It's interesting to see Sony currently doing basically everything any business school would advise against.

On the off-chance we've got any of the brain dead apologists in here, does it not seem odd the CEO sold his shares? Food for thought...

Like the XBox DRM everybody hated where you couldn't use your XBox while traveling to certain countries?

Even worse, besides Sony having a history of stealing back content that you have purchased, the countries that Sony does business with will change. If your government gets into a war or maybe just a disagreement with Sony's government, your console becomes a brick and you lose all your games and other content.

I have the feeling that my PS4 is the last console I will ever buy. Steam machine looks like a better offer with every Sony announcement.

Does the ps5 let you play with no PSN account?

It would be fine if such companies could simply allow to use vpn to bypass regional restrictions. Instead they specifically verify the country where the account is created.

Sales of decks of cards went up and Sony eventually went the way of the dodo.

to be fair, original copies in the third world were non existant, thats why the ps2 was so popular, everyone was pirating

The following years are really going to suck for gaming. Sony is no longer cool with people owning their games, similar with Nintendo, who still do sell physical cartridges, only just some of them will actually contain the game. As for Xbox, it's straight up imploding right now. The only ownership-friendly option right now seems to be PC with stores like GOG, itch.io or Zoom (no, not that one).

However, all of the platforms mentioned still have one problem in common, which is likely going to persist for the next few years: hardware has gotten ridiculously expensive thanks to the AI chip crisis. Right now the smart move seems to be to stick with the hardware you have until the chip crisis blows over, unless you are comfortable with paying through the nose for a new PC or console.

Can you play discs on PS5 without making PSN account?

Compared to what, current percentage?

I suspect some countries might have bigger or smaller populations that others.