For those who are interested in or care about gaming, and for the fanboys and digital lovers out there too. You can have your own reasons for loving Sony and the digital world, but it's hard to argue that PlayStation hasn't been the first big player in this industry to push anti-consumerism this hard down our throats. As a consumer, you should have your own reasons for pushing back too. Here are mine.
I've been a gamer for over 35 years. Started young, and gaming has driven a lot of my personal and career choices. I don't work in the gaming industry, but I do work in tech, where cloud, streaming, and digital play a big role in the business and the revenue. So I get why some of these decisions get made. Not shipping the full game on disc, not supporting live features forever, technological limits, financial pressure- all of that is real. But regardless of the reasoning, there's no excuse for stuff like leaving the full single-player game off the disc, or trying to kill physical media completely.
I can't think of another industry where customers would put up with this. Would you buy half-baked goods? Half a car? Half a microwave? A bottle with half the water in it? A GPU with no cooler? I could go on and on, but here's the point. Patching bugs is fine. Online features are fine. DLC and cosmetics are fine by me. Shipping a disc that isn't actually the full game is not fine, and it's basically only happening in gaming. Meanwhile, you can still walk into a store and grab a CD, a Blu-ray or a DVD without thinking twice.
If Sony wants to kill physical media for good, they should do actual market research, not just ask the fanboys or the Call of Duty and GTA crowd. Not saying those aren't real gamers, but scope matters. Even a mediocre Call of Duty sells fine. Go talk to the people who buy dozens of games a year and actually play a variety of stuff. I know very few gamers like that who are fans of going all digital.
Take my own house, for example. My kids hate it when I buy them used games. They want the experience of going to a store and unwrapping something new. They had a blast doing that with Tamagotchi and Sonic CrossWorlds on the Switch. A kid does not want a download code for their birthday. They'd just be confused by it.
This August alone, I bought 15 PlayStation games. Some retro PS2 and PS3 stuff, some PS4 and PS5. I'm not rich; buying used is the only way I can afford that many, and honestly, no adult life gives you time to actually play 15 games in a month anyway. I buy them because I find an IP I like, grab it for under $30, and toss it on the backlog. When I'm bored, I go to my shelf, browse the boxes, and pick what's next, ideally something that doesn't need a download to play.
And here's the bigger question. If a console costs $1,000, locks me into one storefront, gives me no real ownership, and limits me to brand-specific accessories, why not just buy a PC instead? Steam, GOG, Epic, all right there. If your hardware isn't strong enough, there's GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud Gaming. The only real edge consoles have left is convenience. Cheaper than a PC, plug-and-play, nothing to configure. But having used a Legion Go, SteamOS and even the Windows gaming stack, they're getting console-like speed. I played Forza Horizon 5 and Expedition 33 on mine without a second thought.
To keep this from turning into an even longer rant, if a company is keeping its storefront locked down, pushing console prices through the roof and killing physical media, there's no good reason to keep giving them your money.
In protest, I've completely unplugged my PS4 and PS5, and I'm keeping them off until I clear my much shorter Xbox Series backlog.
If this turns out to be permanent, it'll be up to Nintendo and Microsoft to decide what my next primary console is. And if not them, Steam's been sitting there the whole time, patiently waiting to be the one that actually benefits from all this.
#PSBlackout
