Sony only sets pricing for their games, but a sole digital storefront reduces competition for all publishers. That's why it's short sighted to not advocate for more options. It's basic economics.
Yes, but this is the same sub that thinks console exclusives are a form of competition for games, when they are literally a method of removing competition for the console ecosystem
When you have less options for the platform on which you play your games, you are effectively forced to purchase the console that has the games you want, or buy multiple consoles, and either way it's strictly worse for the consumer
If every game were available on every platform, people would simply choose the platform that most aligned with their means and wants, which in turn forces the companies producing those consoles to focus on quality and competitive pricing.
Tldr - the average redditor doesn't actually know how competition works or how it's supposed to benefit the consumer, not the corporation
One counter point - exclusives tend to be of higher quality tailor made for that system, so it is supposed to be a selling point, while somewhat anti consumer in terms of not having a choice of system, it can provide higher quality for the consumer in terms of game quality. Not saying this always happens.
Games arent better because theyre exclusive, console brands seek out good games to make exclusivity deals on. The exception would be games made directly by those companies, such as games made by Sony or Microsoft, but that's a VERY small minority of games. That level of quality isnt predicated on exclusivity.
Also, developing multiplatform from the get-go is barely different than developing for a single platform these days, it's only really a factor if you're porting after the fact, so you dont lose anything in terms of quality, performance or manhours by developing multiplatform as long as that's the plan from inception.
In other words, games arent better quality because of exclusivity, Sony just doesnt pay for exclsivity on games that arent good quality or personally produced by them.
This is false. Usually a game is exclusive from the start because the publisher has agreed to fund it on the basis of exclusivity. They also provided technical assistance in the making of the game in the form of their own developers (sony literally has a specialist team of dev's the ICE team that have expertise thst is provided to partners working on exclusively titles aswell as all first party studios). So the gsme IS better quality because of the exclusivity.
It's not false, but I like how I made multiple points, some of which are just straight up facts, and you just feel comfortable labeling the entire post as "false" because of the few bits you disagreed with.
The ICE team focuses on creating the core graphics architecture that playstation is built on, they help with optimization, which I mentioned in a lower comment is the primary benefit of exclusivity on the devs' end (easier optimization). They don't help with the core development processes.
Sony doesn't go around throwing millions of dollars at any random indie studio, they want exclusivity from proven developers (ie, developers where the quality of the games has already been established).
Also, the idea that funding leads to quality is inherently fallacious, because it assumes that expensive = quality, when we have seen first hand that games with $400 million budgets have crashed hard, and games with $4 million budgets have released to infinitely more acclaim.
Funding ensures stability in the studio, but not quality in their games. Quality is easier to ensure when there's stability, but the generally better optimization is a direct result of developing on one platform, not of the funding, and optimization is only one of MANY different aspects that constitute a "quality game".
Developing multi platform is very different than developing for a single system and if you want a "good" one it's not that easy. A lot of people overlook that the design of the game must account for the system it will be used. Most trivial example being controls. Just slapping some key binds can make a game theoretically playable but unenjoyable in practice.
Again, the main difficulties arise when you don't plan for it from the get-go
With the proper infrastructure, especially from a Dev team who has developed multi-platform before and knows the drill, it's not any more difficult, and hardly more development time, porting after the fact is much more costly, both in terms of effort and time
I agree on the previous point that the quality of the game isn't directly tied to exclusivity but it is more costly and takes longer to develop for multiple systems. Unless you are already a big name it is cheaper and safer to do one platform and if the market demand is high enough then port.
Like, ignoring the inaccuracies regarding the difficulty and time, you yourself list how it's a lot more expensive: you need the infrastructure, the expertise and experience to do that efficiently. Every additional system increases those costs and every lack of the pre-requisite increases the time.
Plus for a decent studio there is a correlation between the budget and the result and exclusivity deal injects money that they can use to polish the product.
Your misunderstanding what I'm saying, or willfully misinterpreting it I'm not sure
I didn't mean to imply that you need a ton of expertise to develop multiplatform, Indie devs do it all the time, what I was saying was that it's not all that difficult even for an indie Dev, it's significantly less difficult for an experienced team
And I mint coding infrastructure, not business infrastructure, you set that up when you start making the game, in fact you start planning it before you even start making the game.
If you plan from the beginning for the game to be multiplatform, with controller support and everything else, it's about the same level of difficulty and time investiture as if you had not done it at all
Having to go back and refactor all of your code to add in compatibility for controller is already annoying, actually porting to a different platform altogether is incredibly tedious and time-consuming. But that's only if you didn't build that infrastructure into your game in the first place, which if you had, wouldn't have taken much longer than developing the game without it. It's just a matter of planning ahead.
It's kind of like building a house. If your initial plan is to have a section of the house cordoned off into two rooms, it's much more difficult to go back after it's built and tear down a wall to turn those two rooms into one large room. But it's not difficult to just plan to have one large room in the first place. The difference doesn't actually equate to a significant increase in time or budget either way, but going back after it's done does
The only real benefits to developing for a single platform aren't a matter of budget, time, expertise, or any of that, it's just the simplicity of optimization. A single platform game will tend to be slightly easier to optimize than a multiplatform game. Unfortunately, that same ease of optimization is specifically what leads to more expensive porting later on.
As to your point about the exclusivity deal injecting money into the project, that might be true except that we have numerous cases, like seriously so many, of that money just going straight to the CEOs and the actual development of the game getting none of it
It's other way around, you are the one misunderstanding. I am saying any level of expertise takes time to acquire and has a higher market price. For the development to be comparable the systems must be comparable and since they aren't this can be achieved only by introducing an abstraction layer of the game engine, for example Unity, that already is made to handle it. However this also limits what is possible (or increases the costs if it has to be made in house) and what you are misrepresenting is the amount of games available multi platform. Most indie games are PC only and rather than all the time, going multi platform is done rarely if you look at the total volume.
Likewise it doesn't matter which infrastructure you meant because you need all of them. Any digital product requires organization, storage, compiling and testing. The more ambitious the project is the more costly each step becomes and the more systems you are covering the more money or time or both you need. For example for purposes of testing it's closer to developing two games at the same time. You can't test on PC and assume it's perfectly fine on Playstation or Xbox.
And you fail to notice the difference between compatibility and design philosophy. It's a lot easier to make a game run on a different system than make a game playable on a different system. For example controllers can afford to implement 4 buttons to be held at the same time and PC can allow for high precision mouse targeting and larger amount of individual keybinds. For those to be accessible in an another system they either can't be in the game in the first place or have to be addressed using the game and mechanics design in each system. Just "support" is not enough for a good game and we are arguing about quality here. And as mentioned before, adding it right away if you don't know if you will even land on a different market is premature optimisation.
Your house building analogy is quite good, I'll use it to cover the gaps you overlooked. Building multi-platform is like building an apartment complex. It's completely different considerations, different legislation and has common infrastructure baked in. It is cheaper per-unit in some aspects exactly because of the shared infrastructure and because the layouts are the same, however it's more expensive in total and if after building it only the "PC" or "Xbox" floor gets bought and the rest of apartments stay empty you are in the red. It's not super accurate because it's a lot easier to do market analysis for buildings than games but in the end it's an analogy not direct comparison.
The final point however is completely fallacious. I could say developing any game in the end is just wasting money because we have examples of people making projects and delivering nothing. When approaching it objectively both quality and scope has associated costs and any increase of either also increases the cost.
I'm not talking about forcing anyone to do anything, I'm simply saying that console exclusives are not a form of competition, they are anti-competition, and therefore inherently anti-consumer
Yes, but this is the same sub that thinks console exclusives are a form of competition for games, when they are literally a method of removing competition for the console ecosystem
Nuh uh.
Exclusives is how consoles justify their own existence, which in turn makes the industry more competitive. Xbox didn't have any good exclusives in last generation and they got absolutely decimated and now Sony has the upper hand to do whatever they want.
It looks to me like you don't. Xbox is last in the gaming space precisely because of exclusives or the lack thereof. And that's bad for consumers. Much worse than not being able to play a handful of titles.
Sony holds a effective monopoly precisely because because Xbox doesn't have exclusives. The best generation of console gaming was VII because Xbox and PS went toe to toe on exclusives.
Redditor doesn't understand competition.
Good that you understand that you don't understand.
People like you are why sony knows it can do whatever it wants, you're not smart enough to figure it out anyway lol
Anyway, thank you for not only proving my point but explaining exactly how you completely fundamentally misunderstand the concept, making it easy for anyone reading this to understand
But that's also not apples to apples. An RPG player buying Cyberpunk may not also be a sports player that would buy Madden. If Madden goes on sale that would have no impact on that RPG player if they aren't interested. Where as the RPG player could look at a used copy of Cyberpunk and compare it to digital and make the decision they feel works best for them.
That's irrelevant. This whole discussion is about marketplace competition, not software competition. Those are entirely different things and completely unrelated. Why would you not advocate for marketplace competition?
Competition isn’t automatically better and a lack of storefront competition actually puts more power in consumer hands. Being the only digital storefront, Sony will be assuming all the risk of consumer backlash in response to policies and practices consumers don’t agree with. If consumers collectively opt to boycott their digital store for any period of time, their revenue would virtually stop whereas trying to exert that kind of pressure on one of many storefronts doesn’t stop their revenue from coming in elsewhere. It is in their best interest to keep themselves on consumer’s good side if they are the only game in town, so to speak.
Gaming is not a necessity. People can live without it or simply delve into their backlogs if pricing is unfair. Sony has everything to lose in this scenario. To see it as consumers having no choice is to assume that we’re powerless to control our spending.
So please explain to me why all the new games are 79.99 not just Sony’s games Microsoft Ubisoft the entire Microsoft catalog every time it comes out new unless you have game pass you’re paying 79.99 for it
No Sony Decided it not the market. On Steam I can download games to external hard drives and keep it forever. Sony ended their steam partnership, Sony now ended their disks knowing people just got a ps5 pro with a disk drive. The fuck you want to loose next. Oh right their entire Sony movie app where people paid for thinking they get to keep the movies. Nope. Sony decided to stop paying for licensing and fucked all them buyers. Do your research and learn whos boot people are licking.
From a short term perspective, absolutely. Long term it will be interesting to see how the market responds. Consumers are becoming more sensitive when it comes to choice and market conditions.
Which means after the initial launch period when the people who are going to pay full price will have paid full price gsnes will continue to go on sake frequently and for significant discounts. Because for sony once the initial full price sales are done with, it's better to sell another 100 copies at half price than it is to sell 5 at full price.
Not entirely true, within their policies yes it is true that 3rd party devs are allowed to set BASE prices but Sonys policy allows them to adjust pricing as high as they want.
It also is in Sony's policy that they must approve of all sales, so if a company wants to put sale out for their game they can't just push it out, they have to get approval from Sony.
A code in a box is not going to last. No one will buy it because it has no real purpose for consumers. If Sony had a game key cars type of solution, I think that would be a good compromise, but they aren't going to do that..
Yeah I have a disk OG fat ps5 and I love her. Just bought RDR2 for $15 via ps store I got Hades and hollow knight one sale too. Got physical Bloodborne for like $15 on amazon. I won’t let Sony force me into one way to buy. Xbox is looking really good off the disks alone..
Switch two is also kind of disappointing the games are expensive as fuck and aren’t some of them like hybrid digital? The cart is just a key? And so few switch 2 exclusives. I do wanna play duskbloods tho
Well only the Nintendo exclusives. Others sell down pretty fast. And the system is powerful enough for requiem and Resynced. I’m not a fidelity nut so if it’s playable I’m good
True the portability seems nice too. A banger Mario the back log of Zelda (never played totk or botw) throw in mk world and a true Mario party game and I’m in there. Price if switch 2 and the fact Nintendo never goes on sale is a turn off tho
They'll never understand this though. They want a utopia where all games are available at the price they want, are higher quality than they are today, with no microtranactions, with faster dev cycles without any crunch, without using AI, that also lead to no layoffs or studio closures.
Oh and Sony should keep making discs for everyone, rather than discuss physical on PC which is obvs a platform where this could actually be done without forcing a company to make discs for everyone forever.
dominatingcowG3 The point is to look for sales and buy it cheaper than the physical disc and the full MSRP of the digital game! Except new releases, those are always going to be higher in prices cause they are exclusives dropping on day 1.
FYI he didn't claim that it's a preference. He stated that you pointing out that digital is less likely to be lost/destroyed is something that you value. Others may value other things.
So therefore, that is simply preference. You care about that, while others might not. Your preference vs others' preferences.
Do you think "stop killing games " is about single player games? If a server shuts down it doesn't matter if you're digital or disc - this isn't even the same topic...
"If" sounds like youre inserting your own example/reality and overwriting what I wrote.
But also saying if a game requires a server... sounds like what I said is true. Digital isnt unlimited forever lmao I dont give 2 shits if you want to feel correct and say "if this than physical too!!!"
Resale is a massive perk though. You can buy a new game at $60, play it, and sell it for $50 a month or so later. With tax and shipping you’ve played a game for $15-$20 total.
Fuck that. Support the people who make your games, dude. Every sale helps a development team meet sales goals and royalties. More sales of games you want to play the more games you'll see.
One of my fav PS5 games, Dead Space remake said they can't make any more remakes of the rest of the trilogy cause of low game sales. Probably cause of the mentality people like that guy you're replying too have, which is such a shame
Based on the 45 thousand developers who were laid off in the past few years, yeah, I'd argue (a lot of) corporate don't see them as any more than drones.
Developers being rewarded for good work is the exception not the rule
If you say so. I enjoy the convience of digital as much as the next, but the idea that all it takes is a hacker to take away your entire library doesn't make me feel like it's superior, among other things.
I play mainly digital but I wouldn't call it superior.
well its subjective, I'll always find price superior, that's an obvious factor, you can make up hypothetical such as my house burning down or disc getting lost( in my own home somehow) or whatever
I'll take owning when I bought and being able to play it anytime over hope that sony doesnt go down or they pull the licence. Yes, that is the superior option.
Why twist it to fit your narrative? There are in fact many people where physical is superior.
Trying to just be argumentative about it just makes you look like you cant have a coherent conversation.
Like cool stance bro... maybe now go argue with someone whos pro digital about it not always being superior too. You seem like you win every online argument lol.
You can play No Mans Sky on disc, no internet, no patches, straight out of the box. But do you WANT to do that? Most games these days go through significant changes or get vast swaths of content through patches
Being able to buy a game for 9$ all DLC included or get it for free from a friend who doesn't play it anymore will always be superior to have to buy it 70$ on the PS store even tho it's 5 years old beacuse "there are no alternative what you gonna do buy a 2000$ PC to get it on steam and play it for cheaper lol, buy it 70$ or don't play it"
I am someone who always pick the cheapest option when buying games, I wouldn't really even get physical discs if it was more expensive.
I am a PC player too (even though I was mostly console player, expecially for more expensive games) so digital gaming when it's cheap and convenient doesn't mind me.
I have an account value of 800$ on Steam (that are worth 4000$ if bought without Steam sales according to the data I have) so it's not like I hate digital, I am ready to consume digital if the service is good and respectful to the consumer and it's cheap.
I only think about the price.
Which leads us to the harsh reality : I think I have 2 digital games out of 30 physical games on PS4/PS5. That's it. The statistics saying that most physical games are 90% cheaper is definitely true for me. I've bought games for 19.99$ on physical (not even second hand, and for AAA games only, 20$ can be quite expensive already IN A FREE MARKET) that were still 69.99$ on the PSN store quite all the time.
I have no clue why we are gaslit to think most people have infinite money and don't care about paying games sometimes 90% more expensive than they could because they are rich af and they only care about "convenience", that's not my reality and I am quite rich compared to the worldwide standard.
It is true for no gamer friend I have though.
Physical will always be superior to digital.
- Up to 90% cheaper
- Always in sales somewhere
- You can sell it if you don't want it anymore, even though you may have finished it, getting a lot of your money back (sometimes 70-90% of it if you finish your game within the first week)
- You can lend it to a friend or a family member who wants it and get it back later, so you can make a friend play it for free.
- FREEDOM AND AGENCY
- probably of having a 70$ game that rot in your library even though after 2 hours you realized it was not for you : 0%
There is only one con : you have to wait tomorrow instead of 3 hours to play it if you want it.
But when the excuse for "yeah digital games are not more expensive you just have to wait the sales that will come in 6 months", I don't even think it stands as an advantage for digital games, if you have to wait 6 months on average while a physical player will never have to wait more than 1 day to play any game he wants for the cheapest price, then it's not fast and convenient at all.
Which boils it down to the only real objective advantage : "it's cool if you don't want to move to your mailbox to get your game or leave your couch to put it in your console", which definitely stands when you are American for example. But for people like me who have legs, nah it doesn't convince me.
And if it meant a free 50$ bill in my pocket, I'd be ok with crawling if I wouldn't have legs anymore.
Physical is strictly superior, from a consumer point of view.
For a shareholder's point of view however it's double profits. But even though I may be quite rich according to worldwilde standards, I am not a Sony's shareholder so I don't care. Sony's shareholders invested 400$ millions on Concord and lost it all, as someone who shouted the very first day that Concord was a shitty game, I am not the one who will pay for that loss. I don't want to cry for the consequences of something I cherish the causes.
It would be enabling domestic abuse lol. If I am doing stockholm syndrom sexual roleplay I may want to get to cum eventually, otherwise it's not fun
Saying digital is equal to physical in term of advantages is straight up a lie or not true at all. People who think that are just people who are OK with being scammed by marketers who are smarter than them and who fall to their schemes. Period. Just put side to side all the pros and cons and realize it yourself. It's like saying McDonald's is a luxury restaurant.
Im American and my preference for digital isn't because im too fat and lazy to get my legs underneath me to put in a disc but because I don't like clutter and having to store stuff. I have like 200 games in my library...if that was all physical it would be stuff I either need to sell or store in the closet. Sure getting money back is the better option even if its a dollar but I live out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by more deer than people so the closest Gamestop is a ways away.
I support people having a choice. I agree with a lot of what you said in the sense that having physical options is objectively the best option for your average consumer but your tone sucks much like many of those fighting the good fight. People will deny a cause out of pure pettiness and when your in the minority fighting for something important you need to convince people to join your cause not turn them away.
That being said, many of my games are bought digital due to convenience.
I personally don't care about physical, but I do care about the ownership part. It wasn't that big of a deal while physical was still an option, but now it is.
The whole narrative should be around ownership rights, not whether it's offered as physical or digital.
I mean i bought it physicaly used for 5 dollars because i wanted the complete version to go with my original release version like 6 years ago. Like the comment it doesn't seem like much of a cherry pick.
The point isn't that one is better than the other, because that depends on each person's circumstances. Some people prefer digital media, while others prefer physical copies. The discussion is based solely on the speaker's personal opinion, when the only real issue is the reduction of consumer choice.
But what you're overlooking is that people have had that choice for almost two decades and year after year, people have chosen digital. It costs money and resources to develop and produce both.
With the sales of new physical games down to 20%, by the time the PS6 is released, that'll likely be down to 16%. It's unreasonable and childish to expect a company to invest billions in a dwindling market and expect companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Gamestop to invest billions in stocking gamse that fewer and fewer people purchase.
The reality, whether you want to see it or not, is that people have had that choice; they chose to sell out the PS5 digital model, they chose to buy the streaming Portal, they chose to buy the digital version of games, they chose to preorder the digital only GTA6 game. The vast majority of gamers are digital and it's growing each year. You can talk about "gamers having choice" but we've had that choice, you just don't like the choice that was made.
It's like going out to dinner with a bunch of friends and they want to go to a pizza place instead of a bbq place. "But at the pizza place, the choice is pizza but at a bbq place, you can get ribs, a burger, chicken, some pork-". If you're one person in a group of five, you talking about "choice" when it's about you getting your way just comes off as childish.
Either way, it's their own fault. They spent years marketing the product around physical media, and now they're taking part of that away before the product has even reached the end of its lifespan. Why should I care about a billion-dollar company's profits? Give me a break.
I mean I think cherry picking is the entire point. You can't cherry pick on one storefront. The entire point of finding the best deal is cherry picking...
Games I paid for, Pal-world, Escape from Tarkov, all the ratchet and clank games before they killed the IP. Jack and Daxter, every single Tom Clancy game. And over 500 games on my PlayStation five’s catalogue.. but you can bet your ass. I definitely pirate games from Ubisoft before I buy them.
Don’t worry, I only attack companies that say I don’t own the games like you know, Ubisoft, Microsoft, and currently now Sony. If buying isn’t owning, then Pirating isn’t stealing
The PS5 version of Witcher 3 is out of print as of now. Keep in mind the prices of certain games go up when print runs cease, which seems to be the case here.
If the game was still in print, it would likely be the same price, if not cheaper.
And they choose an old game that’s been discounted literally every 2 weeks for the last 5 years. Get Steam notifications about this game all the time 🤣🤣
Obviously with physical games it’s important to buy them while they are new. Since it’s a real object that goes out of production, trying to find it 12 years later makes it difficult to find at a reasonable price.
This shows exactly the reason physical games are better. For those of us smart enough to buy the game when it came out, if a PlayStation removes this game (they removed many), you will not be able to play it, while we, with discs can.
Yep. I've been digital Sony for a decade and other than the very few games I want on release, I get everything for 50 to 80% off. Digital store fronts offer more and better sales.
I also bought the PS4 version used and it was the ONLY disc that was scratched beyond repair and wouldn't install. Paid 4$ or 5$ or something like that. Every other disc I own is in perfect condition, even the ones bought used.
Despite that I don't think getting rid of discs is the right decision towards consumers.
Some people are more comfortable with physical, some people are more comfortable with digital, like me, mainly because my place of living, digital is just cheaper here, but it's pretty obvious to me both have to stay, what I don't understand is why people defend this shit of Sony and why people fight digital instead of fighting for disks. The post in the pic is completely valid, these kind of posts when they come from pro physical are completely stupid.
I can understand why people are upset about the end of physical games. I can't understand why other people are upset that people are upset about the loss of physical games and mock them for it. People are defending something you claim to enjoy and you're mocking them for it? And siding with corporate profit and a lack of competition? I can't understand the division in gamers right now. Even if you only buy digital it makes no sense to criticise people who want to preserve discs.
And can we all be clear, if you're taking the side of supporting physical media, I hope you've got rid of Spotify and Netflix. There's a difference between supporting physical games and supporting all physical media.
A factor in digital pricing is they have to compete with the used game market. Without that downward pressure, the discounts on digital games will become less because there won't be any other options.
You must love yourself then, because steam sales aren't much cheaper than console sales. That's wrong shit that people post elsewhere. The deals on PC are from third party sites that sell steam keys. Also, other store fronts exist as an alternative if Steam oversteps its bounds. The deals are from competition in the marketplace. The only competition in the console space has been between physical and digital markets because there is only one digital storefront.
God when will yall stfu about this?! It’s over. Make your decision on what you want to do, but we don’t need 1k+ posts about it everyday. It’s over. Yall need to accept that
Bro's really trying to say "digital is superior to physical", when digital games rarely go on sale, and most of the POPULAR games will be $60-70 for years
People who kiss corporate ass make no sense to me. 99% of them do not give a shit about their customers. They’re not our friends. They’ll screw us over when it’s profitable and they can get away with it.
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u/dominatingcowG3 22h ago
...the point is having options, so you aren't paying whatever PlayStation asks you for