It’s too expensive. $500 is already too much for these things.
But capitalism’s gotta capitalism.
$700 is actually probably a fair price for a PS5. You can’t really build an equivalent PC for less than that. $900 to $1,200 would probably be close to how much manufacturing the PS5 Pro costs.
But PSN subsidizes these costs, which is why these systems can be this “affordable”.
I doubt it costs that much. You’re looking at it from buying PC components perspective. But they are mass producing identical boards with components that are 4+ years old by now, except the GPU. The cost of production is probably around the same as it was for non-Pro when it was released.
the fuck you are smoking? my first desktop kost that much and it ran crysis really fucking good
These days a good GPU costs almost $700 just by itself, mid range is almost $500, value is $400, budget is $250
The 4060 or the 7600xt are about in the ballpark for the original ps5, but you can’t beat the price if you don’t already have a computer with most of the components
Better than a PS5 Pro? Bruh 😂
Adjusted to inflation and time, hell yes
900 to 1200’s an insane guess. This many years out R&D’s sure to have chilled out and companies that buy parts by the millions get them at much lower prices than individuals, plus partner companies that kit out their facilities to manufacture those parts recoup their investments in those facilities over time as well. I’m sure Sony’s still taking a few bucks hit on the sale of a console but it’s nowhere near close to double.
If you think $700 is bad, it’ll be £700 in the UK.
Which is $913.
Also:
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median household income, UK (2022): £32,400 ($42,265)
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median household income, USA (2022): $74,580
A PS5 Pro is 26% of the typical UK household monthly income.
A PS5 Pro is 11% of the typical US household monthly income.
The US pricing is bad. The UK pricing is absolutely insane.
-
I think they’ve lost touch with their user base, but I also think they know that there’s some people that are just going to buy the console because they don’t have a better option available.
Like don’t get me wrong yes it’s now the same price as a low end gaming computer and it doesn’t have upgrade capability, and doesn’t have a physical media drive, but you can put it right where your TV is, so no seperate setup so it takes up less space (PC games on a tv instead of a monitor looks weird and can be a pain to fix). Plus it’s easier to use/more user friendly and everything is in one place.
I personally will not be upgrading past my current, as I find this generation to be super lack luster and not cost effective, but I can see why some might, I disagree with it but I see it.
Reminder that you can put in whatever you want in a PC. And that you can get a decent gaming machine for 1k (700+PS plus).
CD Drive? No problem. DVD? Of course. Another SSD? Get some random 50$ thing and throw it in there. Floppy? Harvest some old PC and voila.They make pull out cup holders to put in the CD rom rive slot. There are so many goofy fun things a computer can have in it.
Having a pull out cup holder seems insane to me, my personal rule is no drinks near my pc at all.
That said, I have a drawer in place of my cd drive that holds all my small peripherals (thumb drives, usb to sd card adapter, stuff like that) and it’s great.
I was just trying to say something absurd that I’ve seen being sold for PCs lol
I work in IT, the rule for me, closed lid drinks around PCs, no food or drinks in the server room. Unless you are me…the system/network engineer
LGR did a great video on crazy expansion slot PC accessories. One of them was a pull out ashtray with a push plug lighter like cars used to have. https://youtu.be/_ErL39wqO-c?si=zWyVR6m_LqE6SBE0
Floppy drives connect to the PC via ATA. I don’t have that connector in my computer
There’s always some a usb-converter for 10$ around.
Do you mean IDE? I’m confident your PC has S-ATA.
There’s IDE to SATA cards available for eight bucks.
In what universe do you live? Ps plus is $80, not $300
So you use your PC or console for only a year?
I can use it as long as I like. Ps plus just gives you 3 “free” games a month and let’s you play online with games that require ps plus. Imo the three games a month for six bucks and change is already worth it. And you keep those games for as long as you have your account, even if you don’t renew your subscription. You can also just get games that don’t require an online component, though those are becoming harder to find.
If we’re talking raw capabilities… Piracy is subscriptionless and grants you access to virtually 99% of all games from all time and across all consoles. I’m going to say that PC is the clear winner here…
I’m not justifying console vs PC. I’m just pointing out that the $300 on the original comment I replied to for ps plus is insane. $80 a year for a positively moderated, optimized gaming experience the vast majority of the time is worth the money imo.
You definitely lose access to your “free” games if you don’t have PS+ anymore.
Eh, on PC you can keep your games forever as long as you don’t lose the drive they’re stored on. And you don’t need to pay extra to access online features.
And you can play any generation of games going back to pong.
While this is true, consoles still manage to have a way more convenient experience. Its the only reason why they exist (today)
I think that’s mainly a relic from the past. I didn’t have compability or driver issues for a long time.
Once the PC is set up, it’s as comfortable as a console. Setting the PC up to console standards is reduced to installing steam.
Looks like you never played on a computer on a TV screen. The experience is plaged by pad connection problems (Bluetooth), windows popups, random no full screen issues, sound suddenly on the wrong channel, microphone not working, mouse cursor in the middle of the screen (often reset to the middle after launching the game, even when you are playing with a pad) and so on. You still need a keyboard and a mouse near your couch and there is always something. For sure iam still not paying the markup for a console, but i get why there is a big market.
You’re doing something wrong. I’ve been playing PC games on my couch for a decade and haven’t had any of those issues.
What are you on about? I use my PC on my TV all the times and I don’t have a single issue you describe. I just have it connected with Hdmi. The TV even turns on and off automatic if function activate.
I’ve definitely had some of those issues. I won’t count an old issue where my GPU needed a special connection to attach audio to its DVI output (rare oddity). Some others:
- Most computers would need to swap default audio device between whatever you use at a desk, and the TV registered as an HDMI audio device.
- Bluetooth connections to arbitrary controllers have gotten better, but they had often needed manual enablement each time through mouse-based menus or a number of firmware updates to work with Windows/SteamOS.
- My Steam Deck, even in its current iteration, takes some time to recognize the connected TV and swap resolution.
- The mouse cursor issue can come up if you had to do any mouse-based option swapping, like that thing with audio devices.
I’ve definitely gotten it working and had a blast, but the number of button presses to get to starting the game can sometimes be hard to predict. Even when I had a computer dedicated to the TV (a long time ago when SteamOS was fledgling) it was pretty unreliable about having all the right updates and not needing a mouse.
The real point is that you can upgrade it incrementally, you don’t have to throw it away, and upgrading will allow you to play all your old games from generation to generation without having to rebuy them for the latest Gen.
Even if you give a shit about upgrading, binding yourself to sony or whatever company.
Within limits though. E.g. If your mainboard only supports old CPUs that is a huge limiting factor and we saw MS messing with older CPUs just not being supported at all by Win 11.
Now i made the switch to Linux myself too and i am very happy, but for people who want to start somewhere, maybe starting with their own linux gaming PC is a bit much for the start.
I think that’s overkill, but a Steam Deck is on par with a PS5, but portable, and for a cheap dock and a ps5 controller you can play it like a console.
Linux has made such leaps though, have a container with lutris and vulkan and it can handle most basic gaming that doesn’t deal with modern AAA titles.
I got a Steam Deck because it’s a little computer. I can put my own OS on it, that’s awesome. The marketing page was talking about DIY repairs and offering spare parts, too.
I mean i am fully in support of PC gaming and in particular Linux gaming. It is just not as easy to keep upgrading PCs component by component. Eventually there is limits, mostly from the mainboards limits.
Meh, gaming pc of theseus, you replace the mobo less often than a console Gen, more if you want.
I was using the same board and CPU I started with back in 2016 up until last year. My bottleneck wasnt even the CPU it was the fucken RAM.
Depends how old you get. After 30 years some games just don’t work like they used to!
Thankfully we do have modern solutions for old fashioned problems now.
The only problem with optical drives for PC is that most modern case no longer support them.
A surprising amount of Fractal Design’s cases do.
I’ve checked it, and yes. Also some of the lower-end of Be Quiet!.
Paystation
no disk drive and the fucking stand is sold separately! too expensive!
Sony went the apple way. Next stand will be brushed aluminium for mere $999…
ps6 gonna be discless
I think you have an extra s
Oh shit thank you!
*dicless
deleted by creator
I REALLY want Sony to release a handheld that can run PS1, PS2 and PS3 games 🥺
I wouldn’t trust Sony to not fuck that up somehow like everything they do.
They’d give it a 2 hour battery 😂
To be honest my steam Deck doesn’t go that far beyond 4h either on a single charge when I lower all the settings.
Playing witcher 2 at decent FPS only gives me 2 hours on the original steam deck
That’s the one drag for me about the PS5 contrllers, the battery life before recharging. The PS3 controller did great, but the PS5 ones have so many features built in they die to quick for my liking.
Vita can Run 99% of PS1 games “natively” and has a bunch of PS2 ports (some through PSP). Not PS3 though.
That’s the Steam Deck.
Wait can it run ps3 emulators?
Double wait are ps3 emulators working now? I remember pscx2 or whatever being buggy as shit.
TLDR I’m ancient in internet years
I’m gonna blow your mind by telling you there are already working PS4 and Xbox One emulators, although both only support a small number of games so far
PS3 and Xbox 360 can be emulated very well by a modern PC, the majority of games work without glitches
PS3 is the trickiest. They had that weird Cell architecture which is more difficult to emulate than simply “less-powerful x86” emulation required for more-recent consoles.
PS4 is actually easier to emulate than PS3, because former has regular x86 architecture, but latter has a very weird CELL/PowerPC architecture CPU.
I’ve had good experiences emulating PS2 on my Steam Deck. PS3 I haven’t gotten anything to run well enough that I’d call it enjoyable. Some don’t run at all
To be fair, PS2 emulation is still not that great, but I guess it’s due to sheer amount of games for that system. Last summer I decided to check the PS2 emulation after 10 year break and 2 out of 3 games I tested didn’t work properly. Granted, those are kinda niche games (Transformers (2004) and Free Running), but compatibility still needs work. Hardware requirements are decently low for the games that do work, though.
RPCS3 can run most PS3 games but Steam Deck may fall short in some of them. Recommended specs include 6 core CPU but Deck has 4.
It’s also worth noting that even Sony can’t be bothered to properly emulate the PS3, which has resulted in many PS3-era games being remade into either native PC versions, or PS4/5 titles.
While it’s true that there are still some PS3-exclusive games that aren’t available in other formats, many of them are, so most people can get pretty far without needing PS3 emulation.
I only bring that up for anyone that may think they need PS3 emulation, but maybe haven’t been made aware of newer remakes or native PC ports of the games they’re actually looking for.
Going by core count alone is a pretty shitty metric for CPU performance. The 4 core APU in the steam deck will outperform an 8 core bulldozer cpu by any metric
Except for power consumption and heat generation ;-) This is where Bulldozers were hot shit!
So…steamdeck lol
Id open it up and see if a connector is available and use it if so
Wow, was waiting on the pro to drop, but now I giess I’ll just pass the ps5 generstion altogether. This sucks ass.
The PS5 is good enough if you can afford one
Personally I think it’s only worth it if you have the standard ps4, if you have a PS4 Pro you’re not really getting all that much from the ps5. Graphics are a slight upgrade, still not actual 4K and the ram is nice but performance wise it’s somewhat similar, usually your biggest reason to jump from one generation to the next is exclusives and game availability, but the PS5 has been absolutely atrocious at trying to obtain games that work only for the Ps5, every big name developer out there is still making releases that work for both consoles due to the fact that there’s still so many people that are running the PS4. This is a very different outcome then when the PS2 and the PS3 was released where yes they still offered it for both consoles but two or three years after launch they had more or less left the console in the dust, and here we are almost 5 years later and they’re still making games for both platforms
Load times that don’t take ages with the internal SSD of the PS5 is a huge boon too
I haven’t really noticed much of a difference load time personally, but yeah if the game required massive load times it was shortened as well
You can buy a whole-ass computer for $700 and it won’t charge you a subscription fee just to turn it on.
All good points in the comments, but something I haven’t seen a anyone talk about yet:
WHY is a DISK DRIVE $80??? All it does is read a disk. Any encryption on the disk would be decrypted on the console. External disk drives are like $20. If you specially brand them maybe you could go up to $40.
But $80? That’s like a Gameboy Advance. That’s a miyoo mini plus. That’s an entire console in itself.
That’s actually below market value for an external 4K UHD drive.
You’re right! My point no longer stands. Removing the disk drive would then save about $100 from the console, which makes sense to remove if you’re cutting costs and most players play digital anyways.
~also if you’re pushing digital games.
Props for accepting a counterargument on the internet graciously. Not something we see often.
Digital doesn’t have a secondary market which is the real reason. No money is made when you give away, sell, or share your physical games.
Blu-Ray never really took off as a mass-market format so the drives are relatively obscure and expensive without the benefits of manufacturing at scale.
But $80? That’s like a Gameboy Advance. That’s a miyoo mini plus. That’s an entire console in itself.
Bruh, you can even get 2 or 3 DS lites for that price
Ah, I should have been more specific. Back in the day I got my GBA new for $75 retail. (With inflation that’s probably a lot more now.)
Used DS lites are great, especially if you can fix the broken hinges and screens.
DS Lites imo have always been the best on the retro console value curve
How much space does it come out of the box? I bought my PS5 a year ago.
It came with 667GB of space. Some games take up 100gb.
And now you want to make it digital only??? Uhhhh, fuck that. You better be giving me like 1000 terabytes.
The pro upped the storage to 2TB, but I really feel like when the PS5 launched we were at the point where they should have shipped with 4TB drives.
I haven’t built a new computer in awhile, but 4tb ssd would have costed more than the console when it launched would it have not? Unless you are saying they should have shipped with a hybrid SSD/HDD setup. Not sure if read/write speeds would hold up to the frame rates needed for their games now.
You can get a 4TB NVME SSD (i.e. what the PS5 uses) for 200 USD these days.
I’m not going to defend the Pro exactly, but out of curiosity what is your usecase for needing so much storage on a console? Multiple users? Bad Internet? I feel like I have a max of 1-3 active games at a time, and can just delete and download/install them as needed. Works just fine for me so I feel like something else must be going on.
I have a 2TB SSD plugged into my 1TB Xbox. It’s all full. Average game size is 50+ gb these days. Some games easily surpass 100gb. Even with my better-than-average 300mbps connection games can easily take over an hour to download. No fucking way I’m only keeping 1-3 games and downloading as needed.
I agree with the sentiment, but the games don’t play off the disc. The discs contain the game data that is installed to the SSD. You’re using the same amount of storage whether you buy games physically or digitally. I buy mine physically because I like actually owning the game I paid $70 for.
You’re using the same amount of storage whether you buy games physically or digitally.
The difference being that you can load the content back onto the SSD at will, and regardless of server statuses… A lot of people have bandwidth caps or live in places with shit internet speeds.
This is yet another nail in the coffin of physical media. Or, in other words games you actually own instead of long term lease.
More anti-consumer stuff from corporate bigwigs
Death by a thousand cuts
IDK. Between the price tag and lack of the disc drive IDK how many people are gonna buy this thing. It’s probably just for people who HAVE to have the highest graphics, to keep them from getting a gaming PC until the PS6 is ready for them.
I’m not sure. If that is their strategy they’re dancing on a razor. I mean, the market is pretty slim. Basically, you can get a pretty sweet gaming PC for the price they’re offering. And if you project the amount of games you’ll get and estimate the price differential with prices of the same games on a PC you might be able to uprate the specs a few times. I would say that a PS5 with a reasonable amount of games is probably worth a similar amount to a $1k PC.
It’s not like physical media makes any difference anyway these days.
Actual disk often gets just a glorified installer, and even if it includes the entire game you’re likely to have to activate it online anyway.
The “own your games” ship has sailed long ago, unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups.
I remember thinking it was bs when half life 2 required a steam account and now everyone loves it.
For better or worse, the landscape has shifted since then. I can’t imagine people love Steam for being Steam, but rather for being the most consumer-friendly platform on PC.
Refunds? No questions asked if it’s within 2 weeks and 2 hours of playtime.
User reviews and ratings? Yes, and even comments on those reviews.
Community content? Steam discussions, guides, art, etc. Even mods with the workshop.
Bribes development studios for exclusivity deals? Nope! Devs can release games wherever the fuck they want.
Platform support? PC. Not just Windows, but going out of their way to make Linux a first class citizen. They even support Crapple despite its miniscule market share among PC gamers.
You’re right. But, all this good stuff is to obfuscate the central fact that you don’t own the property you bought. Sure, Valve has claimed that should they go away, as their last act, they’ll provide the ability for users to own their purchases, but who actually believes them?
For $700 they could at least throw in a 4k Blu-ray player.
Then again, I ponied up extra for the disc version of the original ps5 for that exact reason, only to find out the media player software is a giant piece of garbage that was clearly given no effort. So I can’t say I’m too surprised.
Sony doesn’t put much effort into most things.
unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups
or you straight up pirate it.
There’s not a lot of brave souls doing this as a passionate hobby any longer. Now it’s for the clout, to inject malware, or to receive monetary donations. Or all three!
I hope I am wrong, and we can get back to the passionate hobby, but it’s looking kinda grim from my point of view.
its always been for the clout in the scene. but ive been pirating shit for a couple of decades now, no malware so far.
If you have been doing it for a decade, then surely you’ve noticed the drop in active crackers…?
you can still pirate games without getting malware, even if a little late.
Yeah. Piracy is alive-and-well. You can even acquire and play PS5 games right now if you wanted to.
The difference is the price of buying discs vs. buying from a digital store that has no competitors.
I’ve bought almost exclusively second-hand discs for my PS5, because they’re like half the price for the exact same content.
Sadly it’ll probably be just a matter of time before those will be phased out as well, one way or another.
Steam keys can be found dramatically cheaper than all of that.
They can, difference is a vast majority of people don’t want to buy/build a PC, or deal with a PC setup in general, they just want to press one button to make it work and sit on the couch. So the easy option for them is buying a console, it’s plug and play, while a PC requires quite some setup.
So we need Steam Box. Steam Deck just works 99% of the time. I can only complain about the desktop mode being buggy and non-steam games being a pain in the ass to install.
Then we return to the topic of not owning your games with Steam. Try installing non Steam games via the Heroic launcher and use Bazzite OS instead
Try getting non-playstation games on your Playstation. What about games from older Playstation? Can’t get most of those on there. And let’s not pretend you “own” Playstation games anymore when so many require online and patches anyways.
Steam is more value for money and improved services and support. I used to be a die hard Playstation fan but it got old being treated like shit.
This in my opinion is one of the valid use cases of a blockchain/NFTs: they provide provable ownership of digital goods. This means that if implemented, in the future we could actually own games music movies ebooks etc. The only remaining step would be a decentralized torrent-like system that allows the users to download the licensed content that they own via their nft.
I mean, I can actually own a bunch of stuff as long as it doesn’t have some sort of proprietary DRM bullshit attached to it.
The problem isn’t that there’s no way to obtain media in a non-bullshit way. The problem is that distributors don’t want to provide media in a non-bullshit way.
Sure, you can still own digital media, but you can’t sell or trade it like you can with a physical copy.
Meh. If life weren’t so focused on material gains and losses, I wouldn’t need to.
It would also mean potential losses for the distributors, as people are (supposedly) less likely to buy directly for them.
So, again, the problem isn’t the media, it’s the distributors.
How would an NFT help in any way? We’re not lacking the means to prove you bought the game. We’re lacking companies willing to sell you games and laws that prevent companies from saying “buy” when they mean “rent”. If we got to a place where torrenting software you’ve bought in the past is legal, we don’t need NFTs to accomplish it…
How would that support “First Sale Doctrine”?
If you can’t modify it, sell it or know what the game software is even doing then calling that “ownership” would be rather lacking. I mean in terms of traditional ownership, not the modern definition: “page 69 of the EULA defines “purchasing” (the software) as a limited, non-transferable lease which can stop working at any time due to dependency on a proprietary server code we will never share I fucked your mom”.
You could sell the NFT and lose access to the game just like a disc
You wouldn’t be able to modify it as the nft would just allow you to download the game.
As long as the network exists
If it’s a networked game, but there’s no reason a offline game shouldn’t work other than incompetence.
Also since the NFT is the DRM the game could be available for download outside of the publishers purview, such as a public torrent site.
But if the game has to call home every time it starts and there is no server your game won’t work. StarCraft can be played offline, as it was created, but you need to connect to play because Blizzard.
One big “advantage” (for the companies) of NFTs is that the emitter can take a commission or fee every time the NFT is sold. This can kind of alleviate their fears of people buying from each other instead of buying a new copy. I think that’s a fair middle ground for owning a fully digital copy, between physical copy that companies don’t want and digital copy that consumers don’t want.
How can they force that and not also force a fee to move it to a different wallet you own?
People change wallets all the time and putting a fee on that would be inexcusable
Without knowing why people change their wallets, it’s hard to nail down a solution. But, perhaps a smart contract wallet whose access is controlled by an underlying wallet that can be swapped out may help. In any case, all transfers or smart contract execution attracts a fee. Even sending money between wallets.
I’m glad some companies are going full media and the younger Gen is buying physical media. It’s creating a counter culture that smart companies are using to their advantage.
Is it possible for modern games to fit on a disk?
I think it would be an interesting change if brand new games had a hard limit on file size so they can fit on and play from an actual disk.
Absolutely. It just depends a lot on the game of course. A blueray disk can contain over 100 GB. But a game could be split over several disks too. It was rather common to do that with CDs on the original PlayStation.
A lot of Xbox 360 games came on multiple discs
The issue isn’t the game engine, it’s the texture files.
If you don’t care what it looks like, you cut 80-90% or more from any modern game subbing low quality textures.
They still have to install.
Disks are too slow.
If they use a good, 12X bluray drive, it will be quicker to install from a disk than to download it unless you’re lucky enough to have a good fiber internet connection. Even then, the servers you download from will often be overloaded and slow on release day.
That’s not my point. Most games do install fine from the disk.
He’s talking about playing from the disk, too, and that’s a problem.
unless you only buy no-DRM and your own backups
Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer. I try to buy games there instead of Steam, purely for this reason.
Going to have to plug GOG here as these are both things they offer.
Note that this is a major selling point for GOG and available on most of their library, but unlike their early days, not everything is DRM-free.
Piracy is the only way, clearly capitalism doesn’t give and inch.
Nor a funk
Maybe but look what happened to Stellar Blade
It does if you rent
I’ve been using gamefly for a while, I can’t rent digital only games
Thing is, that’s not how it works on PlayStation. On PS5 you can download and play games without ever connecting to wifi. The whole glorified installer is mostly an Xbox thing ever since the XB1. I’d know since I own both and usually get discs to play my games.
Or, in other words games you actually own
Newer games rarely have the entire game on the disc. Usually there’s mandatory patches that must be downloaded to play it. I’ve seen games where there’s only a few hundred MB on the disc while the whole game is maybe 15 or 20 GB.
This means you don’t really own the game, since if Sony take down the downloads for the game, you won’t actually be able to play it any more.
Essentially your choice is between a physical license key (the disc) plus a download of the game, or a digital license key plus a download of the game.
And now, the physical licence path is even less accessible. The thing with the physical licence key is it’s transferrable even if the actual data is stored elsewhere. It’s a thin veneer, I mean, Sony could gate access to this data to the first account/machine that activated it. So even this advantage is taken away.
Some enterprise software used to (or maybe still do) use USB dongles for licensing… I’m honestly wondering if games are going to move that way too. Given the fact that practically every game needs a launch day patch, why even have a DVD/Blu-Ray if instead you could just have smaller, more reliable USB dongles? I suspect that in the next generation or two of game consoles, we’ll no longer see disc’s at all.
Uhhh. Maybe I’m a little TOO far from the console crowd but I’m going to say this anyways.
Who tf cares? I’m a PC gamer and I’ve been without a disk drive since 2009.
I will happily admit it is definitely a different situation. For one, this would essentially give Sony a monopoly on games. Which would mean that they would never lower prices and gamers have no one to go to other than them. You know what I’m talking about, all the same shit that Nintendo has been doing for years.
I guess that I’m just curious how many people dislike this.
I stopped buying consoles after they wanted to charge me to use the internet. That’s not how this works.
So, 24 years ago? If so, I’m right there with you in the “getting old” camp.
Why can’t you just plug in a random-ass USB 4KBR-disc drive?
Or sell one that we can use to bring in games from PS1, 2, 3, 4 and 5? And state that the drive will be able to be used going forward, into the next gen and beyond.
They’ve got a rich gaming history at this point and they don’t care because they’d rather sell you an $80 digital copy that they can take away at any time and you can’t trade it in or really own it. And it’s the same with PC games as well, courtesy of Valve and then everyone else.
If the future is digital, we need laws that allow us to transfer ownership of digital content. It would have to be secure, obviously. Not just “steal somebody’s console and trade all their games in”.
I’m pretty sure that would run you about the same as the external component, so there’s no benefit to going with a third-party accessory
Yeah, looking at the prices, it’s about right for what it is.
Suppose the upshot of using a generic component is you could also attach it to a PC.
Looks like the long term goal of them is to stop selling discs altogether. I couldn’t even get BG3 on a disc when it came out, and I think Alan Wake 2 was the same (only physical copy I can see is the deluxe version with both AW1&2 on it).
I see the mythical digital savings never made it to us, to the surprise of absolutely fucking nobody. I wouldn’t mind if they actually put games on a discounted price after a year or so, but you can still see several year old games at the full original retail price.
On the idea of random drives: Many of them might not be able to read the encryption on Playstation discs. I could be wrong, but I think the way they operate involves more than just software encryption. Sony is best off making their own. Hence why pirates burn special copies.
On reading prior generations: I think they’d be capable of reading those if they wanted, but running old Playstation games is more a matter of correct CPU architecture. Most of us have played old games on the new consoles, but often there’s a bit of manual porting/emulation logic going on to get it working - so the package delivered from PSN isn’t exactly would come from an old PS2 disc.
IIRC the Xbox 360 used to do a thing where you’d put your old OG Xbox disc in, and it would download any extra code it needed to run. Most of these older games would be under a few MB of actual code.
Pretty sure the PS5 is powerful enough to run PS1 and PS2 emulated, and probably have a good crack at running PS3 games as well, although a lot of the good PS3 games got a remaster for the PS4 gen anyway.
I think the only thing stopping really us doing it now is the PS5 drive can’t actually read CDs. Plus I think they want to test each game before release and sell us them on PSPlus tiers.
Yup, the Xbox does that; but it’s at least good to acknowledge that was not an insignificant effort on their part. They had a lot of people slowly putting out compatibility packages for old Xbox games based on popularity.
I’m guessing Sony doesn’t feel like doing that when they can also provide that hardware via more expensive cloud systems.
