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@brian_: I don’t think that playstation realizes how much physical factors into games actually being played. If I march my happy self down to gamestop and I make a purchase there’s a big chance that I made that purchase factoring in trade in value, potential gift giving, and feeling like I got a deal with sales stickers. When I buy digital on Xbox it’s because I’ve skimmed the published every Monday evening sale prices for the week. I skim through reddit list that someone generates. I look at the price and I go yep, yep, or nope. Since it’s alphabetized I look at the price first and then look at the game. If the price doesn’t inspire me chances then the game isn’t up for consideration. Sony sales are a little less structured. Even your grocery store has sale circulars on the same day every week. Sony seems to celebrate some sort of pagan holidays at random.

How does marketing now work? Are they just going to leverage twitch streamers because some kids like going to the store to look and plot on games for future birthday money or report cards. Sometimes they can get mom to pay it forward on future unkept promises. Now all purchases are going to require mom to queue up some app on her phone? Pretty unceremonious to get guarantees from your kid without them having a box that can be taken away. How do you share with your brother. Will mom guess my password is a dirty word? Maybe mom will let me click the buy button on her iPhone 11.

For full price games well those are typically purchased within 48 hours of release. Sometimes I’ll just do the $5 down. Sometimes I’ll do the whole purchase price and I forget it’s a nice surprise to just walk out. Does Sony do the preorder thing digitally with $5 down? So I spend $60 and then just wait sounds fun... maybe I get a copy of the previous game to tide me over. Nope? How about a refund system? Maybe? How about a return system if the game is broke or bollocks? Can I loan it to a friend when I’m done? Trade it in for a discount?

What I’d love to see happen is what I’ll call the “fortnite effect” (TM) happens and kids don’t want any of the new consoles they’d rather just play the games they have. I think there’s 70,000 entries for games on giant Bomb. We are saturated. PlayStation flop so hard that they have to do disc based backwards compatibility.

I only buy full retail on games since I know I’m helping my local shops and I know eventually the games will trickle down into maybe even dozens of different hands. Digits doesn’t do that. And I swear I might just make the Series-S my PUBG box and never buy digital so we retain this disc economy. I mean we could all be driving electric cars. The means is there but gas means something to too many economies.. discs are too big to fail?

@gundato: when I know I’m right and I’m just reading through a PowerPoint that is clearly copy and pasta a couple words in I tend to skip stuff. And not knowing about the PS4 3rd party sales is pretty clear that you aren’t up to date on your hobby. What else don’t you know. Please continue to chime in. Tell me more... the no longer selling digital through 3rd party means they are tieing up lose ends and scrounging for all their little pennies where they can. Do you we need the beastcast to spell out what EACH piece of news actually means? Sony is trying to lock things down in the same fashion. Xbox is just trying to keep a foothold in a market and unlike phones they aren’t willing to quit or go quietly (though they still linger with their surface duo announcement). So Xbox users benefit. Keep up if you’re going to speak up. I come to the bombcast for discussions on food too.

@gundato: look at the crap Nintendo is pulling on their limited digital edition 3D Mario collection. If you think that thing is going to have a digital sale on anything other than the possibility some random date is Mario’s birthday or some inanity and now it’s priced at $35 for 35 minutes on March 5th then you haven’t been around long enough. Let the shenanigans begin. I really hate the fact that I’m going to get the Series-S but I’ve pared down the fact I only care about PUBG and I like the fact that if I have people over I have the controllers to support a 4 play split screen game right now. I’m thankful for my digital collection and I only got here because of these corporations duking it out over me. Now people new to gaming. People with a PS4 for their first console or that got the Xbox SAD. I feel horrible about their video game future. One that I ushered in.

@navster15: Games at GameStop prices for that same time period would probably be a horizontal line if not going down over that same time period. In physical world my Madden 2015 copy goes down to $1.00. In all digital world Madden 2015 ceases to exist therefore price increase over time. As the graph shows.

@gundato: Sony no longer sales their digital games through third party. Only the currency cards. Everybody aspires to be Apple and their ecosystem. Nintendo is kind of the original Apple on their whole draconian policies. Sony would love to lock things down 100%. Btw videogames circa 2020 is all about what’s popping in twitch. What do think the corporate “friend” prices will be for fall guys once it leaves Psplus? $29.99 probably. Of course the foolish logic is get Psplus now. So far we don’t know if that game will even play on PS5. When you place your preorders tomorrow do recognize the caveat to all the questions that we legitimately need answers to like Backward compatibility, controller cost, ps plus PS5 titles, and if fortnite and other free to play games will continue to remain free to play. Probably isnt good enough reason to put coin down.

@navster15: there was an article yesterday about how the collective total cost for everything on steam is $360,000. The graphic showed a substantial dip during their bi-annual steam sales. Other than that the price keeps climbing and it’s not because the prices are trending downwards. PC players have the most disposable money and are likely to not be as price sensitive as the demographic that plays consoles. How many kids iPhones have Apple Pay or anything permanent on their phones. PlayStations are going to be the same. Some parent is going to shell out $50 for a digital miles morales after they get the thing home. Don’t think so. Sales are made in store when the protection plans and upsales and warranties make them feel like their investment is worth it. Digital never feels like a fair trade.

@zeik: The sales were only to compete with gamestop and be just handing you a game i'm done with. Those sales are going to be about as prevalent going forward as a Friday night showing of the latest blockbuster at a movie theatre, always full price.

I am curious if they're going to create artificial scarcity for the disc based version. I'm surprised they didnt price them the same and just offer up digital licenses for "free" on the digital version. They may be a little scared of the Series-S

@brian_: People that embrace digital had better prepare their wallets. Of the 200+ titles I have on Xbox One from this generation I only paid for (according to my spreadsheet) full price at $60 for 17 games about the other 175 games i got through free games with gold (and no i dont consider xbox one titles from gold as part of that list), from Gamestop for pretty cheap, or as a digital sale at around 50% off or better. It's going to be a pretty tough sell for me to digital only on PS5 and since this might be the first console since the (not counting the ps4 lol) since the Dreamcast to not offer disc based backwards compatibility I doubt i will be touching a PS5 this generation. Microsoft needs duplicate the meme from the PS4 launch about handing over a disc right back at Sony.

The PSPlus Collection looks as plain to me now as it did when each of those games launched.

@boozak: if they gave you the PS3 titles and somehow the Vita and PS4 titles that would be massive. But since they aren’t in second place like Microsoft (3rd place) the possible is unpossible [sic]. There was no mention of free tier multiplayer so ps plus still required? They might pull some bull on even fortnite or soon to be free rocket league might require ps plus now. Will psplus even offer PS5 games? These events are oftentimes about was is not said.

Miles Morales is on PS4 as well so that major get is going to be more of the same. QTE events galore whoopty do.

Their ps plus service has games that you can get used at GameStop for like $100 for all of them. There were no enhancements announced and I think it’s hilarious they showed second son. That game is ps2 quality gameplay.

Digital gives you the privilege of paying full price and the shenanigans of ultimate edition getting unlocked 24 or 48 hours earlier.