And 13 years before that announcement was the start of the PS2 era.

I'm with you on that which is why I love GOG's efforts.

True. But also, some places that don't have reliable Internet access rely on physical media. They're cutting out part of the market entirely.

This 100%. Discs are actually just ewaste these days but we absolutely need competing storefronts on consoles and a way of selling digital licences second hand.

The issue, normies dont understand DRM free digital media. Once its digital its like its invisible. A disc or a tape, is so easy to understand, you just HAVE it and it works.

My tapes from the 80s/90s just work when I put them in. Does a disc game or digital game from even 2018 do that? Likely not.

Since it's guaranteed the next gen of consoles won't have disc drives, they're going to be gone as well.

The problem with discs vs. digital never was how much of the game you own or the fact that you can play the same disc 20 years down the road. It boils down to the fact that you can no longer sell the game you own after finishing it.

We used to finish games. No update bullshit. A game was done when it was done. Humans can do this shit. Capitalism erodes our skills and our brains.

Just look at crash on ps1. Amazing.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/sony-erases-digital-content-from-libraries-were-reminded-we-dont-own-what-we-buy/

For me it’s called a library.

On a side note, while I very much understand people’s general hate of DRM, I am curious if there’d be interest in a digital library service that lets people borrow video games to download with lite-DRM systems attached (something small, to make certain people don’t borrow the whole catalog, and then crack them on the spot)

I’m sure it’s easy for people to come up with gripes about such a system, or any use of DRM, and would express their preference for physical, but: Physical games prioritize/benefit consoles over PCs, and prioritize AAA games for which the costs of large disc printing runs make more sense. You’re not likely to find many copies of Mina the Hollower at libraries.

I've always been a PC gamer, but for a long time there, consoles were affordable enough to put in for just a few exclusives. Then I gradually went from a couple consoles to one, and then I started skipping generations and now it's at the point where my last participation in the console market was getting a used PS3 at the far end of its life and getting a Switch gifted to me a couple years ago. I was expecting to skip PS4 and get a PS5 after the price dropped, but yeahhhhh. I'm definitely still interested in exclusives (the Shadow of the Colossus remake, The Last Guardian, Bloodborne, and now Intergalactic), but at this point, there's no viable scenario were I'm in the Sony ecosystem in the foreseeable future. Fumito Ueda's next game being announced for PC was shocking to me.

Even if we're talking marginal cost differential for used games, a lot of consumer psychology is just feeling like they are getting a good deal. PC gaming is on the rise--and I don't mean that in a cute, Lemmy Linux gaming sort of way, it's genuinely a market shift shown across multiple indicators--there's growing hostility towards walled-garden ecosystems, and Nintendo's still going strong. Sony needs some sort of carrot, sheesh. Woof.

To be fair, i'd say the Steam Machine is relatively cost competitive with other PC pre-builds. DIY will save you money but you'll never end up with a system that's as small or quiet, and you have to really know what you're doing.

The Steam Machine is not such a bad deal really, aside from the fact that every PC is a bad deal in 2026.