General Gaming News.

[bluegate]

Piracy seems to be the only way forward.

Only buy games with a working crack to remove DRM and make your own local back up copies.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

https://www.ign.com/articles/microsoft-reportedly-considering-canceling-marvels-blade-and-shutting-arkane-down

Ugh......

If it's not guaranteed to make a billion dollars, Microsoft wants nothing to do with it.

Physical disc production ending in January 2028 for new games releasing on PlayStation consoles

In response to shifting trends in consumer preference, new games will be released on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only.

blog.playstation.com

We really are living in end times

How is Sony supposed to take away your purchases if you have discs?! Won't somebody please think of the corporations?!

 

[BrawlMan]

The only silver lining is going to be the inevitable announcement of the PS6, and how on god's green Earth Sony is going to try and to sell this thing. It's going to be fucking hilarious!

This whole thing has disillusioned me on all videogames now. Maybe I'll just get an old fashioned stick and hoop and have my fun that way.

View attachment 14767

I play my R35HHX almost as much as my PS5 at this point. I got my old consoles too. All of them work. Hell, I've been having fun with my 3DS again.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Something just occurred to me: remember when Sony shit the bed because they required logging into PSN for their Steam releases, which got the games unlisted in countries where PSN is not supported? What the fuck will they expect now? Using your PSN account in another country is officially against their terms of service and can get you banned. Does that mean they'll finally support these countries with their own PSN ala Steam? They fucking better.

Even if they do make the online experience better, no physical media is going to straight up kill physical gaming stores back home. Which are pretty much the only legit way you can buy fucking consoles. So Sony better have an idea of how they're going to sell consoles to people.

Realistically though, Sony does realize this and they probably view the lost revenue from countries like mine as lower priority to all the new revenue they can squeeze out of a digital only model.

 

[Bedinsis]

I actually think an all digital platform could be fine, provided there are safeguards in place so that the platform owner cannot arbitrarily cut off access to purchases or do some other malarkey to screw the customer over. I have not seen any indication that Sony has something like that in place, and they recently announced that they would remove access to movies people had bought digitally, which tells me that they likely would do the same thing with games. They also (as @Bob_McMillan said) wanted to enforce PSN access for Helldivers 2 players which can be read several ways but my main takeaway is that if we give it the most generous read and say that they merely wanted to curtail piracy by doing online check-ups of people accessing their titles then that is one additional layer of complication for playing the game and if it stops working due to software updates or other hiccups people won't be able to play the game.

I am reminded of Toy Story 2, where one of those funny outtakes scenes featured a character offered two Barbie dolls roles in the next installments in a way that was meant invoke a sleazy Hollywood producer, which was removed in the Disney+ release in wake of Weinstein's arrest. I can understand Disney not wanting to feature that scene in children's media but it is still removing content; in an all-digital space what is to prevent a platform owner from making sure some content is deleted entirely from existence?

Then there is also the very real issue with all places not having stable digital infrastructure.

 

[bluegate]

provided there are safeguards in place so that the platform owner cannot arbitrarily cut off access to purchases

Add in safeguards to prevent them from closing online shops.

They also announced that they are closing the PS3 and PS Vita digital shops soon. So after 15-20 years some games will just become impossible to buy when going all digital. It's fucking ghoulish to think about.

 

[BrawlMan]

I actually think an all digital platform could be fine, provided there are safeguards in place so that the platform owner cannot arbitrarily cut off access to purchases or do some other malarkey to screw the customer over.

And as we've seen, PSN is unstable, expensive as fuck, has a shitty subscription service, and won't permanently price drop digital versions of games. Discounts yes, but they're temporary, and expect to pay $70-80. Why go through all that when Steam and GOG are cheaper/better options? GOG lets you keep your games permanently, because they're about preserve ration, and Valve has a much better refund policy, and the customer never has to go through an arm and a leg just to get it. Most people aren't going to want a shitty digital box with worse features, and overly expensive as fuck. The console ain't gonna be less than $1K. Everything thing is becoming Las Vegas with these consoles, aside from Nintendo. They're looking for rich whales. Gaming was always a commodity and not a luxury. Emulation devices and pirate sites provide better services.

 

[Ezekiel]

Him:

I think the issue here is this means {Sony} will shut down their Austrian replication plant. Historically, Playstation game manufacturing was the bread-and-butter of Sony's plants. Without it I see no chance of a plant surviving on the scraps that movies bring in. So their plant outside Salzburg will shut down in 2028, further reducing the already limited number of Blu-ray replication plants. For the Western world the only ones remaining will be Sonopress in Germany and the Connectiv plants in Poland and Mexico. I gather there are other plants around East Asia, but AFAIK those handle none of the load for Western nations.

Me:

Movies bring in scraps? With how few people still buy games physically and how briefly Sony prints games, I would think movies are the bread and butter of replication plants.

Him:

In 2025 game disc sales in the U.S. alone was $1.5 billion. In the same year video disc sales for all of North America was $870 million.

More importantly, a given European disc replication factory only prints a fraction of movies, since there are several. There is only one Playstation replication plant left and it prints *all* Playstation games - Sony enforces a monopoly on Playstation disc production. Playstation has 72.4% of the North American console market and around 80% of the European market.

Not only, then, does Sony's one plant produce more game discs than the entire market for Blu-ray movies, but it does so with greater economies of scale since it has only one customer for game discs, a customer with better data on its market than your typical boutique Blu-ray label or even a Hollywood studio like Paramount.

So, yes, movies bring in scraps compared to the Playstation market.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24192049&postcount=52

 

[CriticalGaming]

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation EGS leak lists 9 DLCs via “Story Expansion Pass” as well as pre-order bonuses

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation DLC has leaked with 9 DLCs listed and a Story Expansion Pass as well as pre-order bonuses.

frvr.com

 

[FakeSympathy]

Dear god, even food is going digital-only!

 

[BrawlMan]

​

 

[FakeSympathy]

Just goes to show how much/little of market research these investors are actually doing.

I mean it's not like this will cause fewer sales on the both the next-gen console or digital game purchases. Nope, gotta trust the sales pitch from that Sony exec! /s

 

[CriticalGaming]

Just goes to show how much/little of market research these investors are actually doing.

Most stock investors just look at market reports and dont look into the actual customer based of the companies they invest in. Stock reports themselves dont report on consumers at all and typically only report profit/loss news, product news, and management news like a CEO leaving or signing on, things like that. Those reports never report on feedback on those decisions to inform investors. It's very robotic and numbers based only.

Many Sony investors probably arent even aware of Sony making games. They probably just saw a report on cost cutting measures across sony's digital platforms and bought stock based on that figuring more profits. Nothing more.