Money.
I can see this happening with games more after the death of physical media. Create artificial scarcity with limited time windows and charge top dollar for old games because there will be literally no way to get them besides on their digital store terms.
I saw a screenshot of something like this recently with the pre-orders of GTA VI.
They apparently "ran out of digital copies..." of something that doesn't exist yet.
But yeah, it's a trend that will sadly probably happen.
Either that or eventually we'll have to get some antitrust stuff happening to open these things up, though Epic's App Store lawsuit does not give me much hope in that direction.
This is already under threat due to the Star Wars AI videos being released on Youtube, seemingly without constraint as of yet.
The videos are not Hollywood quality [0], however they circumvent rules Disney can't easily break like using the likeness of any actor at any age in any circumstance.
These fan made videos get lots of views. Even if they were all removed from YouTube, this will be a difficult thing to stop.
I believe a generally accepted "good" or even "great" unofficial, Star Wars film built without sets or actors using AI is inevitable. And that this will be true for any popular franchise.
The natural corollary to this arc is into games, where using AI to code most or all of a AAA-competitive title would be considered inevitable.
I suspect Disney and Sony have at least someone pointing at this outcome.
[0] I suppose idealized Hollywood quality. They are better than some films.
Obviously it's gotten harder over the years, but PS4 and PS5 jailbreaks do exist so that means there's a vector for dumping games that were only ever distributed digitally (at least ones released up to the point where the jailbreaks got patched, as the stores will refused to serve new content until you update your system).
A funny quirk of that is that the Mario and Rabbids games are always 90% off because they are not published by Nintendo.
And I'm one of those tens of millions opting out. The PS2 felt like a great consumer-focused value. Modern consoles feel like opting in to get kicked in the balls and squeezed for every single penny they can get out of you.
The reason modern consoles aren't selling 300million+ units is because of myopia. And the worst part is that it's a vicious cycle. They see their sales shrinking so the penny pinchers and MBAs get even nastier squeezing the ever-shrinking userbase even more resulting in less sales meaning they need to squeeze those that remain even harder and so on.
At seemingly no point is anybody asking 'Hey why do our sales keep falling even though the potential market's way larger and the competition is pretty meh?' I guess that doesn't look as good on a powerpoint slide as trying to kill the used game market and pretending it will have no knock-on effects.
If gamers want to stop this, they need to stop rewarding these companies with their money.
99% of gamers who are mad about physical disk distribution going away will still buy the digitally distributed games.
Maybe they need to look at releasing a cheaper console and making more quality games instead of constantly pushing so hard on graphics. Graphics help sales to an extent, but it's clearly not the whole story, given the popularity of the Wii or Switch. I think the people in charge no longer understand gaming, and are really struggling to produce games that will draw in large crowds again.
> So I think their strategy is to abandon the mass market and sell to price unconscious consumers who will also pay more for games.
Kinda seems like it. I'm curious to see what happens with that, because even people who so far have been willing to pay more will stop being customers if they can't produce an experience that's worth paying for. Maybe I'm in the minority, but the first-party PlayStation games all feel very samey to me.
But I'm also not sure they can sell a cheaper console. PS5 prices just rose and they'll rise again next year - so that level is already going to cost 800 dollars to consumers. You can't really sell hardware to anyone until ram prices come down it seems.
They could release a ps4 level console but I'm not sure it would be that cheap to source parts for... There are rumors of a handheld so that might be cheaper.
Basically console gaming is about to get impractical and they'll try and find a path to stay alive. That's my read.
DRM, online checks, DLC that should have been part of the base game, digital-only games, etc have ruined all that, and if that's going to be the trend everywhere I'll just stick to a PC and Steam where I have a library of games built up over the decades.
I have a Switch and feel that Nintendo provided a decent experience on their recent systems, but with the advent of "game keys" or whatever they call it on the Switch 2, they've flipped to being even worse than the digital-only systems. At least Sony isn't (yet?) trying to sell you a license on a disc to try to fool you into thinking you own a physical copy.
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/606/
> Ebay, to buy: $11 + shipping[0]
> PS Store, to rent: $60[1]
Yeah, Sony is stupid to be leaving money on the table like that. Lucky for us, we live in a market system that we can trust to optimize for maximum consumer benefit (like Sony is doing here). It's our revealed choice that we want to pay more for old games.
Perhaps Sony could add an optional tipping screen before digital checkout for the good customers.
Honestly, Sony should just retroactively bill consumers for inflation. Since $60 in 2016 is worth almost $89 today, they should charge all the people who bought the game back then a $29 price adjustment. It's the the only fair thing to do for.
If consumers don't like that option, an alternative can be a perpetual $5/year subscription that additional provides in-game stickers.
Another alternative is to just buy the used games and play them on the old consoles.
Are they though? Console sales have been dropping. It's only money left on the table if people are also purchasing consoles & games in the same quantities. How many people are just not buying these games because they are digital only?
TBH though, I think the ship has sailed a long time ago. Many games with physical media aren't really playable without downloadable updates anyway. Another reason the modern gaming experience has gotten worse.
There's something to be said for creating a near monopoly and also having the ability to digitally revoke someones right to use something they purchased legally, which we'll see more of.
Regulations are needed to protect us.