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PlayStation (Games) Sony Hardware

Sony's New PS5 Heralds the End of Disc Drives (theverge.com) 73

Posted by BeauHD from the all-digital-future dept.
Earlier today, Sony unveiled the $699.99 PlayStation 5 Pro -- a mid-generation upgrade model for the PlayStation 5 that requires a separate $79.99 disc drive if you want to play your physical games. As The Verge's Jay Peters writes, the announcement "may have marked the beginning of the end for game console disc drives." From the report: Microsoft is clearly eyeing the discless direction with Xbox as well. The more affordable Xbox Series S can't play discs, and there's a discless Series X in white that's set to launch later this year. Last year's giant Xbox leak revealed a cylindrical, "adorably all digital" Xbox Series X redesign too. That hasn't been announced as an official product, but it shows a disc-free future is on Microsoft's mind. It seems likely that Sony and Microsoft are testing the waters for going all-digital for the PlayStation 6 and the next generation Xbox -- or at least offering disc drives separately. It's like Apple removing the disc drive all over again.

But this time it's not just the people making the devices. Retailers are stepping back from physical media, too. Redbox is toast. Best Buy said last year that it would stop carrying physical movies, and Target recently confirmed that it would be all but ditching DVDs in its physical stores. I know movies aren't video games, but it doesn't seem like a big leap that brick-and-mortar stores might stop carrying physical video games down the line; UK retailer GAME has already ended video game trade-ins.
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Sony's New PS5 Heralds the End of Disc Drives More

Sony's New PS5 Heralds the End of Disc Drives

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  • How does one buy and sell used games? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Can you do that without the media disk?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That's the real cost. An optical isn't $80, that eighty is the "You are avoiding the 'Everyone Always Buy A New One Every Time' rule, you rentpeasant." fee.

      No, you can't do that without paying the fee, they get their blood one way or another.

      We have yet to catchphrase the phenomenon well. The first-party exclusivity applied to everything from coffee to ink. The micro monopolies. Protected by DRM and DMCA nonsense.

      • Re:How does one buy and sell used games? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2024 @05:22PM (#64778241) Journal

        So I guess I wonder if there actually is some value proposition here though: in trade for not having the physical copy which probably just contains software that is encumbered to uniquify everyone through an "account" scheme or some other shit anyway, if they would offer a service where when you buy a Playstation 14 at some point in the future, you'll still have access to all the software you've purchased, and still playable through a provided emulation layer.

        Now that would be worth the cost of losing the physical media - a persistent library of games that you can just play on whatever hardware you're logged into, as long as that hardware meets minimum requirements (e.g. no PlayStation 14 titles playing on a PlayStation 5). At least, I'd be interested in that - only ever needing the console I've currently got to use software I still own regardless of the obsolete hardware those titles were designed for, running on an official emulator.

        Now, is Sony going to offer such a thing? Unlikely. But it would be a good way to make this transition not only easier to swallow, but actually have a purpose and value other than what it plainly is: eviscerating the used market with a rusty pitchfork, and user-surly software licensing.

        • No, we'll get nothing like that unless we fight for it, or at least convince them it will be profitable.

          In fact, probably the only thing that might stop them from deleting your whole library in case of bankruptcy (so they can sell the rights to someone else to renew your access), is those stories about slightly unhinged gamers murdering someone over fake game points. So I can only imagine what will happen in the case of outright physical theft from millions of people, who suddenly also have a bunch of free

          • No, we'll get nothing like that unless we fight for it, or at least convince them it will be profitable.

            You have exactly two options:

            1) Bend over and say, "more, please!"

            2) Stop buying Sony consoles.

            • Well I just can't stop buying Sony consoles, on account having never bought any.

              As to the rise of digital pseudosales (of books, movies, games) -- where you can't resell and maybe they can delete or edit your things -- it's just silly to say I should just stop buying them. No, I'd need to convince a lot of other people to also do that, and even that would be vastly inferior to a simple law saying that digital sales have all the same rights as having bought the thing as a physical object.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AvitarX ( 172628 )

          Reminds me of my steam deck.

          Pretty console like experience, and plays games I purchased over a decade ago for a different system.

      • What is with the mods on these comments? Are we not allowed to discuss second-hand video game sales (in a relevant/topical thread) on Slashdot?

    • Silly goose! You're not allowed to own anything anymore! Owning things means you're not buying things, and that means the corporations don't make as much money!

      Just keep paying those subscription fees! And when the service ends and you lose access to all the media you were paying for, you can buy it all again!
      =Smidge=

  • Physical isn't the problem (Score:3)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2024 @05:22PM (#64778239)
    Ownership is. A disc is just an authentication key these days, and they are bulky compared tp modern solid state solutions.

    • Ownership is. A disc is just an authentication key these days, and they are bulky compared tp modern solid state solutions.

      Yep, the first thing that happens when you put in a Nintendo Switch "cartridge" is that the console downloads the latest version of the game anyway. There's really no point in preserving physical media as anything more than some sort of dongle which signifies ownership. Of course, the game publishers would prefer that goes away too, because they're not particularly big fans of first-sale doctrine.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bbcisdabomb ( 863966 )

        If you're not connected to the internet, nearly all Switch games just run off the cart. You don't have to install patches to play them. Using scare quotes around cartridges doesn't make them not hold data.

        • About to say, my Switch never downloaded the entire game when I put the cart in. I think the only games it "downloads" are the cloud-based ones like Kingdom Hearts and Resident Evil.

        • If you're talking a game like Animal Crossing, what shipped on the cartridge isn't even close to the final version of the game.

          • The initial physical versions of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Perl didn't even ship with the title screen. (Or the credits, post story content, most of the soundtrack, etc.) Which is a shitty move by Nintendo, (every update requires redownloading gigabytes of static resource data.), but it's not important for this conversation.

            What's important here is the Cartridge's Ticket which is signed by Nintendo to allow any Switch in that region to play it. As opposed to the Ticket you'll get from Nintendo

      • And that can be and has been a major problem. Ie, if your only internet was an ethernet cable and it didn't reach down to the living room where the console was, then you had to have a physical copy. That was the primary design of all the consoles, where the internet was for optional patches. Then now you've got wifi in the house, but it's only slow 802.11a and that 100GB game decides you'll have to wait many hours before playing. This was indeed the major headache for a long time with giant games on the

    • There's people that keep track of these things, though I can't remember where I saw it. And basically unless you've "bought" a physical disc for a GaaS game then the disc contains a completely playable and perfectly valid version of the game that works even if your console hasn't been online. Unfortunately some of the big releases are basically GaaS masquerading as a real product and these can distort the impression of gaming in general by sheer marketing and popularity. I buy LOADS of games across just abo

  • Are they talking about DVD readers or hard disk drives? I thought it was HDDs at first, but the second paragraph seems to be about DVD readers.

    • I think they're talking about optical drives, but it's not even clear if they're talking about WORM devices or R/W devices.

    • It's subtle, but the clue is in the spelling of "disc", which is only used to refer to optical discs. HDDs use "disk".

      Also, no one uses HDD anymore, and SSD is not a disk (or disc) based medium.

      • Even Solid State Drive is at best an archaic metaphor and at worst obsolete terminology. A drive is the little box that moves a disk, it drives the media around. If you're not physically moving the media it is difficult to imagine the process of driving.
        I don't think solid state storage will catch on even though we could call it something cool like S^3.

  • So, the original PS5 was $399 for the "digital" version with no disk drive or $499 for the regular with optical drive. So now the adder to get a physical drive has decreased from $100 to $80, or from 25% to 11%. So how does this announcement in any way signal the end of physical media?

    • I guess because it's gone from a choice between two SKUs to "sold separately." It's like they are ratcheting slowly towards a complete removal of support.

      A less cynical way of looking at it might be that Sony are thinking most Pro customers will be upgrading and they may choose to take the drive from their existing slim? (Original phat owners can go spit in this scenario.)

      But then an even more cynical view is that if many customers do in fact reuse the drive Sony may use this lack of attach rate of the disc

  • You've been able to buy a PS5 w/o a drive for ages, but not everyone has super fast internet and most folks are on metered connections where pulling down 50gb is a problem.

    • most folks are on metered connections where pulling down 50gb is a problem.

      These guys say 37% of Americans have "broadband"
      https://www.statista.com/forec... [statista.com]
      Forbes says 80% of Americans have "Home broadband"
      https://www.forbes.com/home-im... [forbes.com]
      2021 Census says 90% of households have "broadband"
      https://www.census.gov/newsroo... [census.gov]

      I'm not drilling down into that but most people can download 50GB without any trouble. If you're patient you can do that on ADSL and not go over a typical quota.

      • I'm not drilling down into that but most people can download 50GB without any trouble.

        Some games are around 100GB these days. Under ideal conditions, that's about a 2.25 hour download on a 100mbps broadband connection (which is the fastest option in my neighborhood). To be honest, it sure doesn't feel like much of an improvement over going to a game store and just buying the damn game, but the market has spoken.

      • If you're patient you can do that on ADSL and not go over a typical quota.

        I remember leaving the PS3 on for nearly 24 hours trying to get 25gig down over ADSL. In the end the download was corrupt. Apparently Sony had a bad patch on some of their content servers and they quietly "fixed" it without bumping the version number so the console didn't know to grab the new one and wasted time getting the bad files. So I had to leave it on for another full day. Good times. Normally I avoid digital like the plague but this was one of my "fuck it" moments and I was suitably "rewarded" for t

        • I remember leaving the PS3 on for nearly 24 hours trying to get 25gig down over ADSL. In the end the download was corrupt. Apparently Sony had a bad patch on some of their content servers and they quietly "fixed" it without bumping the version number so the console didn't know to grab the new one and wasted time getting the bad files.

          Yes, Sony is extremely incompetent. In fact I see this about consoles in general. I'm in a Fallout group and the people having problems with their save files are always on consoles. On PC I have literally never had such a problem. Since the Xbox and Playstation users alike have this problem enough for it to be a trope, the problem is the console. So you can't trust that games will install, you can't trust that they will work when installed (they keep invalidating the DLC and then people have to reinstall) a

    • Right, you had a choice between 'disc' or 'no disc.'

      Now your choice is 'no disc, but here's an accessory.'

  • Remember last Gen, when Sony openly mocked Microsoft's XBox for being unable to deal properly with used games and physical transfer? We're not in Kansas any more...

    More broadly, though, considering the history of Sony Corporation, Blu-ray, and the PS3, this really does feel like an unnecessary end of an era. I'd have wanted them to lean the other way. Stick that 4K Ultra UHD right on the box and make it known that the PlayStation remainds the best-in-class media player for all manner of things.

  • I know the disc thing is interesting, but ... (Score:3)

    by machineghost ( 622031 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2024 @06:06PM (#64778359)

    ... can we talk about that price tag? $700 for a console (even without the $80 drive) is incredibly steep.

    Even the X-Box Series X is only $500. With them, Nintendo, and PCs (not to mention the incredibly popular Steam Machine) as competition, am I the only one who thinks Sony is reaching too high?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cinder6 ( 894572 )

      I've been looking forward to the PS5 Pro, but this price definitely has me reconsidering. My PS5 is still perfectly fine—I just wanted better frame rates in "graphics" mode. $780 + tax is a steep price for a relatively small upgrade. +45% performance still won't let many current games hit 60fps in graphics mode.

    • Sony is reaching too high. They're being greedy, like McDonalds was greedy, and will pay for it just like McDonalds. All Microsoft has to do is release a fairly polished Steam Deck competitor at a reasonable price point, and Sony will realize XBox isn't out of the race.

    • Keep in mind the NES would be $500 today inflation adjusted. PS5 is still pretty pricey, but not crazy.

      The real difference is PC prices have not kept up with inflation so the relative price of a console vs PC is making PCs more attractive over time.

      • PCs also have the benefit of not requiring complete replacement to use newer things. I.e. There's no PC N+1 to go get every 5 years.

        You do have to upgrade a few things, GPU is the big one, but most of the parts from an older system (especially a gaming one) will be reusable on your next build. If you have recent enough hardware overall, the GPU might be the only upgrade. (Assuming you'll actually get a benefit from doing so beyond a 1-2 FPS bump.)

        By comparison the consoles are horrendously overpriced. M

    • ... can we talk about that price tag? $700 for a console (even without the $80 drive) is incredibly steep.

      Is it though? The PS3 launch price was $500 back in 2007 which is $760 in inflation adjusted terms.
      The PS2 was cheaper at $300 back in 2000 which is only $580 inflation adjusted, but then that was an odd one out since...
      The Original PS was $300 back in 1994 which is $650

      Inflation is a thing.

      Even the X-Box Series X is only $500.

      I'm not sure why you say "even" as if they are comparable. The Xbox Series X is a 4 year old console. If you want to compare that to something you have to compare it to the actual Playstation 5 which is ... $500.

      Better

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The original Playstation launched at $300. With inflation that's $620 today. So it's a bit of a bump, but the PS1 was considered cheap at the time. The Sega Saturn launched a little earlier at $400, which is more than this device with inflation.

      It would be nice if machines were getting cheaper, but you couldn't really build a similar spec gaming PC for $700 using new parts.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      ... can we talk about that price tag? $700 for a console (even without the $80 drive) is incredibly steep.

      Even the X-Box Series X is only $500. With them, Nintendo, and PCs (not to mention the incredibly popular Steam Machine) as competition, am I the only one who thinks Sony is reaching too high?

      Consoles have been more expensive than PC's for ages now... You might not think that the $700 price tag will get you a good PC but it's not far off, PCPartPicker has some good builds for around the $1000 mark and once you start considering the extras you need to pay for like Playstation Plus its at break even within a year at the $700 price point (used to be 2 years at the $500 price point). The price of entry for consoles is just the beginning, where as with PC it's the end as PCs aren't sold as loss leade

  • I think the last game I bought on a disk was Skyrim.

  • It'll be interesting to see if internet access has gotten upgraded in the last 5-10 years since this was last heralded. If I'm downloading a 50-100GB game and my internet is 10Mbps with a 200GB cap, I'm still not going to "upgrade" to something without a disc drive.

    Good god I hope the 10Mbps/200GB internet plans are all gone. I suspect they aren't.

    • You must not own a modern console and buy games on disc. Most games get huge day one patches so you are downloading that game one way or another.

  • On the one hand, having a physical disc to install all the components of the game is great and allows you to not be always connected to the Internet. Single player still exist after all and so does sitting on the sofa with a friend to play a game.

    On the other hand, many games are now so huge you'd have to sell a volume of disc. BG3 was something like 120g of hard drive space and probably more now. How do you exactly fit that on a disc and distribute it?

    I'll just stick with my old gear that does fit on disc,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by darkain ( 749283 )

      BD-XL are 128GB in size. So yeah, that checks out with a 120GB game on a single disk still. Also, compression is a thing too, and the compressed contents can be decompressed and stored on internal system storage.

      • It's fine to have to install from multiple discs. Some early CD console games used to have four or five discs! And it wasn't a big deal. Final Fantasy games and Panzer Dragoon Saga come immediately to mind. Having two discs is no big deal, or even one install and one run for cinematics and such.

      • Huge day one patches are also a thing. Discs are just a license verification tool for 99% of modern games.

        "But they could ship the game as the final version!" you will say next. Yes and monkeys could fly out of your ass. Let us see which happens first.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Cinder6 ( 894572 )

      The real issue is that physical games can usually be found cheaper than their digital counterparts. The price difference is often significant, too: RE4 is $10 less, RE8 $14 less, SMT5V $20 less, and so on. These are new prices on Amazon. Even brand-new games are often appreciably cheaper. You can save even more buying used. Every time I buy a game, I check the digital price first, and it's only been cheaper once. If you buy more than a small handful of games (which I hope you do if you're spending $700 on a

    • I have the physical version of BG3 for my PS5, and it came on 2 discs.

      • That's very interesting and I've learned something from these few posts. I stand corrected.

        With that said, yes I'll take my optical drive thank you very much! Ty for the information everyone.

  • Sony deleting purchased content (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NimbleSquirrel ( 587564 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2024 @07:44PM (#64778559)

    Sony has already got themselves into trouble for deleting purchased content. At the end of last year, Sony announced that it would be deleting Discovery TV content from users accounts due to licensing changes, despite the fact that users had specifically PURCHASED this content. They were just going to delete it with no recourse for users. It was only public outcry that forced them to backtrack.

    Moving to a digital distribution method may have some advantages, but what is to stop Sony from doing this kind of thing again with purchased games? We're just buying a license to Playstation games, that relies on that license being honored forever. Sony is effectively just saying 'trust us', but previous behavior from them suggest that we cannot trust them.

    • .... despite the fact that users had specifically PURCHASED this content.

      No they didn't. They licensed it. There is a big difference.

      • In effect, yes. But the problem is that this isn't what they tell people, they are still using the words "buy" and "purchase".k

        Some consumer protection laws should really crack down on this, and force clear language. See how many people are still willing to pay $60 if it's to "rent, guaranteed to be available for 30 days."

        Wasn't it Sony who had in their Terms of Service a sentence literally saying that their use of the words "buy" and "own" doesn't imply ownership?

  • It seems the plan is to digitize everything so if you want to sell back titles, Game Stop is removed from the equation. Sony/Microsuck will be the gatekeepers of any 3rd party transactions and will impose transfer fees just like Live Nation does with their concert tickets.

  • No Drive, no sale

  • How would this be different, then, from a plain old PC connected to the TV? Is it a scam to make someone buy a separate "PC box" that has a PlayStation sticker on it?

  • Right now even Sony's biggest fans are struggling with the price point. I suspect that as early as Spring they release a disc-based version of the Pro for $650 and it sells like wild.

  • Annoyingly in Australia the PlayStation store price is often $10-$30 more than you can get from Amazon on day 1, so it only takes a few games purchased to cover the extra cost of buying the console with a disk drive. It doesn't make sense to have physical copies cost less to the consumer when they cost more to the supply chain.

  • Can they play games you "bought" on PSN, logged in as themselves?
    Because it's not possible on the PS4. They did allow it on the PS3.

    It's why I buy the disc version if they are available. Usually they cost the same or even less.

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