The death of physical games media and Nintendo.
Hello you wonderfully wonderful Patreon people!
I hope that all of you are doing exceptionally great, that your favorite streamer picks up on every single comment you write in the chat this week and that all your red cards may be forgiven!
The videos about 3D World coinless and Mario Maker power up detection contraptions are finally out and I have to be honest with all of you here - it was really tough to focus on producing them while this incredible event is happening in the background.
The best players coming together to play countless games …
The insane display of skill …
All the amazing plays and tricks …
One game closer and more thrilling than the next …
Needless to say my productivity always takes a big hit during the Summer Games Done Quick but somehow I still managed to get the videos out which is great!
So first things first!
This update is going to be a bit shorter than usual and we will only be able to enjoy it in text but not in video - the reason is quite frankly that there are currently a ton of things going on for me behind the scenes and I’m struggling to keep up a schedule.
So please forgive me for I have decided to cut a corner here to keep things manageable.
Nonetheless we got a little update - which already brings us to the topic of this little update!
Shame on me!
You see, during the last Patreon Q&A one of you wonderful people asked me the question how long I believe physical games media will continue to exist.
And it is the answer I gave to this question that prompts me to apologize.
Feel free to keep laughing but I naively answered that I believe that physical games media will survive one more generation because at the end of the day physical releases aren’t as bad a deal for games publishers.
Afterall they make a lot of extra money selling physical special editions.
Most of you clever Patreon people probably already picked up the failure in my naive worldview …
I wrongly assumed that game publishers actually have to include the game into the physical game special edition boxes they are selling.
But why would they!
And only to make fun of me, Rockstar went ahead and announced only a couple of weeks after my naive assessment that GTA 6 will be physically sold without GTA 6 actually being in the box. (It’s a download code instead.)
Solving the little inconvenience of physical games releases once and for all.
And only a couple of days later Sony picked up on the idea and straight up announced that they will end disc production for new games altogether in roughly 18 months.
Not just for Sony games - they end PS disc production altogether.
Sounding the bittersweet bell for the death of physical games.
It looks as if neither the PS6 nor the S XboX Series SiX SX (just brainstorming naming ideas for Microsoft here) will feature a disc drive.
And I think consumers are not going to like that.
Here’s the thing.
During the last Patreon update we actually discussed that Nintendo might be sailing into troubled waters because of their very unusual software line up.
I pretty much argued that Nintendo seems to be deliberately hitting their little toe against a crate with what they are doing.
Ouch!
What I wasn’t aware of at that point however, was that Sony is currently shooting themselves in the foot with a shotgun while Microsoft is busy figuring out how to most effectively set themselves on fire.
Mega ouch!
Holy Fuzzy the past couple of weeks have been a mess in the gaming industry!
The next console generation is shaping up to be a disaster and all of that has me believe that Nintendo might be better positioned than I originally suspected.
So first Sony and Microsoft both recently raised the prices for their consoles.
As we are speaking a PS5 is being sold to sad kids for 649$ while Microsoft sells the base Series X for a whopping 799$.
The reason for these price increases is obviously the RAM shortage and the general AI computing boom, but nonetheless this means that this is the first console generation that is getting more expansive during its life cycle.
As far as we can tell the shortages seem to continue for a while, meaning that the PS6 generation is very likely going to launch somewhere in this price range.
And that’s just, like really a lot of money.
Add to this that these consoles will be the first not to support physical discs and that hardware in general is progressing a lot slower the past years and the result is …
Well, the result is that it seems as if the PS6 will be a more expensive PS5 without a disc drive that might not even be able to play my old physical games library.
And I am not entirely sure who the target audience for this product is.
That’s the hardware - but what are Microsoft and Sony’s strategies when it comes to games?
Well, Microsoft's strategy is currently to buy up studios and to close them immediately afterwards - something only proving to be of mixed effectiveness so far.
Sony on the other hand is releasing less exclusive games this console generation than the previous and for the first couple of years all their exclusives were backwards compatible to begin with.
Meaning that it looks like the next console generation will be a very small technical leap forward, super expensive, will take away physical releases and likely round it up with very few exclusive games.
Maybe my tealeaves aren’t working properly, but as far as I can tell they clearly spell disaster when it comes to Sony and bedlam when it comes to Microsoft.
So why are we waffling about the weak position that Sony and Microsoft seem to be in when it comes to the next generation?
Well, because for whatever magical reason Nintendo managed to dodge all the problems that the other two big console makers are facing.
Nintendo “only” had to raise the price for the Switch 2 by 50$ so far - meaning they are likely willing to swallow some losses to keep the price competitive.
The Switch 2 is (hopefully at some point in the future) filled to the brim with great exclusive software, it still plays physical games and it is a handheld as well.
The other two players in the eternal game of console war just caused Nintendo a penalty with the keeper nowhere to be seen.
I can’t wait to learn about the very specific way that Nintendo figured out to somehow kick the ball over the goal nonetheless.
See all of you in a couple of weeks with a hopefully longer update!
But before we go: of course - as always - a huge thank you to all of you for your wonderful support.
You are all awesome and I hope that all your countries will end up winning the world cup!
Lot’s of hugs!
Comments (5)
Thank you very much for the update, Ceave! Your humour and writing are so good, it still really impresses me. I do absolutely wonder at Microsoft's strategy of buying companies just to forcefully toss them into landfills. What are they thinking?
I suspect: During covid they were thinking that gaming will be the next huge thing so better invest all the money in it - only to find out that AI is the next best thing so better cut all the gaming money and throw it after ai. But it’s also a lot of incompetence. The news just broke that (apperently) Microsoft is firing all coders at ID Software. That’s the very coders that managed to have the Doom games run on the original Switch and they are clearly incredibly talented. There is just no logic behind it.
I really find the fact that the ps5 had almost no games baffling. Never during its entire life was it really purchasable for a reasonable price, and even if you are willing to buy it, it is just an overpriced pc that runs like 2 additional games but nothing else, and just leaves me wondering what they intended the reason for buying one to be. I also believe that console exclusive games are something of a double sided coin, of course I do not like having to purchase an entire console for just a single game, but I also think no one will buy consoles without them doing something unique. However, games are not the only thing you can make unique to a console, as can be seen with the switch or even the steam deck that both do unique things you can’t otherwise or are just a convenient, rather cheap package optimized to play games.
Let’s be real, these console prices probably aren’t going to come back down. 😭
Hello Ceave, hope everything fine on your end and the heat is not so bad where you live. So, a couple of hours ago I was having a coffee with a friend of mine who is a gamer too and the news about Microsoft new round of layoffs hit us. We both agreed that we are tired of the situation and I had to realize I'm at the point of strongly thinking that the AAA industry is a threat to the survival of videogames. Yeah, we still may need hardwares and thats a problem too, but I want to believe that indies and smaller productions can carry the medium toward a better direction than these corporations have with budget of several hundred millions of dollars wasted on games that all play the same. Videogames should be about bringing joy and fun. I accept the fact is a job and a way of making money for companies, but all they are giving us lately is misery and microtransactions.