I have mentioned elsewhere the short memory of the media cycle and even society in general. It is no surprise then that it is also evident in the much less important aspects of our lives such as popular culture. This post will be focused on one such example and one where many people who were once opposed to something, end up tolerating it in a different form.
The PlayStation 3/Xbox 360/Wii console generation was unusually long with seven to eight years elapsing between the succeeding generation depending on which console you begin or end with. One reason for the length was that all three of these consoles were successful and the three competing companies were understandably reluctant for this to end. These were also the main consoles during a time of change in the gaming industry and entertainment in general. Consider for example that the slightly cheaper Xbox 360 model at launch had no internal storage and the more expensive model had only a 20GB HDD that would seem tiny in just a few years. By the end of the generation, newer models came with much larger storage and most (if not all) of the games were available to buy digitally and could be also installed to reduce loading times. It was similar for the PlayStation 3 which notably promoted the new Blu-ray disc format and high definition through HDMI (which is now standard). It is often forgotten that despite this boast, the original console release (and even the first slim revision), came with composite cables and a HDMI cable had to be purchased separately. Between 2005 and 2007 or so, most people did not have high definition displays which is increasingly hard to believe given how ubiquitous they now are.
It was the adoption of digital distribution in particular that was perhaps the most significant change. PC gamers had already been downloading demos and patches for years and some consoles had experimented with digital distribution in the 1990s. It was only around the mid 2000s that this became possible to do on a wide scale as Valve had by this time already demonstrated with their Steam platform on PC. Microsoft also made it appealing with their Xbox Arcade service on Xbox 360. Even Nintendo included it on their Wii with many of their classic titles available for purchase from the day the console launched. Despite some difficulties with questionable downloadable content (DLC), digital distribution was quickly adopted.
This quick adoption obviously caught the attention of business executives in every company which saw a much cheaper way to lower distribution costs without necessarily reducing the price of their products. One manifestation at the time of what was to come was what is generally known as the “online pass” which was a one-time-use download code included with physical releases. This did not stop a physical copy of a game being sold on the used market but did mean that some content would be unavailable (usually online play), unless purchased (again) on a digital storefront. This was met with quite some outrage and was eventually abandoned by publishers like Electronic Arts towards the end of the generation.
The announcement of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One successors happened pretty close together and it was clear that one had taken the idea of a digital future a lot further than the other. Both consoles included internal storage and Blu-ray disc drives but Microsoft initially planned to digitally restrict physical releases to the console they were first used on. This would have effectively ended the used market as these discs would be un-sellable because their serial numbers would have been tied to the console they were first used on. The negative response to this from consumers was ferocious and Sony quickly capitalised on the outrage by putting together a short video mocking Microsoft.
Microsoft soon responded by completely backtracking and removing all the related digital rights management but the damage was done and this one issue essentially handed the generation to Sony with the PlayStation 4 having roughly double the total sales of Xbox One by the end. During this same time, Nintendo was just being Nintendo but they had also made their first-party titles available digitally. The Wii U was technically the first out the gate in 2012 but the sales were poor and the console limped along until the Nintendo Switch released and changed the companies fortunes in early 2017.
All of this is somehow still well-known but also forgotten. One point my cynical mind has to make is that Sony would have done the same thing if they believed they could have gotten away with it. I have wondered before whether Microsoft decided to do this under the mistaken assumption that Sony was intending to do exactly the same thing. If they’d both adopted this policy, there would certainly have still been outrage, but they might have gotten away with it together. There is an idea among some that Sony was somehow more moral than Microsoft and not just taking competitive advantage of a strategic blunder on Microsoft’s part. Similarly, Nintendo’s strong-arming of publishers during the era of the Nintendo Entertainment System is well-documented but also often forgotten.
When the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles released in late 2020, they both offered a cheaper model that didn’t include a disc drive; which meant that only digital games could be played. I am not necessarily faulting this decision as many people were quite happy to buy games digitally by this point and discounts are frequent enough that one need never pay full price. At the same time as all this, the wider public were happily switching from physical media to digital streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. Microsoft has turned its Xbox Live service into something similar with a subscription offering a wide number of titles (including new first-party releases) along with access to only multiplayer. Microsoft’s blunder then was not in the intention but the inelegant way they originally went about it. Both Sony and Microsoft are ultimately getting what was attempted with the Xbox One back in 2013.
Last year, Sony was put under fire for planning to remove purchased digital content from users due to expiring licenses. This is not a new thing in and of itself but the plan to remove access completely was. For similar reasons, Steam has delisted games but importantly also left them available to download on accounts that had previously purchased them. What Sony intended would have taken a way all access to purchased content. I say “would” because the outrage led them to backtrack, much as Microsoft did with the Xbox One. And it absolutely wasn’t Sony’s apparent earlier respect for consumer rights that led them to do so.
The long rumoured PlayStation 5 Pro was announced a short time ago as of posting and interestingly, it does not include a disc drive either; though it is more expensive than the other two available models. You can purchase one but it must be their branded model and requires an internet connection to be paired to the console which is very similar to what Microsoft had intended to do with game discs on the Xbox One. I have a Blu-ray reader and writer connected via USB to the computer I am using to write this and it requires no such thing for it to work. I simply plug it in and it can read a wide variety of disc formats. This means it is an unnecessary extra requirement consciously included by Sony.
So ultimately rather than attempting any strict digital rights shenanigans as Microsoft did, both companies are simply moving towards not including the option for physical media right out of the box. In Sony’s case, you can still have it but it requires much more messing around than was previously the case. I expect the next generation Xbox and PlayStation consoles will follow suit and offer no disc drives on the basic models at all. They may offer an external or optional solution for extra expense, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the next consoles are completely digital from the outset. I expect in the future, there may be no consoles at all and PlayStation and Xbox will be little more than digital services as Steam already is.
Many games released physically already have large patches waiting to be installed on launch day and from generation, consoles had noticeably lost some of the ease of use that made console gaming attractive. Nintendo still offers this experience but even many of their games include patches though generally much smaller in size. Many third-party companies also confusingly release physical Switch games with download codes meaning that these can not be resold. Another example is the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection where all three Metal Gear Solid games in this collection are not even present on the card and have to be downloaded. The card in this case acts as something of a key to make them available and it will be completely useless when the servers shut down in the future.
Ironically, Microsoft’s more aggressive attempt to end physical media was also the more honest. What has happened since are only subtler attempts but the goal is still the same. These companies want you to pay them and keep paying them. They want to sell products as services but charge you for the product and then an ongoing service. Given how quickly so many (including myself) have switched to digital storefronts, one can hardly blame them for taking things as far as they have.