this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
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Why can't you just plug in a random-ass USB 4KBR-disc drive?
Or sell one that we can use to bring in games from PS1, 2, 3, 4 and 5? And state that the drive will be able to be used going forward, into the next gen and beyond.
They've got a rich gaming history at this point and they don't care because they'd rather sell you an $80 digital copy that they can take away at any time and you can't trade it in or really own it. And it's the same with PC games as well, courtesy of Valve and then everyone else.
If the future is digital, we need laws that allow us to transfer ownership of digital content. It would have to be secure, obviously. Not just "steal somebody's console and trade all their games in".
On the idea of random drives: Many of them might not be able to read the encryption on Playstation discs. I could be wrong, but I think the way they operate involves more than just software encryption. Sony is best off making their own. Hence why pirates burn special copies.
On reading prior generations: I think they'd be capable of reading those if they wanted, but running old Playstation games is more a matter of correct CPU architecture. Most of us have played old games on the new consoles, but often there's a bit of manual porting/emulation logic going on to get it working - so the package delivered from PSN isn't exactly would come from an old PS2 disc.
IIRC the Xbox 360 used to do a thing where you'd put your old OG Xbox disc in, and it would download any extra code it needed to run. Most of these older games would be under a few MB of actual code.
Pretty sure the PS5 is powerful enough to run PS1 and PS2 emulated, and probably have a good crack at running PS3 games as well, although a lot of the good PS3 games got a remaster for the PS4 gen anyway.
I think the only thing stopping really us doing it now is the PS5 drive can't actually read CDs. Plus I think they want to test each game before release and sell us them on PSPlus tiers.
Yup, the Xbox does that; but it’s at least good to acknowledge that was not an insignificant effort on their part. They had a lot of people slowly putting out compatibility packages for old Xbox games based on popularity.
I’m guessing Sony doesn’t feel like doing that when they can also provide that hardware via more expensive cloud systems.
I'm pretty sure that would run you about the same as the external component, so there's no benefit to going with a third-party accessory
Yeah, looking at the prices, it's about right for what it is.
Suppose the upshot of using a generic component is you could also attach it to a PC.
Looks like the long term goal of them is to stop selling discs altogether. I couldn't even get BG3 on a disc when it came out, and I think Alan Wake 2 was the same (only physical copy I can see is the deluxe version with both AW1&2 on it).
I see the mythical digital savings never made it to us, to the surprise of absolutely fucking nobody. I wouldn't mind if they actually put games on a discounted price after a year or so, but you can still see several year old games at the full original retail price.