The End?
I haven’t felt much like writing lately, that much is obvious from the time gap between this post and the previous one. This year, like last, has been a daily struggle just to survive.
I’ve got some ideas on things I want to write, just have absolutely zero motivation to put pen to paper (or fingers to the keys in this instance). I’m nearly done with the first part of my trilogy of Destiny posts, I have a neat idea for making my own “RPG Pantheon” like that of Axe of the Blood God, plus some other personal things I intend to write about. But what’s really been on my mine as of late is Sony’s rather devastating announcement on the first day of July that they will no longer make PlayStation physical games after January 2028.
To say that this has been a gut punch and a rollercoaster of emotions and is hard for me to deal with is an understatement. I don’t know what I’m going to do here. I have so many physical PlayStation games that I really am now afraid that the console will break before I’m able to play them all. I’ve never wanted an “all digital games future” and the people that do are either fools or money hungry pieces of shit. But all of this certainly puts things into perspective.
If all the years and thousands of dollars I’ve spent on your platform meant nothing to Sony? Fine. I know where I am and am not appreciated and I don’t stay in places where I’m not appreciated. My plan is thus:
Deleting things off my PlayStation Wishlist that I either have on another platform (I like to double dip to support developers and studios) or I already had physically, or I feel is either going to be uninteresting to me, or if I feel it costs “too much” for a digital only title.
Keep my physical game pre-orders I have but I’m not going to make anymore.
If future PlayStation games that I was looking forward to are going to be a digital only release, then its a no buy.
Migrate my Final Fantasy XIV subscription from PlayStation to PC.
Double down on the used games market (eBay and GameFly). If Sony wants to play ball, we’ll play.
Friends are helping me to find either a decent, long lasting pre-built PC for gaming, or help me find the parts to make a decent Steam Machine. I’ll try to embrace PC gaming but I make zero promises about sticking with it or even liking it.
Make the jump back to a Nintendo only console ecosystem. It just feels right to “go home” so to speak. Nintendo was where I started gaming and it looks like that is where I’m going to end up.
So what about the other companies and ecosystems that this is going to affect? GameFly has been my steady source of “new” used games for a while now because I feel that this $70 price point is ridiculous and I will never pay something like that for a digital only title (Destiny and FFXIV not withstanding). What about all these companies out there like iam8bit, Serenity Forge, Special Reserve Games, Limited Run Games, etc. that produce small numbers of physical games? What is going to happen to them? I might have issues with how Limited Run does business, but I certainly don’t want them to go completely under. As I write this, I can’t help but wonder if Fairhurst knew this was coming and that was why he decided to leave LRG back in March.
I know I could have been gaming on PC for a long time, but I didn’t want to. I did not and do not want the headache of making sure my drivers are updated, making sure this game or that game is compatible with my hardware, making sure my hardware is compatible with my hardware, and on and on and on. That was and still is why I prefer console gaming, its just less work for me to do to in order to have fun. Just put the disc in and play the fucking game, that’s it. Hopefully my switch to PC gaming can be a seamless one, but I have my doubts.
But with gaming on PC, this brings me another set or moral quandaries that I don’t want to deal with and that is the current state of Windows and Microslop. Microslop has decided to shove “A.I.” into several aspects of Windows and its made using a Windows based PC a new lesson in irritation. So much so that I’ve decided to learn how to use Linux and will eventually have a Linux based PC in the future. Satya Nadella and Asha Sharma can eat it. I really don’t want anything to do with Microslop anyway since they continue to help the Israeli government commit genocide in Gaza.
Nintendo is not without fault in this equation. While I’m understanding about the reasons behind the high cost of the Switch 2 (data centers grabbing up all the RAM chips and possible collusion behind companies to artificially raise the prices on RAM) I really dislike the concept of Game Key Cards and not having any data on them. Perhaps the jump back to Nintendo is really only delaying the inevitable.
I really hope this doesn’t spill over into my being able to buy movies and tv shows on discs. Perhaps Frank Cifaldi is correct and that piracy is the only way to preserve any of this.
