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The whole idea just makes me really sad. I appreciate everyone knows that I love physical game purchases, so I am trying to see this from an objective view - but I appreciate there may always be some unconscious bias. For me, it drives so many poor behaviours and attitudes in the world. They want quick to market, so that means we will get less polished games, more likely towards a PC styled games. The love for PC games just isn't there for me, can't remember when I saw a proper AAA title come out on PC, whilst hundreds of thousands of Indie games are littered on the storefront. Ironically, indie games are usually self contained games that don't need online support, which then could be physical lol. Its the whole experience for me. A console has been a driving force for years as its a 'physical' thing a parent can buy a kid for Christmas. You never see a PC done like that. What went with that is opening games, surprises on what is with them. If you look at the games that have been well received over recent years, so many are physical playable games, but also because they have some incredible physical packages you can buy. The Witcher 3 which is still up there on the best of all time games, was such good value for money. People got maps, details, etc, inside the physical game. We've just hit what I think is about 2-5 years near the end of the Digital, minimalistic era. AI will accelerate but games will go digital for a while, but it will all come full circle and we will be back to delivering items that people want to physically own in their hands and their houses. I saw a joke somewhere that this is the perfect time for Xbox to announce they are going back to Physical games. It would be the Powerplays of all powerplays. Our social voices creates movements very quickly these days, so we'll see if it changes anything in the coming weeks/months.

That's not accurate I don't believe is it? Quite a lot of games still contain a full game albeit without day 1 patches. You generally install the game from it and play from your hard drive admittedly and I think live service games also skew the figures. For example Ratchet and Clank Rift apart, Astro Bot, God of war ragnorok, Spiderman 2 could all be installed and played with just your console and the physical game from start to finish without ever needing an internet connection. The games that do generally follow the practice of a disc being just a download key are typically your Fifa's and Call of Duty's, companies that you would not really be surprised by this. The majority of game 'sales' now are also likely to be live service games which are generally only bought digitally, your fortnites, your Warzones and such which are also notably free and what I think is a big thing is they are not showing what their breakdown is, I suspect DLC's, micro transactions and such may also figure into their figures. Single player titles are much closer to 50% physical and 50% digital sales. 15% of all new game sales are still bought brand new and physical, that is quite a chunk of your fan base to alienate. It also does not include second hand sales so that percentage could be skewed the wrong way. All this is targeting is maximising profit and nothing today with improving things generally. Oh look at us we are doing this because we are following sales trends when in reality it's losing second hand game sales, it's the cost of manufacturing the disc, the case and paying someone to create art for it or layout the casing, the cost of transporting etc etc, all that will now go into the profit that they are making, it's not suddenly going to see a price drop of £5 on each game say because they are all now digital. I get that the trend is currently towards digital only however I don't think you will see the same moral compass from Sony as we have with say Valve, only this week have they also said that many user's won't be able to watch a number of digital films that they have bought and paid for on their consoles. With that in mind if they can do that with any digital content (which their T's & C's allow) there is also the preservation argument whereby we could see games literally disappear and become inaccessible by anyone at some point in the future. Your digital library with Sony won't be as secure as say your steam library, there is every likelihood that in the future you paying £70 for a game is so you can use it for up to 2 years and then you lose access or some other crap. Even following the TV / film industry with how prevalent subscriptions have been with Netflix, Disney etc they have all opted to retain physical copies for people to purchase, I could still go in HMV (surprisingly still exists) and buy a physical blu-ray film, similarly we still get physical cd's. For me and a few people I know now, we buy more games digitally yes however the plus of owning consoles is having the option of physical titles as well. If I am only going to be buying digital games moving forwards it will more likely be on PC. I can get mainly the same games, I can generally buy them cheaper, I have the options of what type of device I want 'Lots of power with a desktop, a portable hand held or something in the middle'. A lot of people own consoles for physical titles or exclusives in addition to their PC and such. What I also find mad is the number of people who just accept this saying ah it doesn't bother me or in some instances I have seen online where people are getting irrate or arsey with those who aren't keen on going digital only. Neither do starving children in parts of the world but it should because it affects other people unnecessarily (appreciate that this is a bit more of a blunt way to say it 😄 ) It's classic case of 'I'm alright Jeff'. If people want to play and enjoy a game they way they do why should it be ok to take that away just to give more profit to the shareholders and such?

Controversial opinion. I don’t care. Physical version of AAA games have been gone for years. The disc you get may as well be a drinks coaster. It’s nothing more than a token to say “download the game”. Nothing runs from disc, and the version you play is a patched version that doesn’t mirror the disc data. the payoff for Sony is you can’t sell digital. If you want to play the game, you must buy a copy. moving physical units costs money, so it’s no surprise in this climate they are shying away from it. the move towards games as a service will probably move towards the subscription model, even owning digital versions will become less common. It’s following tv/dvd habits. The real question is, do we need a PlayStation 6? For the first time, graphics aren’t holding us back. we should prioritise gameplay. You can even buy brand new mega drive games.

I second this. 🙂

I think you removed it but I appreciated the "Home" feature for viewing new messages. However, if it contributes to the forum's smooth operation without this feature, I can do without it.

I've disabled all plugins and stuff to speed it up a bit whilst @GazzaGarrattand I migrate us to a new host. During this process I'm also gonna trim back some of the unused guff, so if you're missing any features please let us know. Any that aren't reported missing for a month will remain in hibernation until needed. Also, all settings and profile stuff is saved, so don't worry about anything being lost, when we reinstate the plugins and mods they'll be there nice and fresh.