Why do Disk Drives matter?

[Chazore]

Cobretti2 said:

I've mentioned this several times over the years, 100% agree. I have also said if we ever go digital I will go PC exclusive as Steam as example isn't tied up to a fixed period in time. I can revisit games I played in the 90s and enjoy them without too much worry.

I've also said if console manufactures want us to go digital they need to give us freedom to backup our data easily (updates, bug fixes, extra purchases etc) and not tie it to the hardware it's on or a digital user ID that does not log in once online services are down.

I can understand locking it to a console to protect sales, but when a generation ends, firmware should be released that allows us full freedom of our data to be used as a retro console on any console an not locked just to yours, i.e. in case your hardware fails and you ned to replace it.

Also you bring up a good point I failed to mention in my post; Why do cloud saves even cost money on a console?.

On PC my cloud saves across multiple clients cost nothing, and I'm still able to access them years later with no need for paying a sub fee to access them or to have them taken away from me, but on consoles it can cost money, and even then, when you stop paying you can lose them, which makes no sense to me as to why a few kb's of save data should cost anything.

Also yeah, totally agree, when a console gen ends, the firmware should be made public, because otherwise you're just going to lose everything in one go, which would be a death blow to a console players digital library.

Going forward, the 3 consoles need a more unified store system, one where the cloud saves cost nothing, where you can always download games you own digitally, even when they get delisted (seriously, delisting a game and yoinking it from a customers library should be downright illegal to do, but I've seen it happen on both PC & consoles).