Discussing the PS6, Project Helix, and digitization of games

 So....in another hinting at next gen coming soon, Sony is discontinuing physical games in 2028. And....a lot of people are freaking out about this. Honestly, I have mixed opinions. I mean, I'm on PC, I've been using steam since like 2008, and while I initially was skeptical of the service because I was like "what if you lose all of your games", it was basically forced on us back then and by this point, it's kind of a fact of life for PC gamers, and a lot of us wouldnt have it any other way. For years, physical releases have just been a code in a box, maybe a stack of DVDs to install the game, but then youd need to update it anyway to play it, so...yeah. It's kinda been pointless for a while and I myself rarely buy physical media these days. 

At the same time, I get the concern. Game preservation, the whole "you should own what you buy" thing. And a lot of it is about corporate control. I won't go so far in the doomer camp of "you will own nothing and be happy and the future is streaming everything to chromebooks too weak to run anything natively", I do think there should be a physical option, but tbqh, companies dont like it because of possible piracy. Companies have been getting more aggressive every generation with security, and a world where we control the media is a world where we control the media more than the companies WANT us to control the media. So not only are consoles super locked down PCs, but they're also going to force everything to run through digital services to ensure they remain control. And oh well if the game gets pulled maybe you'll no longer own it. Theyve kinda been doing that with games with online integrated into them. Remember "the crew"? Yeah, im kinda salty about that one too. 

Idk, in some ways I kinda see it as...well...normal to move on this direction, but I also get the concern.

My whole thing with all of this is...DO WE REALLY NEED NEXT GEN CONSOLES RIGHT NOW?! Jesus Christ. I sound like a broken record but seriously, the hardware market has been a mess. They released the last one in the middle of COVID and it led to shortages, scalping, and $800 price tags. it took 2-3 years just to be able to afford a PC on par with said consoles. And at this point, that same hardware is more expensive than it was back in 2022-2023. The $500 consoles are $650-700 now for the base model. Getting an equivalent PC, as we've recently seen, costs around $750. WHY DO WE NEED NEW CONSOLES?! 

And they aint taking a loss on it either. I mean, Jesus Christ, this is my beef with nintendo as well. They had the $300 switch, had it never drop in price the 8 years it was the current gen thing, then they raised the price to $330 and dumped a NEXT GEN console for $450 $500. 

I'm gonna make things as clear as possible:

THIS CRAP IS NOT AFFORDABLE, NO ONE WANTS THIS!

Seriously. What drove the desire for new consoles in the past was the idea that due to moore's law and the rapid increase in tech specs for the same price, that we could produce a console with much better graphics for the same money as the last one. The old console would inevitably drop in price, be replaced with a new one, and the cycle would continue. But between graphics kinda bottoming out in the late 2010s, and rising hardware costs, I really dont see the point of a new console. Why should we buy a new console that barely has better graphics than the old one? Seriously, gaming has developed where we dont really need more power. if anything more power just allows devs to poorly optimize games for no apparent reason, while they barely look better than the previous title from a decade ago. I have not been "wowed" by a game's graphics for years now. They all look good, I'm kinda over it, but what I do notice is the fact that we're still expected to throw away money on new hardware for these new games, or we get left behind. Games are designed around the new hardware, run poorly on the old hardware despite it not being justified, and to go back to the previous topic, they're removing more control from the users and digitizing everything. 

Idk at my age, I'm feeling increasingly tempted to just live in the past, reject the present, reject next gen, reject the new games, and keep playing the old crap. Ya know, just cashing in my chips, riding the hardware I have for as long as possible, and just not buying into the new ecosystem. It's not justified, the entry costs are INSANE, the games arent that good, and yeah, I honestly think the gaming market needs a crash. This isn't sustainable. Nothing about "next gen" is remotely interesting to me. Even as a PC gamer. Like consoles have been a joke for a while IMO, but just the system requirements going up and getting increasingly insane forcing me to upgrade my hardware to run new games is just....no. I mean, the entry price for gen 9 was bad enough for me, there havent been enough games that really justified the hardware requirements, and I'm just...over this crap. Im not gonna rebuild my entire PC for $1k+ just to run some mediocre game that i dont even find as fun as a game from 2015 or 2005. I ain't just.