With digital stores closing, the fight for physical gets serious

[PIOTREK27-1982]

The battle is lost already.

PS4 and PS5 doesn't have backward compatibility with PSone, PS2 and PS3 disks and VITAs aren't compatible with UMD PSP disks.

Disk games don't have dlcs and sometimes buying GOTY packs of said games digitally is cheaper than buying vanilla game on disk and buying dlcs afterwards.

Even if you buy GOTY version on disk you only get dlcs in a form of digital code to download. Check Spider-Man or Fallout 4 for reference. Fallout 3 and New Vegas GOTY had everything on disk.
 

There is no way to play any PSP UMD disk games on newer Sony devices. They are only available digitally.

I bought many games on disks but after PS2 it's totally useless and some old PSone and PS2 have bullshit prices thanks to scalpers. There is no point in paying them +400$ for all those Sukodens, Castlevanias, Silent Hills or other games that are available for 9$ digitally max.

Edited September 18, 2023 by PIOTREK27-1982

[Ashande]

3 hours ago, Seamndel said:

These crazy spiraling threads could all be layed to rest if Nintendo, Microsoft and SONY do the following: 

 

• Announce backwards compatibility teams that would work on the hardware and software to emulate lagacy consoles.  If the current flagship isn't strong enough to run emulation then build custom hardware and announce it as a streaming feature that would later come to future iterations of the flagship.  
• Allow third-party disc drives to be attached to the console. Not to actually run anything off-disc, but to validate download and authenticate a custom version of the software. Authentication of custom versions of games via disc has been done since the XBOX ONE. 
• Announce a countdown of, say, 20 years, before allowing a purchase to be downloaded as an executable file onto a different device (effectively removing DRM after a very long period of time). 

 

As for montezation, companies should charge all who weren't on the bandwagon a premium for lagacy content, and further justify themselves by offering enhanced frame-rates and resolutions as well as trophy support and social features. 

 

Players who have their physical discs/cartridges from previous generations should be able to download and play the custom version of the software without any enhancements as long as a valid disc is being authenticated in the drive. To upgrade, companies should charge said lagacy players at a steep discount only for the enhancements. 

 

The most effective way to solve all of this is to appeal in mass to legislators. Legislators can forbid re-releases , set technical and budgetary standards that would allow the release of remakes and outlaw stackable trophy lists. 

 

All said steps would lead to platforms that are more competitive and produce better products. 

 

The Digital v. Physical debate is something the companies want to keep customers busy with.  When consumers are torn between two oppositions, it prevents a large-sized group from forming and appraoching governing bodies that are readily available. 

 

What I offer isn't only a solution that would lead to better products, but would satisfy all consumer types whilst allowing companies to make revenue.

 

 

 

As regards backwards compatibility hardware/software: it’s frequently not an issue of power; it’s one of architecture and physical differences. Developing custom hardware to appease a small portion of the user base is likely not particularly cost effective in the long run (especially as the list of systems and hardware to support grows ever larger), and that’s to say nothing of all the people who scream and yell that offering streaming as an option is either unacceptable or not good enough. How do you propose this would interact with, say, the WiiU’s touchpad, or the PSVR1?

 

As regards the third-party drive: Why third-party? So far as a custom version of the software, who’s going to build that custom version (or the wrapper/emulator that handles it), and where is the money/manpower going to come from? You claim the companies may charge “a premium” for the content (offsetting customer grumbles with QOL updates or graphical boosts), but how is that significantly different from what’s already being done in some cases, and where’s the benefit to them doing this to, say, Stroke the DikDIk compared to something people clamored for for years like Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth or Twisted Metal? That also doesn’t address that server space somewhere is going to need to be allocated to this, which has a cost of its own… and would effectively be doubled (or more) by your demand that owning the old cartridge/disc/whatever would allow access to a non-updated version on newer hardware. Lastly there’s the matter of rights issues; plenty of games in the last decade alone are mired in legal troubles over ownership as devs implode, their catalogues are traded about like baseball cards and individual portions of the content may belong to different people if ownership can be established at all… and that’s before licensed music, actors, guest-stars or branding deals get involved. All of those factors only get worse the farther back you go.

 

The 20 year countdown isn’t a terrible idea, but is still going to hit the primary stumbling blocks of the other two suggestions: server space, compatibility teams and ownership. Both this and the previous suggestion also negate developer/creator choice; if for some reason a dev doesn’t want their game available any longer, with rules like this they have no choice. Some might say “too bad,” but I think that’s kind of a dangerous precedent to dive into.

 

So far as legislation, there is the option to appeal to your regional lawmakers in most places, regardless if you can/will form a supergroup… but what I found most interesting was mentioning getting legislators to ban stackable trophy lists. That strikes me as a strange and very specific thing to want mandated, and I’m not really clear on how that relates to the physical vs. digital debate or backwards compatibility. Perhaps you can elaborate?

 

I feel like companies instituting most of this would end up with a net loss in quality or production, as they’d be effectively forced to spend a significant portion of their revenue on continually ensuring 20+ year old material was available rather than any forward momentum or new products. I’m not invested in the “too bad, sucks to be you, you missed it” philosophy, but at the same time I feel like a hyperfixation on getting anything and everything available forever isn’t really the answer, either.

[LadyGallethX3]

@mrmivo Yeah im surprise government hasnt stepped in, there's a lot of resale taxes $$$ they can make.