PC for 10 years before finally upgrading to a newer build, and I’m hoping to use my current one as long as well.
But just based on the displayed difference in performance between the base PS5 and the PS5 Pro, it doesn’t seem like a good investment for what benefits you get. It’s like paying Apple prices for marginally better hardware, and with overpriced wheels disc drive sold separately.
My memory may be hazy, but I recall the mainstream acceptance of the digital distribution model on PC as more of an early 2010’s thing. People hated Steam at launch, having yet another launcher you had to download which was basically just DRM for Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike.
It wasn’t until their marketplace opened up and they offered very attractive sales that people came around to it eventually.
The side-by-sides are definitely diminished returns compared to earlier gens where hardware bumps had very noticeable gains.
I am sure the performance is measurably better than the base PS5, but I don’t think it’s $200-plus-separate-disc-drive better.
I also found the game choices they used for some of these comparisons to be odd picks. Sure you have “Made for PS5” exclusives like the new Ratchet and Clank, Returnal, and Spider-Man 2, but they also heavily showcased:
The Last of Us Part 2
God of War: Ragnarok
Ghost of Tsushima
Horizon: Forbidden West
Control
All of those are last-gen games that received PS5 enhancements. Being on a base PS5, I already feel like I am getting the “better” experience compared to the default for those games, so why upgrade?