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Playstation single player games will no longer be ported to PC
- Thread starter Flogger23m
- Start date
I'm not saying it will never work, just that it's not guaranteed and that get-angry groups frequently have outsized views of their impact.
And that includes social media users. Yes, it's 2026 and there are billions of people on Instagram/X/Threads/Facebook, but the angry replies and ratio/note campaigns still come from a very small slice of their user bases. The people who are indifferent to Sony discontinuing discs aren't enthuiastically posting "I don't mind either way!" They say nothing.
Now, if Sony is still dealing with this months from now, you might have a point. But companies also know to resist knee-jerk reactions, especially if they know the trends and advantages work strongly in their favor. The backlash will likely cool down; the moves to digital and the cost savings will last for much, much longer. Capcom recently noted that 93% of its game sales are digital, for instance... does it make sense for Sony to support that 7%-and-shrinking demo just because someone posted a "greed has no limits" meme reply on X?
You don't have to like Sony's cutoff, but it's optimistic to believe that you'll change its strategy.
Prince Valiant
Gawd
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Sony is repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot. I hope it continues long enough for the masses to take notice and decide to have a spine for once.
Well something is making Sony worried because people were cancelling their PSN accounts in mass and now when you try to cancel it tries to offer you a discount. 
https://insider-gaming.com/playstation-discount-cancel-ps-plus/
https://insider-gaming.com/playstation-discount-cancel-ps-plus/
It’s because 6 months later or a year later you can get the game for $30 at Walmart while it’s still $80 on the PlayStation store.
We joke about the likes of GameStop but they are still around for a reason.
Not everyone buys the latest games week 1, lots of us are getting them months if not years later. Single player narrative games don’t have the same FoMo issue that live service ones do, you don’t need to be rushing to be playing them with people.
That’s the rub for Sony, their Live Service plans have collapsed and making those exclusive was never a viable option. So that leave single player narrative games, and if half the buyers are getting them second hand or from the discount bin it only makes Sony’s numbers look worse.
PC players don’t really care because we have the likes of Valve and the frequent Steam Sales, imagine PC gaming without that?
DukenukemX
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It's mostly due to botched DRM. Look at what happened when Microsoft raised the prices of Game Pass? People left in droves, and went Playstation. People bought PS5's and aren't coming back to Xbox. Look at it another way, if it didn't matter then why did Microsoft quickly retract it? Xbox One's were being sold with the DRM feature still there, but an update quickly removed it.
We know Uncharted 4 sold 83% on discs because of the Insomniac Games leak. Also, the PS4 was very much able to buy games digitally, just like the PS3. If you look at the leak harder, you see PS5 games that sold mostly on discs. There's many more games that are well over 50% on discs, but they're on PS4.
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart: 76% Physical
• God of War Ragnarök: 76% Physical
• Demon's Souls Remake: 70% Physical
You do know Final Fantasy 7 on the PS1 was three game discs? If it doesn't fit in one disc then that's a bigger problem for the SSD size on PS5's. You're also assuming that people have a faster internet than a Blu-Ray disc, which is not always the case. Also, people may have data caps that could make this a problem.
It's obvious that Sony is doing this to maximize profits because they can't increase game prices. Sony would have no competition for pricing, no used games, and no reason to ever discount games.
Sony will end up like Sega in that they'll make games but not hardware. It has happened before and will likely happen to Sony. Microsoft is already half way there.
Apple and Google aren't companies to admire. They too need to allow side loading.
PC gamers don't care because Valve has competition. We should worry when Valve starts selling their hardware that only works with SteamOS. Then we should be upset.
I am quite pleased that Valve is going to be making Steam OS available for general download and install soon rather than just the janky Steam Deck image you can try to force through.
And both Valve and Nvidia are reporting that they should have native Nvidia support for Steam OS sometime next year, which will be nice.
I am growing ever more impatient with Microsoft each year, and it is not made better by the recent price hike on my licensing; bastards upped my annual by 19%, which I can't give the specifics on, but it damned near added a 0 to my bill.
M76
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If you haven't seen any numbers how can you say so confidently that it's not a major factor? I for one have re-sold every single playstation game I ever owned. And I'm sure everyone else did the same when they got rid of their old playstation, why would they keep games they no longer have the HW to play? All those used games are a lost sale to sony, even if these are discounted by that time, making 20-30 over nothing is still huge.
You act as if cloud storage and bandwith is free. It's not, and even worse sony has to pay for every download while they only need to pay for physical discs once.
Or continue to offer both options and let the user decide? How about that? That system seemed to work pretty well for everyone.
Sort of.... Single-player games, yes, they don't get the same degree of patching, but live-service ones not so much because of how the patching works.
The disk may offset the bandwidth requirements for the first few weeks, but a few months down the road, you are breaking even.
I wish you were right on this one; I really do, but sadly development doesn't work this way anymore, and that is to the detriment of us all.
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The money people get from selling their games would go right back into buying new games. So there would be less sales of new games if people couldn’t sell their games used. And the people that buy the used game wouldn’t necessarily buy them new if they weren’t such a low price, meaning they were probably never going to buy the game unless at the used price, so it’s not a lost sale.
M76
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Right.....So you're saying sony will kill all of its sales by going digital only? Because that is the implication here, that if people can't sell old games they won't buy new ones.
Funny how now suddenly this argument is valid, but not for piracy, pirates would surely buy all games they download for free! /s
I didn't say it wasn't, just that there's no math to support it. You don't make conclusions when the evidence isn't there one way or the other. Anecdotal experiences can be useful, but they aren't proof of broader trends by themselves.
They're not free, but they're cheaper than manufacturing discs and boxes, shipping them to stores, and retailers taking their own cut (typically 20-30%). That's a lot of money that could go toward digital infrastructure. Again, I'm not celebrating this, just pointing out the financial incentives for Sony.
Eventually, the finances of offering choice might not make sense for the companies involved. Like I mentioned, nearly all of Capcom's game sales are digital. What's the point of offering a choice only a small minority of customers use, but still has significant downsides for the business?
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I'm so disillusioned from this sort of thing now. Like the reddit protests when they removed API access and killed third party apps. People love to cry loud about it but they always fold in the end. ESPECIALLY gamers.
I'd love to see it work out and make a difference just once but I doubt it
DukenukemX
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People feel the same with Adobe. What I'm afraid is that one day Valve wakes up and realizes they have a market they can abuse. Look at the prices of their GabeCube and SteamDeck?
View: https://youtu.be/CqjLot7vg4U?si=ccwTZ9JUX8IiisFN
Don't be shocked if one day Sony limits how many times you can download a game. They are already min maxing their profits by removing physical media, and this can promote the need to buy PS6's with larger SSD's. Assuming that Sony doesn't put an M.2 slot in their PS6.
He's not wrong. If people offset their new game purchases by selling their old games then this could hurt new game sales. Look at what happened to Game Pass when Microsoft raised prices? The price increase wasn't worth the loss of subscriptions so they lower prices.
Not all games but I've done it. If I play a game I truly like then I buy it. I did this with all From Software games. I try before I buy. Do you know how many crappy new games have come out lately? I didn't even think about pirating SilkSong, because I knew I'd like the game plus $25 is cheap for a good game. This may also push harder for piracy since if you can't own it then you can't steal it. Side news, HyperVisor might work on Linux soon. Without the need for a VM that is.
Yeah... My Creative Cloud licensing was equally atrocious, and let's just ignore the price increase for Adobe Sign.
I actively fear what happens to Valve the day after Gabe is no longer involved.....
Just as I fear for Linux the hours after Linus is gone, his iron fist and way with words is probably the only thing that has kept linux free and stable.
Flogger23m
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I would assume 1st party games sell more physical copies than 3rd party. They generally hold more value and I think people who really like and/or are invested in the platform are more likely to get the 1st party games physical, even if most of the other games they buy are digital.
maybe Sony will evolve after eliminating physical sales...maybe they will offer more sales on their storefront for digital games...no one is talking about that possibility
They haven’t done it yet, why believe they would start now? In fact they did the opposite and started charging more for titles retroactively when they increased prices.
they haven't done it yet because it doesn't make sense to offer big discounts on the digital version while the physical version is still available at a higher price...now they don't have to deal with the extra costs so they will be more inclined to offer discounts on their digital storefront
Flogger23m
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Maybe, but I am doubting it. They could always offer more discounts on digital games and leave physical games being the more expensive option for those that value it more. It does cost more to make so it would make sense. Greater digital sales would get more people hooked onto downloads like PC gamers were. It would have softened the inevitable blow.
But it’s the opposite you can get the physical for a fraction of the price years old titles and the digital price went up. We’re talking physical for 30 marked down from 70 while the digital was made 80 to adjust for inflation…
I’ll believe it if I see it, but absolutely nothing Sony has done leads me to believe that it’s even on the table as an option.
sharknice
Supreme [H]ardness
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I think Sony has the numbers and calculated they'll make more money ditching discs if the trends continue.
M76
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Nobody is saying there is no financial incentive for sony. Of course there is. All we're saying is that their excuse that it only affects a few straggler dinosaurs who still buy physical media is bullshit. As Louis Rossman would say, if they're going to be a bitch be the whole bitch and admit that they are doing it out of greed and don't give a fuck about how many people are affected negatively.
People also like to throw a pity party when developers are laid off, but I have not seen the same energy shown about retail store workers who are inevitably getting laid off by this. Xbox is barely hanging on life support, PC hasn't been a factor in a long time in physical sales, so if sony pulls the plug on physical that will be the end of physical videogame stores.
The only people showing pity to the laid off devs are be the modern audience. The same modern audience that doesn’t actually buy the games/movies/comics they campaigned for. I have zero pity for the devs that ignored actual customers feedback for the last 10+ years, that they didn’t like the direction things were going and would stop buying those games. And they also openly mocked and belittled customers’ concerns about product direction, assuming we’d buy the slop anyway. Sadly there’s a bit of collateral damage, but that always happens in the creative destruction process.
I’m very much of the opinion if Sony follows through with no physical media, they’ll open Pandora’s box on real digital media ownership for the whole digital media industry, instead of faux ownership where it’s watered down to a license that can be revoked at any time.
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M76
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For digital ownership to be an actual thing first we'd need to get rid of DRM, I don't see that happening, do you?
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He's still ranting 15+ years later and hasn't aged a bit, lol
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSY_m3H8nQE
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSY_m3H8nQE
DukenukemX
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Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart on Sony's own store is still listed as $70. The Digital Deluxe Edition is on sales for $40. Brand new on Amazon it's $40. On Ebay it's $25 used. On Steam it's normally $60 but the summer sale is going and it's currently $24, and only good for 4 hours.
This is a five year old game that used to normally end up in the dollar bin at my local super market. The only versions of this game that's guaranteed to be low is the physical disc version. You wanna depend on Sony for sales? What Sony has done is create a price floor for games. Remember that Sony will no longer be making games for PC, which means if Sony had it their way then you'd pay $40. Sony does have a sale in both their store and Steam's store, but Steam has the better price.
You can think of the license as DRM. If you can't play the game without entering a license key then that's DRM. It may not be effective at preventing piracy, but when has DRM ever been?
The leak shows that Sony made game sales are usually over 75% physical, which means there's more people interested in physical than digital. Nobody can argue against numbers.
We forget that game stores are likely to be shut down after this. They can't survive on selling used games from PS3 and Xbox 360.
View: https://youtu.be/dmenIYxAcCo?si=AAsIFTu1IDd4r8tX
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M76
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DRM has only ever been effective at annoying and driving away legitimate customers.
I see it as more of a "yes, and" rather than "either/or." Yes, Sony wants more money, but it also has real stats showing the transition to digital (especially by the 2028 timeframe).
I feel for retail staff that are let go, but let's be honest: that shift happened years ago. GameStop and similar stores now tend to be collectible and accessory shops that just happen to stock some new games. And if the physical games are basically DRM in a box, have you really achieved your objective?
Like zehoo suggested, my hope is that moving to all digital will shine a spotlight on ownership and lead to a solution, like an equivalent to Movies Anywhere (i.e. there's DRM, but ownership crosses services and platforms) or even that shift to DRM-free media we saw with iTunes and other stores after years of reluctance.
sharknice
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There are some similarities between music and games but I don't think it's going to work out the same way.
The music industry gave up on DRM because they lost. People can just stream any song instantly without ever needing to download or own it.
And even before that if you had a CD you could always play it on any CD player, if you had an mp3 you could always play it on any mp3 player. DRM added restrictions to change the norm and failed.
But games have always been more restricted. It has always been you can only play Playstation games on a Playstation, you can only play Xbox games on an Xbox. You can only play PC games on a PC, having to enter a cd key or other DRM has been a thing since pretty much forever. And then there are live service and online multiplayer games, and all sorts of forms of games that don't even function without connecting to online servers, micro transactions, free to play games, etc.
The only significant industry figure that has proposed a solution to owning games across multiple stores is Tim Sweeney. Valve doers not want this because Steam's biggest advantage for sales is people want all their games in one spot.
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It really continues to bewilder me why somehow this is the issue that people who use a proprietary, locked down platform - one that has been for better and worse integrating more installs, updates, DLC, sync-ing of saves and other data, digital services. A physical box with a code in it is not much different than one with a disc full of incomplete install media lacking day one patches and other features and in some cases requiring some sort of online connectivity in order to 'unlock' the title. I remember during the PS4 era that after some street date breaks a friend saw that Sony started asking for titles to be "unlocked/decrypted' even after they were installed.
Fixation of physical media in an age where fewer and fewer games are solely and exclusively , complete, running from said medi seems like a sidehow. Rather than focus on spinning plastic in the hopes to get away with some loophope for doctrine of first sale, this feels like a perfect time for the irate console users to join with the long standing PC users to demand amendment to regulation so that digital titles can be transferred just like physical ones. I think I mentioned previously that at least twice to my knowledge Steam has attempted to allow digital resale; deauth, remove from Steam account, put it up on Steam Marketplace like any other item. Owner gets the vast majority of the purchase price (70-80%), the game's publisher gets a modest yet significant cut (I think it was 15-20%) and Steam gets the smallest slice for the sales and transaction infrastructure (5%-10%) or something similar. All the major publishers threatened to pull their content should Steam go through with it, basically turning Steam into nothing but a handful of indies overnight...so they had to back down. This seems like the kind of thing that needs to be legislated - until we deal with the issue of digital ownership/licenses those who profit from locking things down will continue to lobby for the status quo as, like so many other situations, our legislative and regulatory systems have not caught up to technology... often by intent of the aforementioned who benefit.
Fixation of physical media in an age where fewer and fewer games are solely and exclusively , complete, running from said medi seems like a sidehow. Rather than focus on spinning plastic in the hopes to get away with some loophope for doctrine of first sale, this feels like a perfect time for the irate console users to join with the long standing PC users to demand amendment to regulation so that digital titles can be transferred just like physical ones. I think I mentioned previously that at least twice to my knowledge Steam has attempted to allow digital resale; deauth, remove from Steam account, put it up on Steam Marketplace like any other item. Owner gets the vast majority of the purchase price (70-80%), the game's publisher gets a modest yet significant cut (I think it was 15-20%) and Steam gets the smallest slice for the sales and transaction infrastructure (5%-10%) or something similar. All the major publishers threatened to pull their content should Steam go through with it, basically turning Steam into nothing but a handful of indies overnight...so they had to back down. This seems like the kind of thing that needs to be legislated - until we deal with the issue of digital ownership/licenses those who profit from locking things down will continue to lobby for the status quo as, like so many other situations, our legislative and regulatory systems have not caught up to technology... often by intent of the aforementioned who benefit.
It's not a perfect analogy, true. It's more about loosening the restrictions on moving games around once you have them, and making sure they aren't lost because a company could no longer run a DRM server or stopped delivering updates.
Flogger23m
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More than likely people who do lots of selling buy used in the first place. I am sure there is a decent sized portion of the console market that almost never buys new. Even if gamers are playing less games Sony obviously wants to make money off of every transaction.
I was about to post how physical media is meaningless to me, and then I looked around my immediate surroundings and see 20 grand worth of collectible garbage purchased over a lifetime for no other reason than to mostly sit wherever they are at the moment. Why? Dunno, these are 1st world Dilemmas that I try not to spend too much tmie on.......I guess even though games don't run off disc anymore and many times those discs are just spot-checks I'm assuming.........there is that lure of having the case and such in your hand. Personally, I have some old unopened DOS, Windows and a bunch of Atari and Intellivision carts unopened from 30 years ago......but now I will stop and dwell on any old video game packaging in that old-timey kinda way, like when my grandfather would stop at a lumber yard and fondle 4x4's or something....the new selection of saw blades for his table saw.... with this glean in his eye (woodworking, not murder....as far as I know).
Anyhow, not enough time has passed yet to make me nostalgic for anything in a, say, a CD Rom or later box. I have probably 10 or 15 atari, intellivision, colecovision and "Floppy based game boxes" around, mostly unopened while some are, like my Activision boxes and a few others.....and I have to say even though today I could care less about physical media itself, that whole vibe of having the physical packaging, I do get that part of it. Of course, this is from a day when packaging was art. Game graphics on the back of software or cartridge boxes were just artists renditions of the games, not photos of the games actually running....every in-game shot would have a little * years later saying "artists rendition".....there might be nothing but fantasy or cool period art on the packaging in earlier games, and it might not have jack-or-sheet to do with the game itself, kind of part of the fun of those wild-west early Home Personal Computers with tape and 5 1/4" floppy drives days.
Unforuntaely now this just means Sony will want $200 from adult collectors for special editions....which isn't the same vibe.
Anyhow, not enough time has passed yet to make me nostalgic for anything in a, say, a CD Rom or later box. I have probably 10 or 15 atari, intellivision, colecovision and "Floppy based game boxes" around, mostly unopened while some are, like my Activision boxes and a few others.....and I have to say even though today I could care less about physical media itself, that whole vibe of having the physical packaging, I do get that part of it. Of course, this is from a day when packaging was art. Game graphics on the back of software or cartridge boxes were just artists renditions of the games, not photos of the games actually running....every in-game shot would have a little * years later saying "artists rendition".....there might be nothing but fantasy or cool period art on the packaging in earlier games, and it might not have jack-or-sheet to do with the game itself, kind of part of the fun of those wild-west early Home Personal Computers with tape and 5 1/4" floppy drives days.
Unforuntaely now this just means Sony will want $200 from adult collectors for special editions....which isn't the same vibe.
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I won't purchase used PC games. From my experience, 90% of the time the original owner doesn't release the game from their account so the purchaser is potentially stuck with an unusable game. Happened to me several times with EA and a few others.
I'm still disappointed with Sony pulling the garbage move of ceasing porting games to PC. Horizon Zero Dawn PC sold 3.3 million copies. Horizon Forbiddon West PC only sold around 300k. I wonder if the latter is part of the reason why Sony made the decision.
The story in forbidden west is incredibly bad. Gameplay is good though otherwise I wouldn’t have finished it. Was watching some tv series the whole time playing just ignoring the story. Not going to buy the next one, maybe not even another game from their studio unless there are serious changes.
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One of my clients back around 2015 bought a physical copy of Win10 Home for me to use with the then-new build, and I was very surprised to discover it came on a flash drive:
The last couple times I had seen a physical copy of Windows before that was when I bought Windows Vista and Windows 7 through a friend who worked at Microsoft at the time, using his employee discount. Those came on DVDs.
Very surprised games and other software didn't take this route.
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I mean, I guess I do, I paid the extra $80 or whatever for the disc drive on my PS5 Pro.
Games on PC can be way more easily backed up and accessed if there is a problem with the digital distribution platform. Consoles you're kind of SOL unless you can jailbreak it. Also, I guess I trust Valve more than I do Sony.
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Even growing up I always preferred digital since I could easily swap between games.
Now that I main PC though, I had considered buying a PS5 to use on the side. The plan was to get cheap used games and then sell it off once I was done with it. Wouldn't be able to do that anymore. If it was my main library though, I typically prefer digital, especially with how fast download speeds are now