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by hiptobecubic 1406 days ago
Both of those formats require(d) licensing didn't they?
1 comments

Not from the consumer, just the manufacturers. As a consumer you bought a piece of hardware that could read the format and it worked across-the-board. With Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo, you buy the game and not only is it linked to the format, but it’s actually linked to their proprietary hardware. You can’t buy an Xbox game, which is exactly the same as the PlayStation version, and play it on the PlayStation. But I can buy a song online on my Mac and play it on VLC on a Windows machine.

Imagine if any music I buy on bandcamp could only be played via a bandcamp app or software on bandcamp’s proprietary hardware.