Sony Defense Force

Tactical Espionage Action

If Sony thinks its audience is going disk free, they haven’t met their long time target audience.

They're going to have a hard time trying to market that thing to people. As if I've said before, hardware and performance doesn't win people over anymore. It's expected. Not to mention the price alone will turn people away if its anywhere near $1,000. The real challenge will be player migration - getting people to migrate over to the PS6. There are still people who REFUSE to leave the PS4 and given recent events, it's going to stay that way. Same for the people with the PS5. There will be no incentive for people to crossover. I'm not paying $1,000 for a new console that's likely 5%-10% better than what I have. Simply living is beyond affordable right now. Shit is not cheap.

Their decision to end production of physical games has done more damage to the PS6 than they could've imagined. It's obvious by this point that the PS6 will be digital-only which not only fucks over people who collect physical games, but alienates a portion of their customers internationally. We haven't gotten to a point where internet is 100% globally. There are still countries that have zero or poor internet. How are they supposed to play and buy games now? Fuck them, I guess?

Then, there's the PS5 Pro which till this day I believe was unnecessary. The fact that the Pro exists is enough to prevent people from wasting their money on a PS6 especially when there will hardly even be a noticeable gap between them. If people need a new PlayStation, they'll like just opt for the PS5 Pro assuming it'll be a slightly (and I mean ever so slightly) cheaper option by then. It'll still have a disc drive until they stop producing them. And trust me, that's definitely going to happen.

The only thing they can rely on is games and if it's portable. But being portable won't help either. There are too many options plus they're not outdoing Nintendo in their own space. They tried before. That leaves games. And games will be VERY important next generation. They can't repeat what they did with the PS5. We were stuck in a global pandemic. The world literally stopped for a couple years. They can't reboot and remaster their way out. They'll need new games.

Given the current climate, gaming will be dominated by live-service and indies. Most of those games are available everywhere. All they'll have left is their doomed-to-fail live-service initiative and whatever PlayStation Studios is able to put out. Even then, things are bleak. Development cycles of AAA games are only going to get longer and more costly. So, you're likely not to see many AAA games coming next gen. They'll have to invest in any partnerships they can and/or go heavy with indies.

Even then, with they way things are, what game development studio in their right mind would WANT to be acquired now? You're telling me that a studio I and my team built over the course of several years can get shut down within the blink of an eye? And I have no say in it? Nah, fuck that. You buggin'. I'd rather risk being independent and failing because at least then I can end it on my own terms. I can only imagine the amount of distrust that studios have for publishers right now.

The vita was a super powerful handheld capable of running shit near on par with the PS3, a sleek simple device with a ton of functionality. And its greatest weakness was an insistence on a proprietary expensive storage media instead of the cheaper, more common Micro-SD card. We're at a point where most big budget games take up a third of your drive!

I remember getting a Vita secondhand, being so excited to play stuff on it. I had used PSPs super heavy, the games were much smaller, tons of homebrew potential! I got the vita, and the smallest Vita memory stick I could afford was still like $60-$80! For like 4, 8 gigs MAYBE! I'd end up being able to install ONE psp game on the NEW system, and only ever be able to play shit when I could actually find physical copies!

I already had to upgrade my PS5 storage with a whole second SSD, and I still rarely have room for actual shit I want to play. I constantly have to delete shit. MHWilds, MGS∆, BG3, Oblivion Remastered, Fortnite, hell even ps4 stuff like Fallout 76 all end up over 100gigs! Most of the most cherished titles I've had the last 10 years have been physical, despite the huge push for digital. It's the only way I can manage playing stuff that isn't some shoestring budget 300mb indie game without my storage disappearing.

Just one shot in their own foot after another.

We don't need a PS6, the PS5 is still plenty powerful and only recently started feeling like it has an install base after these boneheads launched a new platform in the middle of a global crisis. Its been 6 years and I barely know anyone that owns one of these things still and the constant price increases aren't helping.

Video games and consoles used to get cheaper as time went on, that's how they made install bases grow. This is what killed VR headsets and it is what will kill consoles. No one is going to buy a damn $1000 PS6.

In just the past two months, Sony has:

Said the PS6 will be more than $1000 at launch

Announced the end of all physical PS game releases

While simultaneously announcing the end of two of their console game stores — ensuring multiple games will die forever

Declared that they are wholly dedicated to (A) leveraging A.I. when making games and (B) creating live-service games above all other game types

Announced that if you bought any movies through their PlayStation Store, over 550 of them will soon be deleted from all users' libraries — with no restitution offered of any kind

Gamers, it is time — to paraphrase Robert Vann — to turn Sony's picture to the wall. Any one of these insults would be bad, and taken alone? Maybe it could be swallowed. But this is an ongoing campaign of disdain towards customers, with each declaration worse than the last.

You are free to step away.

The greatest ecosystem in gaming history is not dependent on any single participant.

You are not being deprived of games by some mustache-twirling villain; you are being gifted broader, managed access to the greatest IPs in gaming history across multiple console generations.