No. And even if PS and their home electronics division died, Sony has their hands in too many pies for it to hurt them longterm as a company; they’re in the cine and ENG industries, they make still cams, they make image sensors for everyone, and last time I thought they also had an industrial imaging division, Sony as a company will be fine even if they lost PS and their home electronics division.

To put it bluntly, Sony is in the position now, that RCA was in when they were in their prime, only Sony has yet to have a CED moment where RCA killed themselves in their stupidity with the CED. And no, Betamax and MD don’t count as neither of those formats killed Sony as a company, the CED otoh, killed RCA as a company.

Noup, it’s not going to have any effect. Like the other person said. People have already voted with their wallets and will keep voting the same way, because for some reason. Not buying something is completely unthinkable to way too many people.

Plus like I pointed out, even if PS and their home electronics division died, Sony themselves will still live on because they have their hands in basically everything. They have a pro audio and video division, including ENG. They’re in the still cam business and make image sensors for pretty much everyone else too, and unless that changed, they also have an industrial imaging division as well.

Also, Sony barely makes dedicated disc players anymore, only having one model each of 1080p and 4K BD players in production, and I feel like those won’t be much longer for the world either.

Sony’s future dedicated media player is probably gonna be a glorified Roku-type streaming box; effectively a thin client to stream rented media to.

I’m surprised they even still make traditional AVRs and speakers and didn’t switch exclusively to soundbars or drop out of that market entirely yet, even.

The future for physical media is gonna be grim as even though you can still buy BDs/DVDs and CDs and vinyl second-hand, there might not be any new players for those formats being made in the foreseeable future anymore apart from videophile/audiophile stuff. Although in an odd twist of fate, and potentially a repeat of a trend from the early '80s when the audio CD first launched, CDs are outselling vinyl again.

That too, even if through some way gaming market crashes completely. There are multiple other branches that will keep Sony afloat.

As for second-hand physical games, from PS4 onward, there’s the chance that a lot of your discs might not work once support is dropped for those consoles as most of them are glorified license keys.

Nintendo made that concept literal with the Game-Key Cards and I wouldn’t be surprised if the Switch 3 if one actually happens, dropped carts altogether, and the Switch 3 effectively become a glorified tablet that you lost access to your games on after support is discontinued because it’s digital-only.

Even MS is playing with moving PCs to the cloud, and if Win365 takes off enough to get a consumer tier, it’s game over for PC ownership.

The only thing that’ll kill Sony as a company is if they have a CED-level screw-up as the CED was such a massive screw-up that it killed RCA as a company, and Sony has yet to screw up that badly. I make the RCA comparison because RCA in their prime, before their stupidity got the best of them, was basically in the position Sony is currently in with having their hands in basically everything. I really feel like Sony and other big companies for that matter, should treat RCA’s demise and the CED debacle that caused it as a cautionary tale, but that’s just my opinion.

No it wont.

Since covid, physical media has been declining sales. Since games and other media are only getting larger, it makes sense to have it digitally instead of multiple disks. Consoles and PCs are being made without disk drives.

And even dedicated BD players are seemingly on the way out as most of the major manufacturers either severely pared or discontinued player production outright, assuming they’re even in the home AV business anymore to begin with.

Sony just has one model each for a 1080p and 4K BD player, I don’t know what Panasonic is up to with their players if they even make anymore, and beyond that, boutique videophile brands like Magnetar and Reavon were still making players last time I checked, but they’re ludicrously expensive.

Assuming Sony discontinues their dedicated disc players and moves exclusively to streaming boxes, they’ll be done with physical media forever. And I’m still surprised they even make traditional AVRs and speakers and didn’t kill those in favor of a couple soundbars yet.

Exactly!

It’s just Sony, look at Nintendo. They are trying to transition from cartridge to code for digial downloads. Steam has exploded the last 10 years and everything is digital

It’s not a bad thing, tech is just evolving. People can make the comparison to cartridges when disk based consoles came out.

Its a bad thing for two reasons:

1. It destroys any form of ownership people have over digital assets like games, movies, etc.
2. No ownership destroys the second hand market. This hurts for a number of reasons:
3. Preservation can now only be done illegally
4. Access to gaming and other media becomes more expensive
5. Large corporations get to decide what you can / cannot play. Removing games from storefronts and consoles is a lot easier than hunting down physical copies.

That being said I have no issue with digital only, we just need legislation that forces some form of “ownership” beyond just a license.

The fifth part has an asterisk: Access can still be denied for physical copies, too. The Crew proved this, not to mention all the old G4WL CD titles which are effectively paperweights because their DRM is defunct and there’s no crack yet for a lot of them if there ever will be any, and as for BD movies, in theory the studios could revoke AACS keys for a given group of media and render those media into coasters as well.

Audio CDs are DRM-free at least so they’re pretty much immune to that, but if Sony had their way with their rootkit DRM and didn’t get successfully sued over it, audio CDs would be DRM-encumbered too, thankfully they didn’t get their way and did get successfully sued over it so audio CDs remain DRM-free to this day so you could rip them to FLAC and do as you wish with that lossless copy; transcode it to a lossy codec such as Opus or Ogg Vorbis, make additional copies of the lossless copy, etc.

When was the last time a boycott worked?

On the right, Bud light after the transgender ad. On the left, people have called for boycotts for so many things it gets drowned out as noise.

The BDS movement had a lot of successes.

I don’t think it will matter to them if I boycott them. But that won’t stop me of not buying their products.
Same thing with Target - my yearly $200 I spent there before I started my boycott - won’t even ping the radar. But my ‘boycott’ still going strong.

Nope. You will own nothing and you will love it.

(Nobody was buying disks – boycott for DRM free offline or something useful)

Probably not.

It’s working for me. I didn’t even know about the boycott and I still don’t have a playstation. It must have succeeded in controlling the narrative.

I’ll answer with a question that should well serve as an answer

What boycott?

no

If I know gamers, it will be just as effective as the Modern Warfare 2 PC boycott back in the day

The general population doesn’t care about discs or even owning their game. I think one-vendor consoles are on their way out though. There will just be normal computers in fancy boxes and Nintendo left after this next gen runs its course imo. About time tbh.

The lack of affordability in the console space will do more. I’d ballpark 95% of playstation purchasers have no idea about Sony’s announcement. And when it finally happens, they’ll just do whatever they need to do to make the game run. If they just can’t justify the money it takes to do what they need to do, then it won’t happen.

But no, playstation won’t notice the blip of people who refuse to purchase for long-term ownership reasons.

No because we tried to boycott the micro transactions and look what happened, the rich people just paid to play. Now everything has micro transactions. God of war will come out and suddenly a huge number of us forget about any silly boycott.

no… it is all slacktivism now…

People love to bitch whine and moan on social media but won’t do a damn thing about it.

With that said. Physical media sucks… let it die.

We got a corpo in the chat. How do the boots taste?

It is all Slactivist whiners now… No one will change their behaviors at all or even be inconvenienced.

You can bury your head in the sand and tell yourself otherwise, but that changes nothing.

The disk battle is the wrong one to fight.

The correct battle is that buying=owning not leasing.

It’s a big nothing burger.

I think people underestimate the power of collective action. People have been underplaying the strengths of these actions in online discourse to the point where I wonder if its coordinated.

Being loud and boycotting does work. And even if it doesn’t why support anti consumer practices.

NO… the golden age is over… video games are a scam now. Swim against the stream and throw in the towel… cold turkey. Your wallet will thank you. Get a new hobby like masturbation. Anything but giving the PDFiles your money. The turds have entered the building. The fun has been compromised. aftribune.com/…/epstein-files-expose-how-jeffrey-…

Get a new hobby like masturbation. Anything but giving the PDFiles your money.

Better be talking about jerkin off using the power of imagination cuz the porn industry is full of pedophilic and rapey circumstances. I’m all pro-sex work but there’s a lottttt of reform in other areas to focus on first IMO

I concur. I just think porn wouldn’t exist in a better world and we all would be gettin our nut. It was a crass joke. Do people eat fast food? They use slave labor. At the end of the day this system makes me dirty. There is no eithical consumtion under capitalism in anyway shape or form. But these over priced video games which are not even that good anymore are a death sentance to a person on a shoe string budget. Refering back to the artical I posted it explains how the groomers control the games. I am not claiming to be profound or a well of wisdom but as a poor shmuck, these video games are for the richers or for fools. So I ain’t nailing anyone to the cross, that is just my take. Econommicaly speaking. Not moraly. Besides who pays for porn? Everybody shakin ass on the net these daze. The internet is free sample costco on steroids. It is either revolution or jerkin. No one can push this gawd damn bolder up the hill on their own. What a sorry state of affairs. Everybody thinking they have morals… individualism… its funny… everybody building hell while seeking heaven. (If the porn became expensive or out of reach… i’d be lookin for the sears catalog.) <— to whom it may concern… this is called a joke. to be fair I am just shooting from the hip in the comments.

Nope, nobody really cares about physical media or owning anything anymore

No. Convenience always wins. Same reason people decided streaming is better than owning.

Some percent of those upset and boycotting will simply give it up. These things have about a 2-4 week lifespan. Then they’ll just miss their PlayStation and everything will be over, except they’ll own even less.

And the same thing that could also work in Win365’s favor against PCs should it get a consumer tier.

The boycott wont do anything now but I think once they actually stop releasing physical games a lot of people will move to switch to continue collecting, or to PC since it’s more convenient for digital games. If it’s enough to make them change course, I don’t know, but I sure hope so.

No.

People already buy digital games at greater rates for years, plus most digital games havent been the full game for a while now. Some of them are literally just download codes now.

Also, boycotts and protests almost never work.

That depends entirely on how long gamers are able to stay angry enough to sustain the boycott, and how many of them actually stick to it.

If there’s an actual boycott - yes it will work. Will EVERYONE refuse to buy their products?

Yeah… right.

All I know is I’m not buying shit from them again.

Yes, the even more powerful way of protesting: not giving a shit.

No. Its that simple.

People will keep using the playstation, people will keep playing games, buying shit etc. Its wishful thinking that the boycott will do anything other the slightly lower overall numbers. The equivalent of a normal workday.

Nope.

Its a dumb ask. I bought the Playstation to play it when I have the time. I think way more people would be on board if it was a ps store blackout. No MTC, no purchases, nothing. Easy. Doable. Asking people to ignore the $600 widget they already bought and use? Pretty unreasonable.

Nope. PCs haven’t had physical games for well over a decade. Even “physical” games like Battlefield 1 just had a code in them, and that was 2016, a decade ago now. Discs were going away for PC games by the early 10s. I’ve been surprised that consoles held out for as long as they did, considering the always online stuff, the updates, seasonal DLC, DRM, etc. I miss when games were feature complete, like Pokemon Emerald or the early Sonic franchise.

I would like to be able to legally resell my digital games that I don’t want anymore.