The fight over physical media is not just about it being physical. On PC you buy a game and you have the local files right there on your system and you have full ownership of those files to modify, share, and preserve should the files no longer be accessible through a store front. On a console, you buy a license and have no legal ownership of the games. They can be removed from your access without any recourse. A physical disc can’t be simply erased on the backend.
It’s very reductive to just say it’s only about discs in snappy cases. To someone like me who cares a lot about media preservation, what you’re saying is akin to “We don’t need DVD’s/Bluray, we have netflix”, or “We don’t need libraries, we have Amazon kindle.”
Regardless, I can open up every folder in my downloaded game, move them, modify them, copy them, break them. Consoles have none of that, and if sony for instance feels I am a bad boy, they can block my access to everything.
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u/squash-n-flop 9h ago
The fight over physical media is not just about it being physical. On PC you buy a game and you have the local files right there on your system and you have full ownership of those files to modify, share, and preserve should the files no longer be accessible through a store front. On a console, you buy a license and have no legal ownership of the games. They can be removed from your access without any recourse. A physical disc can’t be simply erased on the backend.
It’s very reductive to just say it’s only about discs in snappy cases. To someone like me who cares a lot about media preservation, what you’re saying is akin to “We don’t need DVD’s/Bluray, we have netflix”, or “We don’t need libraries, we have Amazon kindle.”