RobN

@Oram77 I'm willing to bet that Sony CAN'T copy this. XBox has unique codes on each disk to identify it individually - that was part of the whole fiasco when they announced how XBox One was going to restrict sharing/selling disks, which is only possible if each disk has a unique identifier.

I'm not sure Sony does the same thing for Playstation disks - does anybody know for sure? If they don't, and it would be a lot cheaper if they don't since each disk could be identical, then they wouldn't have a way to implement an identical feature. If they did something similar, it would probably require you to mail your disk to them, so they can destroy it when they give you digital access.

@get2sammyb It will be interesting to see if the PS6 offers a drive at all, and if it does what formats it supports for movies. I picked up a separate UHD player for my system, because the PS5 doesn't support DolbyVision on movie disks, which was disappointing.

I suspect if they offer a disk at all, it will be like the Slim and Pro - an add-on (maybe even the same add-on, if they can make it work) for an extra price. Availability will be another question, as well as features.

Honestly, I think it's more likely that if Microsoft's idea of mailing in disks works well, they'll copy that idea - ship them your disks so they can be destroyed, and get a code for a digital copy (that they can never ever take away, pinky promise!).

While I won't touch the discussion of the working conditions, as I don't know enough about them for my comment to be useful, I do think the layoffs after releasing a game are going to be trend that continues for everything that isn't a live service game. The developer needs all hands on deck to wrap it up and get it out the door, and maybe for the first patch post release, but at some point that full staff you had to finish the game no longer has work to do. Some studios may be able to switch people over to the next game rather seamlessly, but that requires excellent management that has games staged and ready at the right time. That's hard to pull off.

Jobs aren't there for the sole benefit of the employee - they're there to provide something the employer needs, too. If the next project isn't at the stage they need all hands on deck, then it's time to lay off some of those hands until you have work for them to do and need to start hiring again. It can be brutal, but it's still a better career than hunting wild animals with a sharpened stick to get food for dinner.

I signed the petition - I lament the loss of physical games.

But I also recognize this was inevitable. The industry is moving this direction whether we like it or not, and it's been moving this way faster and faster. The publishers want it, and despite the enormous backlash, the majority of customers want it as well.

We're on the losing side. We're the buggy-whip collectors watching the auto industry take over transportation.

I'll have to go back and look - perhaps a good reason to fire up my PS3 and revisit an old favorite. If I don't have the Platinum for this, I think I want it. August 31, you say? Hmm....

(double-checked, have the platinum, I rarely get those in the PS4+ era, but have them on both InFAMOUS games on the PS3)

@gordonps I don't read that as a call for government action, but for Sony to make it a policy. They already have some oversight over trophies, this would be a rule they could choose to add.

And personally, I think it's a good rule that would make sense.

@Boxmonkey Okay - but you're kind of proving my point. You're not talking about switching to PC because Sony isn't going to make Playstation discs any more - you're giving reasons for switching to PC that have been true since the start of the PS4 era.

I don't get the logic of trying to punish Playstation for eliminating discs by moving to a platform that hasn't offered physical releases for a decade or more.

I do some PC gaming, but the vast majority of my time is spent on Playstation, and that's unlikely to change.

I will add, I'm not a huge fan of multiplayer, but MP on a console is a billion times better than MP on PC, where bots and cheats are as rampant as the draconian anti-cheat methods which fail to work as designed.

If this was Sony against the world, they might back down. But it's not.

Publishers are happy to kill physical sales. They don't want to deal with the cost of physical distribution or the "loss of sales" to the used game market.

PC has already killed physical sales, and XBox is clearly very close to doing the same. Nintendo has largely joined them, though apparently with a nod to the used game market that lets (some?) codes be re-used...I'm not an expert on that.

The push back that MIGHT convince Sony to change could be push back from retailers. If Best Buy and Walmart and whoever else sells large quantities of Sony consoles and/or games pushes back hard enough, they might win some concessions. But don't bet on that. If they can replace locked cabinets full of games with a small display of game cards with codes that don't unlock until they're swiped at the point of sale, then they might be thrilled with continued sales AND smaller floor space requirements with smaller risk of loss from theft.

I suspect Sony is hoping to change laws in those 132 countries to allow them to roll out PSN to them, so they don't mind bad press in pursuit of leverage. Sony's message is probably "talk to your government about changing the law so we can run PSN there." I'm not so sure that's wise, but it's not my business to run.

Worth keeping in mind if they don't have black Friday deals when I come up for renewal.

@LiamCroft I, for one, own the version I could play on my PS5 Pro now, and am not buying the remake - but a comparison of what both would look like on the hardware I'd actually play them on today would be more telling than comparing the new to what the older one would look like on a PS4 I no longer own.

That said, I tend to doubt the PS4 version would look dramatically different on my PS5 Pro compared to a PS4, though I do expect it might have a higher frame rate than it did on the PS4.

I still argue that this is what the publishers in the industry have wanted for decades. They don't see the used game market as positive, they don't see it as promotion, they see the sale of used games as stealing sales they could have made directly to the used game purchaser, with money going to a third party who didn't do anything to make the game. And they do have something of a point, even if I disagree with it.

The XBox One announcement in 2013 was pandering to this desire on the part of publishers (and Microsoft itself), who hoped to increase revenue by killing the used games market. I'm not sure if the reasons are all the same today, but they're MOSTLY the same, maybe with some extra concerns thrown in about the cost of production and shipping, loss due to theft or damage, and some greenwashing concerns about waste.

It will be interesting to see how the retail stores accept this. In-store sales are sure to drop for codes, though online sales might actually increase if stores are allowed to offer their own discounts on the digital codes. Sony hasn't allowed third parties to sell codes for several years, so it will be interesting to see how those relationships shake out and what happens - if stores around the world pull Playstation from their shelves because there's no profit in it for them, that COULD have some negative effects.

@ShadowRJ What has the industry done that's worse than this? That's easy. DLC. Pay-to-win. Massive post-purchase monetization. Games that feel more like spam than game, because of all the monetization push (nearly every e-sports title).

@ShadowRJ It's not the same as the XBox One announcement, no - but it's the inevitable end to the trend that announcement was declaring.

Yes, Microsoft walked back from it under pressure - but the industry still wanted the future Microsoft had predicted, and continued working towards it. Every disk that has nothing on it but a license key was another step closer to this announcement, every digital sale was another step, every drive-less console was another step. The industry - the publishers and storefront owners - wants this, whether the consumers do or not.

I don't want to see physical releases disappear, but it was inevitable. It makes more business sense to Sony and game studios alike.

Many of the things we love about disks are revenue losses for them - sharing, renting, and the entire used market is revenue they see someone else get that they don't get a piece of (except through DLC sales). Basically that wishlist that Microsoft pushed at the XBox One rollout which Sony countered onstage by handing a disk back and forth - that's the reality that studios WANT, and it's the reality we've been getting closer to.

When I put in a UHD movie disk, I get a better quality image and audio than I get from most any streaming service - the bandwidth just doesn't match. But when I play a game on my PS5, there's no difference in quality between the digital copy of the game and the disk version - the only difference is that I don't have to worry about which disk is in the drive when I play a digital game. That hurts game sales even more than movie sales.

I don't like it, but we all knew it was coming, since that XBox One announcement. Now it's nearly here. Oh well.

Sure, the differences may be small, but the haptics on the controller can be surprisingly immersive. Plus, the PS5 Pro vs the Xbox is likely going to be a bigger difference...but they aren't advertising "Best on PS5 Pro."

@OpheliaDynamight By that logic, they were HIRED by someone else's choices, too. At what point should government interfere with that, too?

Companies make decisions based on what they think is in the company's best interest. Sometimes that means hiring people, sometimes it means firing people. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong. Nothing is ever certain.

And yes, I lean into the government bureaucrat argument, because it's relevant. Bureaucrats CAN be experts, but they can also be political hacks or idiotic paper pushers with no understanding (or concern) of what's best for a business, and there's no way to guarantee which type of bureaucrat you'll get (but they tend toward the latter two, in my experience). The idea that somehow government will manage businesses better than the business can manage itself is historically ignorant. It's like communism - in theory it's the perfect form of government, but in practice it simply doesn't work and always leads to mass poverty and/or death.

@OpheliaDynamight Again, why should I trust a government bureaucrat to make better decisions than a Microsoft executive? Sure, I believed this was all going to happen - but I don't (and shouldn't) have more say over Microsoft than their own executives.

If the studio wanted to sell and Microsoft wanted to buy, then it ought to be allowed even if I think it's a bad decision. Government shouldn't try to protect us from bad choices - it's not our mommy, and it wouldn't do a good job of being mommy if it tried.

Government should be a referee making sure the rules are followed, it can create/enforce rules around employment and truth in advertising and environmental impact, but it shouldn't control which business can buy which other business. It may make sense to have it step in to prevent monopolies, but we clearly don't have in the gaming industry right now. If a studio wants to be bought out by Microsoft (or Sony, or EA, or whoever), it ought to be able to negotiate that deal, and take the good and the bad that comes from it.

@OpheliaDynamight Why should I trust a government bureaucrat to make a better decision than a large corporation executive? That doesn't make any sense to me.

Government should enforce contracts and step in when there are legitimate anti-competitive concerns, but there's no reason why government should oversee any business just doing business. I doubt that more government oversight would have changed much of anything here.

I predicted this - not this game/studio specifically, but this is history repeating itself. Back around 2000, Microsoft went on a buying spree, bought up a bunch of studios, then faltered and shuttered almost all of them a few years later.

20 years later, they repeated the process.

This was always going to happen. Microsoft is a solid third-party publisher, but they don't know how to run game studios, and the market forces that make buying up all the studios you can seem like a good idea inevitably turn into...well, this.

@RoomWithaMoose Yep. What separates a winning live service game from a losing one isn't quality (or at least not JUST quality) - it's popularity. Popularity can be driven from quality - or from being the first to hit a new idea, or the first to populate a fad, or just dumb luck. It's pretty clear nobody knows how to reliably replicate it, not even the ones with hits on their hands right now.

"Love or loathe it, I personally don’t think it’s wrong to pursue this market." Yep.

I loathe it, but I understand it. One enormous hit will make up for all the failures so far, and a few more besides.

It's the same logic that keeps Las Vegas running - one more pull at the one-armed bandit and you just might hit that jackpot.

That hints at the answer, though. Stop trying to hit the jackpot. Make good quality games that keep your platform as the place to play, have moderate but consistent success that keeps the lights on, and then take a percentage of that jackpot any time some other developer hits it and sells through your platform. There's good money to be made not trying to hit the jackpot - ask casino owners.

@Max_the_German I might sell mine used - at this point, "heavily discounted" might be close to what I paid for it back in the day. These days it's a dust-catcher.

@NerdyPaul Maybe. But you have no more real evidence (that the retailer is stirring up FOMO because of poor sales) to present than the retailer does of an impending shortage, do you?

It's equally possible the retailer is acting in good faith and trying to get ahead of shortages, so when they do run out they can point to customers that they tried to warn them. Managing expectations can be a valuable customer relations tool.

It's all speculation for now.

So wait - I thought the price hikes made the PS5 undesirable for everyone. The same people saying that were telling us the PS6 will fail if it comes out next year and costs $1k or more.

Yet now there's a suggestion (I won't go so far as to say "evidence") that PS5 sales might spike this year despite the price hikes. Huh. What else could the experts be wrong about?

If in 2027, the PS6 rolls out in coordination with GTAVI Online, optimized for the PS6 with all the "plays best on PS6" branding in all the promotional materials for it...are you saying sales would still be low? I bet there are enough people who will pay $1k+ to make it a success.

I am not a fan of this type of game at all - I appreciate the art style and the music, but the game play doesn't interest me.

But I love the idea of creative content included with an affordable physical copy. That's awesome! Best of luck to these guys, I hope this is a huge success that encourages more creative additions like this!

EDIT - oh, wait...digital cookbook? I misread that, thought it would be a little pamphlet included. Okay, less interesting. Still a neat idea.

I hate those type of machines in real life, and I don't see why I'd play them on a console. I do love raccoons, so it's got a hook for me there, but...nah, I don't see it.

If this is your thing, have fun. I'll skip it even if it's free.

Wonder if instead of being a dust catcher, I could sell my Series S for something close to a profit over the original price?

The ONLY consumer benefit to stretching out the release of games is if they're also stretching out the announcements, so every week or two there's another addition announced.

If they announce them all at once (like they did this month) but scatter the releases through the month, the only other benefit is reduced load on their servers from people downloading games on different days, rather than all of them downloading on or near the same release day.

Sounds awesome. I'm so tired of racing games that start you at the back of the pack and insist you work your way to the top 1 or 3 in a couple laps - it's not just unrealistic, it also stops being fun after it happens again and again. Win every single race and you never get pole position, how does that work?

Declaring a middle-of-the-pack finish as a victory will be frustrating when we're conditioned to think we should be first every time in every other racer, but if you can feel accomplishment for that it will make the whole thing more enjoyable overall.

"I struggle to see how the PS6 can launch in this climate and be any kind of success like its predecessors."

The problem is, you're comparing the pricing of the PS6 to the PS5, PS4, PS3, and so on. But no matter when it releases, it won't be selling against those, primarily - it will be selling against PCs and a new, expensive XBox console. And if a PC with similar specs is $2k, then while $1k is a lot, it's still a good deal.

Consoles are always a luxury item. The original Atari 2600 sold for $200 when it released in 1977 - that's about $1,020 in 2026.

@Mes_Urson Assuming you don't have metered Internet, sure. It's not fast or convenient, though.

November of last year i NEARLY bought a 4TB drive from Costco, was on sale for $250. I'm so kicking myself now for not pulling the trigger.

@PloverNutter "I have seen more new studios open up, announce a game that never releases, and close within a year than I have seen successful new studios."

That's the standard in the restaurant industry - most new restaurants fail within a year. It's a race to get enough customers and income to cover your expenses before you run out of money - but in the gaming industry, unless you're taking funding from someone (Sony, Microsoft, etc) you don't get any revenue until all the work is complete, and then it's too late to tweak the menu like a restaurant can.

Making a game is a risky endeavor - but the developers have to be paid whether you finish the game and sell any copies or not.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is the new normal - once a studio finishes the big project they were working on, they mostly shutter until the next thing is far enough along to start hiring again.

Even if they have the next game lined up, are they far enough along in planning to move the developers from the game they just finished to the new one, or does it need more work before it's ready for everyone to jump in? Some studios may have the ability to manage multiple games in the pipeline at once and move people between the projects to keep everyone working on something, but not every developer is going to be good at that. That's just reality.

Hopefully the industry finds a way to keep people employed and working productively if they want to, and/or pay enough the employees can absorb breaks between games.

@Kakun "Pc gaming was the beginning of gaming" is an interesting take. Here are two quotes from Wikipedia:

"the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard (was) Released on August 12, 1981"

vs

"Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released c. September 1977"

I'm old enough to have played the Atari 2600 when it was new (can't guess how many hours poured into that thing, but it was a LOT), and I was an exclusive PC gamer back in the day when Voodoo 3D graphics were the top of the line. While PC gaming has a lot going for it, it's hardly a slam dunk that it will kill consoles. Keep in mind, the death of consoles has been predicted regularly for nearly 50 years now, and they're still here.

Have a Pro, so if I play it, it will be on a Pro. Not convinced I should pick it up, though. I'll definitely want to see reviews first, and probably wait for a sale, as I'm a cheapskate.

@Balosi Sure, but...if you're a struggling studio who needs a cash infusion to survive long enough to finish what's in the pipeline, you'll take the buyout from anyone, even a parent company with a history of killing studios. At that point, the choice is die now or maybe die later.

@Hoff And that attitude is why so many AAA titles look and feel the same. If you're worried about making a niche game that won't sell, the obvious solution is to make a clone of whatever IS selling - but we all complain about that, too, don't we?

@Boxmonkey Honestly, I think that's cheap sentiment without a grounding in reality.

If you've seen one superhero movie you've seen them all, but they're STILL making them and many (though not all) are STILL making a profit. If you've seen one reality show you've seen them all, but that drivel is still being produced at an astonishing rate. If you've seen one battle royale game you've seen them all, but Fortnite still rakes in the dough.

Don't mistake your personal preference for the industry's preference, or a studio having financial problems with a lack of interest in their content. It's not just about what people like - it's about how much it costs to make compared to how much it can be sold for - it's about ROI.

Looks like something from Speed Racer or James Bond.

Not every racing game has to be a serious sim - fun and crazy arcade racing can be a blast, too. A variety of well-implemented mechanics can breath new life into the genre - it doesn't have to go full kart racer, but new ideas to shake things up are appreciated IF they're done well.

I had some fun with it when it hit Plus, played partway through the story, and fell out of it. Never disliked it, actually enjoyed the variety, just never got hooked.

I might go back and give it another shot, though I don't care about the multiplayer part generally, anyway.

My (adult) kids bought this, as they're on some sort of Sonic kick, but I wasn't going to play it. Probably still won't.

If they're going to stagger the releases, why are they still announcing them together? That just makes it more confusing, doesn't it? Though I suppose earlier warning that something you might buy is about to be free (even if only for a while) is nice, so I won't complain (much).

Feel free to stand your ground and refuse to spend money on any game that you think ever used AI at any point in development. I actually admire people willing to make such stands for what they believe in - it's the best way to push the market in the direction you want it to go.

Meanwhile, I'll also be interested to see how long people keep that up when they start to realize nearly every game released from here on out is on their AI boycott list. If studios don't admit to using AI somewhere during development, they're probably lying, at least for anything new from here on.

Personally, I think it's all nuanced. AI can be used in destructive ways, in ways that cost jobs and suck the soul out of art - but it can also be used in productive ways to brainstorm and try crazy things that get rejected. If you only see it as black and white, I think you're going to be profoundly disappointed with where things go over the next decade.

What's weird is if they still announce them all on the Wednesday before the third Thursday, but they scatter the releases despite announcing them together.

If they REALLY want more engagement, then an announcement each week of what's coming the following week would put them in the news more often.

For me, it's less about being impatient (I'm willing to wait for games to go on sale or come to Plus) and more about being confused as to what's coming when. I used to know new games would drop the first and third Tuesday, now they're going to be scattered through the month, so it's more likely I'll miss noticing something that would have interested me.

Never heard of it before this article, and after watching the trailer, I have no idea if this is something I'd love or something I'd hate. It has potential, at least.

Not sure when it comes out and how much competition it has will matter - six months after release it will be on a Plus tier and I'll give it a shot then.

Unbelievably sad. It's been years (and I was late to it, playing the PS3 remake), but I'd totally play a remastered ICO on a modern console. It sure feels like Sony messed up with BluePoint - they had a great thing, and they murdered it.

I have a series S which I probably shouldn't have bought, it's been collecting dust. Maybe there will be a reason to fire it up some day, but I'm not so sure, when Microsoft's pay-to-play-online is even more draconian than Sony's, in my experience. Oh well.

We've gone from "there are no PS5 games, this generation is a bust!" to "OMG, there are too many PS5 games, I can't play half the ones I'm interested in, why are they all coming out in the same window?!?!"

Nice problem to have.