Interesting that Sony considers a Blu-Ray drive to no longer be a key feature of the flagship console model. They’re probably not wrong, given the long slow decline in importance of optical media. Feels like the beginning of the end when even Blu-Ray’s primary creator is walking away.
Sony & MS aided in the decline of discs by making a disc drive an expensive add on and having every game need an online connection or day one update to fix bugs.
I'm sure they had a marketing plan of making $90 bucks off a $10 buck disc drive and then go "oh wow, look, only 30% of people spent an extra $100 bucks!"
It also enables them to effectively kill the used game market when you have to buy all games new through their store (or a code). You can’t even share a game with a friend, unless you share their whole account, which is way more friction.
They were also following consumer trends, digital purchases were already getting very popular before they introduced diskless versions of the consoles.
I always wondered why both Sony and MS stuck with discs instead of ie. SDCards like Nintendo - with up to 1TB in size and faster speeds that seems to be a way better fit?
They have sales data and probably analytics on actual usage. Even if the numbers aren't diminutive, they're likely looking to cut retail out of their margins.
I like physical media. A loud subset of gamers like physical media. But when you compare against Steam, it's clear what actually sells.
> But when you compare against Steam, it's clear what actually sells.
And not just "what actually sells", but also that digital games remove a lot of costs while consumers don't necessarily expect a discount.
There are a lot of people who wait for sales and bundles, but IMO that's more likely digital games being able to capture parts of the market that physical games struggled with rather than expecting a discount. I know I would definitely think a lot more before buying games if every title in my Steam library took up the space of even a disk.
