Balaam_

For the sake of our consumer rights and the very future of this beloved hobby, let us pray it’s a lie like the 8K banner on launch console boxes.

The original Bioshock.

A place where the artistically and intellectually elite are isolated from the drooling masses, where they can creatively thrive…that’s the place to be. You better believe there would be no live service slop, no ai, no microtransactions and no all digital future down there.

‘Hideaki Nishino, Hermen Hulst, Lin Tao, Would you kindly report to Dr Suchong for evaluation?’

It seems Xbox is letting you sort your achievements by a few different methods now besides the awful ‘last achievement earned bumps that game to the top of the list’ method. This is excellent and long overdue. It’s also irritating, because we used to have this option on PS3 and it was subsequently removed when PS4 launched, and all we get now is that garbage method described above. With any luck Sony will give back what they foolishly and inexplicably removed.

@Rhaoulos Couldn’t agree more. I wish there was a digital Joker who would scam everyone out of their Vbucks, put it all in a big pile and burn it like in Dark Knight. ‘This platform deserves a better class of gamer, and I’m gonna give it to them.’

I think Poland said the same thing after a certain somebody marched in

@GirlVersusGame Ah, thank you. I figured the possibility of an update existed; I was probably early enough it was live but too early to have hit the news/forums.

Unrelated to the article, but as of now there’s no relevant one to post this on.

Was there a new, mandatory PS5 system update released in the past 24hrs? I can’t find anything online. Here’s why I ask. The last update was not a mandatory one, and so I didn’t update. I’ve been ignoring it and powering off the system without updating, and it’s been fine until today. I booted up my system and I’m signed out and greeted with a message telling me I have to update to use network features.

I’ve never encountered this before, and I’ve chosen to not update in the past for non-mandatory updates. I can only presume Sony is worried people are not updating for the express purpose to jailbreak their consoles and they’re trying to corral people into updating.

Edit—I should mention I’ve been online the entire time since the previous non-mandatory update. I’ve played games online, even bought a game in the summer sale, so it’s not like I’ve been DC’d and had no presence for a length of time and that’s why they signed me out. It’s been business as usual until today.

I like Bautista, but I don’t think he’s a good fit. Almost wish they’d go with an unknown as there currently aren’t very many (or any) big, tall, bodybuilder type actors who can actually act. Maybe they could do some forced perspective stuff like in Dark Knight Rises and get away with using a good actor who isn’t actually all that big.

How dense are these people? Just stop using ai altogether and watch this fiasco vanish overnight. Instead they continue to poke the hornet’s nest with a stick and then wonder why they’re getting swarmed and stung.

@Fluberuper doesn’t sound like my thing and I’m irritated other people are interested. It’s a large contributing factor to the decline of quality games and the rise of…these kinds of games.

Two great remasters of old games, a bunch of crap, and one smaller scale uniquely interesting game. That one got my vote.

Mm, mhm yes this is the future we should all be striving for. I can’t wait for more games to become permanently unplayable because there’s no disc versions to fall back on—and being blocked from that rightful platinum? mwa chef’s kiss 👌

It’s been awhile since I clicked the bricks together. Are they still sold as physical plastic blocks you buy and own, or has Lego shifted to a digital only business model where those coveted ‘one piecers’ you’ve hoarded can be taken away from you without your consent?

“…one would hope the company will significantly bolster its digital storefront to make it a more robust, feature-rich, and appealing place to shop.”

Again, none of that matters in the slightest if we do not legally own and control our digital purchases.

What good is a more robust storefront if you are simply leasing digital code and Sony subsequently removes it from your account without your consent? Naysayers will argue ‘Have they ever done that?’ to which the answer is no, not yet. But they can. And that’s the point. As long as they legally have the power to do so, no one is safe and everyone’s consumer rights are simply waiting to be violated.

Yeah whoever drafted this list sort of glossed over the absolute most important thing of all, true legitimate ownership. I’m talking ‘guaranteed by legal rights’ type ownership.

It’s sort of implied under the ‘sell/trade digital games’ bullet point, but this is far and away the most important thing that could be done to protect and benefit consumers in preparation for an (unfortunately) all digital future. Hands down. Nothing else on this list even comes close. If you don’t OWN your digital purchase, none of the rest of the above points in this list even matters.

Resonant is definitely on my list. Not counting that worthless live service cash grab they put out, I’ve enjoyed every Remedy game I’ve ever played. I expect a great time with Resonant.

Cool, now I have 235 other reasons not to play this besides it being a parenting sim.

Let me own and control my purchases and they’ve got my money. Should they continue to pursue their attempt to deprive me of my ownership rights, I have no issue moving to a platform like PC where I have far greater latitude in ownership and control (and can take their old roms for free, out of retribution).

Lost interest when it was confirmed the disc is nothing but a coaster with a few MB’s on it. If I can’t own it, I don’t want it.

Leasing digital code is like leasing an apartment. You can boast about all the money you’ve saved and the convenience of it, up until the point you get evicted and thrown out into the street. It’s then you realize the value in owning your home.

I’ll buy it when I can legally own it. Until then I plan on ‘creatively acquiring’ it.

Mm yes, mhm, no problems here. Bring on the all digital future. Yes, surely nothing can go wrong.

What Remains of Edith Finch for $5 is an absolute steal. One of my all time favorite indies. Also, the Messenger is criminally overlooked. Both are fantastic games

I didn’t see clarification within the article—would simply unplugging your console from the internet accomplish the same thing? I would heartily like to lend my support to pressing our communal foot down on sony’s throat, but want to be sure of the particulars. It’s not like I don’t have a dozen retro consoles with a vast library of physical media at my disposal so it’s certainly no inconvenience to me, but I’m a bit muddled on the details here.

This debate has brought out the stupidest people from under the woodwork. There’s a common thread of logic permeating not only the disc vs. digital debate, but practically any other comparative points anyone could ever make.

There is zero reason why both formats could not or should not exist concurrently.

If someone still wanted to make VHS tapes, that wouldn’t diminish what the blu-ray connoisseur gets out of his preferred format. If someone wants to make a new phonograph cylinder that doesn’t diminish someone else’s high fi experience.

Anyone asserting there should be an only digital future is like saying there should be no electric cars because you prefer the internal combustion engine, or that they should kill regular coke because you like Diet Coke. It betrays an arrogant, self centered ignorance. Same goes for anyone saying digital should die and there should only be physical media, although I’ve not come across anyone that stupid yet.

As for me? Both formats should exist in perpetuity, but I am someone who values ownership and control over convenience.

Fingers crossed the B team is doing this Laufey while the team that knows how to pen believable, non-anachronistic dialogue is hard at work on the next GoW.

This will be the first GoW I’ll be waiting on reviews for before deciding to play it. Ragnarok’s level design and dialogue were absolute crap. Cringe inducing, horrendously embarrassing garbage. After Laufey’s trailer I have no confidence things have improved in the dialogue department, so unless they knock the level design out of the park I can see waiting till this hits $9.99 in the bargain bin.

@Czar_Khastik Bro you still have an actual television? I’ve been cloud streaming directly to my eyeballs for the past few years. It’s so much more convenient than owning a device I have full control over. I don’t have to think or make a decision myself, I can just sit there breathing through my mouth while Sony beams ads at me. The burden of autonomy and control is finally lifted from my weary shoulders.

No big loss. Like SquareEnix, Sega’s glory days are decades behind them at this point. Sonic&Knuckles was the last good Sonic game until Sonic Mania (which isn’t really a Sega game outside of the IP), and outside of some remasters they haven’t published anything new worth playing since I can’t even recall. Them shifting primarily to a ‘Fleece the simps with a digital lease’ model doesn’t affect me much.

Happened to be playing a classic Sega Saturn game on retro hardware at the time, so I was blissfully unaware of the outage 😌

There’s a secret feature in the new update. After it finished, I put my console in rest mode and left the room. I heard a noise so I stealthily crept down the hall and peeked my head back through the door and saw a tiny little mechanical arm reach out, grab one of the discs off my shelf, and snap it in half.

@Oram77 I presume the use of the word “everyone” here implies ‘everyone with half a brain who understands the value of true, permanent ownership vs signing away one’s right to own to a greedy, arrogant corporation that can remove access to games you paid for without warning and without your consent and who desires to further cement their total control over your consumer rights in an attempt to bleed you for as much money as they can get out of you’.

That “everyone”.

Mind’sEye reminds me in a way of one of those failed toy brands in the 1980’s or 1990’s, the ones that tried to become the next TMNT or He-Man or what have you but just didn’t capture the interest of practically anyone.

Excellent. More of this. Continue flooding every single social media post those disc butchers push with comments until anti-consumer Nishino-chan and that halfwit Hulst beg to let them sell us discs again. And if it never happens, at least we’ll have had the pleasure of grinding them under foot.

Good sentiment, but I feel like we’re praising someone for something that should have always been done in the first place. It’s reminiscent of that classic Seinfeld bit about tipping someone just for the absence of outright hostility—“Thanks very much, and here’s a little something extra for not taking my head and smashing my face through the glass countertop.” Physical discs should be obligatory and expected for literally every single non-GaaS game made by more than a handful of indie devs on a shoestring budget.

What we need is one of these world famous athletes with legions of fans to make a public remark about how they hate Sony’s disc genocide. These beloved sports figures have enough clout to put the pressure on. Pity they probably don’t know and don’t care.

He looks about as lame and awful as the Sam Raimi movie version.

Old school GG > Techno anime GG

‘The plan’s the plan until we decide to shut down those studios and torpedo the plan’

Solidarity, my physical bretheren, solidarity.

This is what’s known as ‘collateral damage’. Sony pulled the pin, threw the grenade, and now some shrapnel has hurt someone innocent. The solution is to bully Sony into submission so this developer’s unfortunate occurrence won’t be in vain.

Are these going to be ‘Let’s finally fix everything that’s straight up broken’ Remasters, or ‘Lazy sloppy port hiding behind the pretense of preserving the legacy of the originals’ Remasters à la Oblivion Remastered?

“That’s one DOOMed space marine!” —Duke Nukem, 1996

So they’re doubling down on all the crap I bypass on the way to the register to ring up my physical game, got it.

Maybe he strained too hard ‘pooping in the woods’ or however Jaffe so wonderfully put it when poking fun at that awkward promo shot

I’m on the fence. It looks like classic turn based random battle classic FF which as well all know is infinitely superior to the real time slop, but this is kind of a reanimated gatcha corpse—which I’m extremely leery of. I need to look into this further and see whether or not they ditched everything that makes gatcha games pure trash, or if there are any filthy remnants of that infecting this like a disease.

Those Anonymous guys must be asleep at the wheel. Sony is long overdue for another 2011-style hack which beats them to their financial knees and forces them to come crawling back, begging for the privilege of selling us physical media we can permanently own.

Ragnarok’s dialogue was poorly written garbage that was anachronistic and entirely out of place in some parts. The dialogue in the Laufey trailer was also very poor, particularly both that ‘token-Pixar-comedy-character’ cube’s actual lines and the delivery of said lines.

I don’t care whether I play as Kratos or his wife, but crap dialogue has and will drag the perceived quality of these games down to Hades, and no amount of graphics or gameplay can help them claw their way out of that predicament.

Cool, saves me money. Maybe I’ll get it on Steam in 10 years when it’s $5.00.

The world would be a better place if mobile phones were still only strong enough to play Tetris or Snake.