Sony Is Working Towards “a Future Where Consoles Could Disappear” as it Tackles Cloud Gaming

[VanceIX]

Shadow1980 said:
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You don't own the game though, you own the disc itself. Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo/Publisher can still take away your rights to play the game, if not the disc, if they so wish. It doesn't happen, but it is possible.

And the idea that physical media lasts longer than digital is laughable. Unless you treat your physical media insanely well and never use it, it will degrade over time. Just by playing the game you risk scratching up the disc. On digital media, all of it is linked to the cloud, and you can just redownload it if something terrible happens and your HDD breaks. Of course, with the rise of SSDs, drive failure may be a thing of the past. My SSD will store all my games and take all kinds of physical damage without losing any information. Can't say that about discs. When I buy digital, I gain access to a vastly superior storage format, that allows me to not have to change discs and not worry about damage, not to mention download on multiple consoles. Just because you don't think it's "ownership" doesn't mean that the games aren't in my possession for me to enjoy whenever I want.

Steams to consoles is not apples or oranges at all -_-. Were you around when PC gamers made a huge fuss over Steam taking away their ownership rights, abd making it impossible for people with bad internet to use the service? They used the same arguments as you, abd now most of them have happily bought into the system.

You seem to think the console manufacturers will completely force people to go digital only. They won't. It'll be a slow transition, where more and more people choose digital due to the discounts and convenience. Over the last generation alone digital game purchases have grown exponentially, and are continuing to grow, whether or not you like it. If they do grow as they have been, maybe in the future, two or so generations from now, digital-only will be a possibility. That is ample time for more people to get better internet as well, seeing as how fast high speed internet is spreading due to the actions of companies like Google.