Current Consoles

[TheCatt]

We played Super Mario whatever on the Wii as a family. We called it the "fight starter".

Yeah... It was about 90% good, 10% bad for us

Nine Parchments was a similar experience, but as we got better, we also got nicer.

[Leisher]

Sony announced yesterday that in 2028 they will be doing away with physical disks. X-Box followed suit a few hours later.

"You will own nothing."

Domino's UK had a response.

[Leisher]

Sony's stock went up 3% on the news. More proof that Wall St. is filled with greedy retards.

Meanwhile, social media is filled with people blasting Sony, cancelling their Playstation Plus subs, and promising they will not be buying the PS6.
Notes:
-People were already pissed that Sony discussed that the price would be over $1000.
-Sony already raised the prices of Playstation Plus subs in May.
-A recent investor call suggested Sony was looking to possibly increase Playstation Plus prices even more to offset dwindling console sales. (Allow me to repeat myself yet again: Record profits every quarter is unsustainable.)
-Consoles across the board have their lowest quarter sales EVAH thanks to all of them seeing huge price increases.

Sony has gone dark on all SM for over 24 hours now.

[TheCatt]

Meanwhile, social media is filled with people blasting Sony, cancelling their Playstation Plus subs, and promising they will not be buying the PS6.

Blah blah blah.

[Leisher]

Meanwhile, social media is filled with people blasting Sony, cancelling their Playstation Plus subs, and promising they will not be buying the PS6.

Blah blah blah.

Thank you for reaffirming my constant point about Adam Smith's invisible hand.

[TheCatt]

Meanwhile, social media is filled with people blasting Sony, cancelling their Playstation Plus subs, and promising they will not be buying the PS6.

Blah blah blah.

Thank you for reaffirming my constant point about Adam Smith's invisible hand.

People say a lot of thing. I judge actions.

[Leisher]

People say a lot of thing. I judge actions.

Let's check in on what's been going on...

1. First and foremost, I'm gonna help you out a bit and counter my own point with a history lesson. Before the current gen of X-Box and PS5, Microsoft was the king of consoles. It wasn't really a close race either. Know what happened? Microsoft announced moving away from physical disks. Sony jumped all over the backlash. That's right. Sony took over king of the console hill because of physical disks.

2. Sony is still absent from all social media. There is a rumor out there about them waiting until MS announces the upcoming layoffs. They hope that will steal headlines and let them slip back out there with minimal damage.

3. Sony pushed numbers showing digital games were now 85% of the market, but several outlets and watchdogs have exposed this to be wrong and Sony is manipulating the numbers. They're including games that had no physical release, DLCs with no physical release, etc. Apparently, physical games are still very much in demand.

4. You might be asking why. Let me remind you that "Stop Killing Games" is a real movement in Europe and the U.S. winning court rulings in both places. People are fed up with devs killing older games. They want to OWN a game forever. This is a big, big fighting point between devs and consumers right now because older games are kicking the shit out of new games in play time. Beyond that, people want to sell their old games or trade them in and you cannot do that with digital. Obviously devs want to completely kill that market.

5. How big is the Sony announcement? The views on it have now surpassed the views for the GTA 6 trailer. Yeah...

6. PS5 disc drives are now limited to one per order because they're in such high demand. This is from Sony themselves. Crazy for something they claim nobody wants anymore.

7. X-Box did NOT announce a move to digital as well. They were expected to follow suit, but after the backlash, have not done so.

8. Nintendo has said they're still making physical games for the foreseeable future.

9. Sony just recent deleted 500 movie titles from their customers' libraries because some contract ended or something. Thing is, those customers bought those movies. They didn't rent them. People see the writing on the wall about their game libraries being all digital.

10. Sony is currently wiping game completion data for physical disks on PS5. Sony claims it's a bug. Crazy timing...

Ultimately, I think this wouldn't be even remotely as big an issue if companies would stop pushing that they're licensing games (and movies) to people. People don't see it as licensing. They see it as buying something. Just because we buy something digitally should not mean we're giving up our consumer rights.

"You will own nothing" is being pushed in games, movies, and music, but will eventually cover every conceivable product. This is the front line of a war between consumers just trying to have rights and corporate greed. And if you think I'm wrong about that, you're not paying attention.

BMW wanted to charge a sub for the seat warmer.

HP is pushing print subscriptions.

[TheCatt]

OK, your first facts are wrong. Even I knew this before googling.

6th Generation (2001–2005)Sony PlayStation 2: ~160 millionMicrosoft Xbox: ~24 millionNote: The PlayStation 2 remains the best-selling video game console of all time.
7th Generation (2005–2012)Sony PlayStation 3: ~87.4 millionMicrosoft Xbox 360: ~84 million
8th Generation (2013–2019)Sony PlayStation 4: ~117.2 millionMicrosoft Xbox One: ~58 million
9th Generation (2020–Current)Sony PlayStation 5: ~90 to 93 million (industry estimates)Microsoft Xbox Series X|S: ~33 to 34 million (industry

The 360 was the only time MS got close.

I've had Steam long enough I'm used to everything being digital. In fact, I prefer it.

That BMW thing is from 4 years ago.

The HP thing is retarded, and HP is shit.

[Leisher]

The 360 was the only time MS got close.

Interesting sales numbers, although they do not tell the entire story. Totals might indicate one thing, but that doesn't mean that X-Box wasn't king at a point in that time frame with higher PS numbers coming after MS had already moved on.

Personally, I think MS is fucking stupid for ever trying consoles. They had windows and PCs. They should have been Valve, but were too short sighted.

Anyway, watch the video. Do other research. MS trying digital was their massive misstep and Sony jumped all over it. Now they're making the same mistake.

I've had Steam long enough I'm used to everything being digital. In fact, I prefer it.

Valve isn't deleting our stuff or trying to remove our consumer rights. But I'm with you on enjoying digital. I wonder if we'd feel differently if PC had a big trade in market or Valve was acting like Sony?

That BMW thing is from 4 years ago.

Doesn't matter when it was from. 95% of the Earth's companies are trying to trap people in subscriptions.

The HP thing is retarded, and HP is shit.

Correct x2. Remember when they couldn't do wrong in printing? How the mighty have fallen.

NEW SONY STUFF:
Just now Sony has pissed off 132 countries by blocking Marvel Tolkon.

Forgot to mention that just a month ago they decided to stop releasing their games on PC because they want people to buy their consoles. All that did was piss people off. Nobody is buying a PS5 just to play a single game. PC gamers aren't stupid, plus emulators and piracy exist.

Did I mention they're about to increase the price of the PS network again? (That'd be the second time this year.)

AND they just changed their TOS to include the right to delete your account and everything in it after 3 yrs of inactivity.

Back in the day these Sony executives would have the good sense to commit Seppuku.

[TheCatt]

Correct x2. Remember when they couldn't do wrong in printing? How the mighty have fallen.

I remember being so happy with my brand new HP inkjet in the mid-90s. Now they are dead to me.

Totals might indicate one thing, but that doesn't mean that X-Box wasn't king at a point in that time frame with higher PS numbers coming after MS had already moved on.

The consoles were pretty much all released within a year of each other, no? I remember Halo being big, and a big reason people went XBox, but Sony has been king for decades.

At the end of the day, the businesses will follow the money. For better or worse.

[Leisher]

I remember being so happy with my brand new HP inkjet in the mid-90s. Now they are dead to me.

Ditto. I moved onto Lexmark and then they got bought out by Xerox. Ugh.

The consoles were pretty much all released within a year of each other, no?

Pretty close, but those aren't all day 1 sales. Point being, I was curious if perhaps the PS4 or whatever got a lot of sales when MS made their digital misstep. Just googled it and 19-20M PS4s were sold AFTER the PS5 came out. Weird.

Anyway, I do remember MS being king of the console hill for a bit. I don't think the Mandela effect is in play, but who knows.

[TheCatt]

Xbox 360 came out 1 year earlier and did sell pretty quickly

The Xbox 360 outsold the PlayStation 3 in the United States, selling roughly 25 to 26 million units to the PS3's 14 to 15 million.

So it may be focusing on US vs Japan, etc, since, you know, we're American

[Leisher]

Yeah...that was the piece I was missing. I completely forgot about Japanese sales. X-Box was a monumental failure in Japan. They just couldn't crack that market. Turns out that the Japanese are pretty xenophobic.

[TheCatt]

Turns out that the Japanese are pretty xenophobic.

Truth.

MSFT job cuts, nearly 5000

[Leisher]

Let's see if Sony comes back to its SM accounts now.

If you're MS, do you sell the X-Box, move into game distribution, and help to shrink the gap between TVs and PCs thus eliminating the need for consoles?

[Leisher]

They also pissed off all of their partners. And Rockstar told them to stop using their stuff in any announcements for the time being.

Really brilliant minds over there at Sony.



Meanwhile, they finally got on SM again, and they're getting bodied.

[Leisher]

On a different note and console, here's more proof to my theory that board rooms across the corporate world are filled with out of touch, greedy morons.

[Leisher]

And now back to Sony... "Please don't leave" Playstation Plus discount of 50%.

Guess it's more than just talk. People are canceling their subs.

[Leisher]

It was reported over the weekend that not only did Sony not notify its partners about the decision to no longer make physical disks, but they didn't bother informing their employees either.

Meanwhile, X-Box remains mum, but they had planned their new console (Helix) to be digital only. Honestly, it's a no brainer. This is literally: "Do what the customers want or very likely make tons of money winning this next generation of the console wars OR go against the wishes of the customers to save a pittance on each console you won't sell." Lets see if there are any brain cells still at MS.

A Spider-Man: Brand New Day vignette released this weekend and was filled with comments about the disk situation. I love when people unite like this and really hammer a corporation.

Here comes a lawsuit and I think they have a case:

[Leisher]

There's also the news below.

If we want to save Capitalism and not watch the world fall into worldwide totalitarian rule, we need to fix this sort of thing. When the C Suite can make decisions that hurt the company and consumers, but pad their pockets, shit's broken.