[fredoralive]

Closing the online store for older systems simultaneously with announcing the dropping of physical media leaves an interesting question for the future. Even if you’ve never bought an online PS3 or Vita game, you’ll still be able to use the systems for physical games. Presumably once the PS6 store is gone, any console is just an ornament if you don’t have access to an account with games already purchased (and how long will the download servers stay up anyway? What is the foreseeable future?).

[dice]

I was having this discussion with my 9 year old yesterday. He mentioned that a friend had Rocket League on their Switch 2 and "it didn't even need a game card". I told him that anything without a physical card can be taken away, the company that made it can decide to take it back or to stop letting it work. Compared that to my old DS which he found along with game cards for Lego Star Wars and Scribblenauts that still work ~20 years later.

I think he "got" it. He was certainly annoyed at the idea that something purchased could just be taken back. Maybe it'll stick and he'll be better able to understand why I'll push back on a new PlayStation or any digital only games.

[pavon]

What is frustrating is that even when you buy physical games, often what you get is a buggy beta release of the software that isn't playable without GBs of day-one patches. I have little confidence that 20 years from now I will be able to play console games I bought today, without resorting to "pirating" and console mods or emulators. I'm pretty sure that the Switch will be my last console because of this.

At least with PC I have the actual files for the game I am playing, and can backup and mod them as I wish.

[wtetzner]

I've thought it would be cool to have a console where later updates are installed on the game cartridge directly.

[ZiiS]

Be aware that many (most) new games with physical disks can also be taken away (see Concord).

[officeplant]

We must simply raise kids to understand the pitfalls of live service games and how they should never be trusted or given money.

[mminer237]

Concord is explicitly an online-only FPS. I don't think that's representative of most games.

[ZiiS]

As with everything it depends what you class. If you went on raw number of games you only really count Mobile/Steam slop. If you correct for most played games then Roblox, Candy Crush, Minecraft, PUBG, LoL, Fortnite these are all games that owning the disc doesn't guarantee anything. If you count AA/AAA releases on PS5 it seems unlikely that most discs will ever be unplayable (though I think that is always at Sony's and the publisher's whim)

[bigfishrunning]

Your point stands, but Rocket League specifically is free (this wasn't always true, but is now...)

[vel0city]

I mean Rocket League is game focused on matchmaking through an online platform. Its main game types will stop working when that platform goes away. That's just the kind of game it is, its not like playing Lego Star Wars at all.

I see playing a game like Rocket League more in lines of having a membership to club to play a certain game rather than owning a copy of the game to play alone, forever. The club will eventually go away, that's just the nature of such things.

I do agree its a good lesson to teach your kids about the limits and issues of digital "ownership" though.

[tavavex]

The two departments that made these moves might not be coordinating, but if they are, I imagine that Sony's implied pitch is something like "Games are temporary. Eventually, we will take them away. Want to play? Get going then, buy as much as possible, play as long as you can, while you still can."

[AussieWog93]

The assumption is that it'll be jailbroken well before they shut down the store.

[Cthulhu_]

I'm not convinced, jailbreaks are becoming more difficult.

[Telaneo]

Given enough time, I'm sure it will happen, if only because they're not going to get security updates until the end of time.

And even if true, there's always emulation (also a pain though).

[MYEUHD]

Emulation requires the ability to dump games.

And dumping games requires a jailbreak.

That's why there's no switch 2 emulation as of now.

[mghackerlady]

theoretically, the playstations are the most vulnerable since they run static versions of a FreeBSD derived system. the xbox doesn't really need to be jailbroken and the switch line is nearly impossible

[Teever]

> the switch line is nearly impossible

Werent early versions of the Switch 1 jail broken pretty fast and people were dumping switch 1 roms online to play in emulators?

I don’t follow this stuff too closely but I thought that I saw people playing the sequel to Breath of the Wild on PCs to get acceptable frame rates when it came out.

[mghackerlady]

Yeah, I should've specified softmods. There was a hardware bug in the launch switches SOC that wasn't patched until a year or so after the consoles launch

[ZenoArrow]

> switch line is nearly impossible

Nah. Switch 1 is already compromised and I'd predict we'll see modchips for the Switch 2 in the next 3 years.

[mghackerlady]

Sorry, I should've specified soft mods. iirc there's only been 1 softmod for the switch that was patched out extremely early on before we knew about it

[ZenoArrow]

You're partially right, only the first revision of the Switch 1 could be hacked without modchips, but those early revisions can't have a software patch as the exploit relied on a hardware bug (some design flaw in the NVIDIA Tegra SoC if I remember correctly).

[AussieWog93]

Nah, Switch has been blown wide for almost a decade now.