DebatableRaccoon

I will admit it's not only the price that is a deterrent, even if that's now competing with a perfectly capable gaming PC that can do significantly more, doesn’t have an additional charge to play online, doesn’t have to deal with increasingly standardised subpar controller longevity, commonly have cheaper games, better sales, and will have a longer shelf life. I already thought the PS5 was a bit pricy at launch, at a time when I was still considering buying one. That time has been and gone, I've spent the money on upgrading my already decent computer into an absolute beast because I figured "why not?" and I still have yet to see a reason to buy the PS5. It's no secret that consoles are commonly loss leaders for the manufacturers while the exclusives are the money-makers. It's a way of doing business, that's fine, but to this day, I can only claim to have seen them release maybe 4 exclusives that I'd deem worth playing. That's already a bad deal. No-one in their right mind can justify paying full price for a console to play 4 games. On top of that, 1 already got ported to PC, one's got a release date, one's already had public response from the developer to be working on the port, and the last has really strong odds of getting ported too. 4 is my number, and I don't doubt other players would swap my own picks for something more their taste, or maybe even bolster the numbers, but I don't think anyone could make it as high as 10 without naming a game that was also released for the PS4 and/or got ported. So unless Sony gets their shit together, the PS5 tells us that the PS6 will be a bad deal.

My regards to Sony, the pricing makes it easier to not even consider buying one.

Hardware theft is on the menu today, boys.

It doesn't invalidate what they're doing in a karmic way, no. As for any legal precedent way, I'm genuinely concerned that it'll very much be a "too little, too late" scenario. Many of us who have come from the school of Jim Fucking Sterling Son, or even those with their eyes open, saw how bad this could get a decade ago. It got bad enough to go to court where companies like EA produced pathetic stand-in excuses about "lootboxes" that manipulate the young, ill and weak-willed into spending insane amounts of money are actually "surprise mechanics" and thus totally different. Some countries were smart enough to put some amount of age limit on such things, others were even smarter and outright banned them but many just let it happen. It has kept happening and the biggest gaming corpos are now more than big enough to hire all of the lawyers in the world collectively and fight any claims off through the sheer force of printing money.

Yes, I'm possibly embellishing a little in that lot but after witnessing the gaming market slip further and further down the sinkhole the way it has with excuses of "it's only cosmetic", "it's optional" and "it's not required to experience the game", I have every reason to think we're not coming back from this.

Oh god, not them. Pick another producer, please. There are plenty out there... Most of them suck but at least most of them aren't publicly known to be sex abusers.

Context clues would suggest it has something to do with piracy. One way to find out...

Lots of gamers and parents have been going on about this for around a decade. EA was even in court over it. Where the heck have these 'groups' been? On an extended vacation with their distant relatives the mole people?

Not to my knowledge. They try to subpoena VPNs to give up client logs though. The good ones tell them where to shove it.

Fair enough. Thanks for the clarity.

Oh, was that it? I'd heard someone had hacked the EL Twitter account. That's even dumber. Thanks for the correction and highlighting how much dumber the fallout was, luckily my misunderstanding didn't take away from the main point.

In regards to how precedent can fuck over future decisions, could this now cause issues for libraries in the future?

It certainly sounds like it should be more difficult than that (and as far as I, a non-medical professional, know it is) but keep in mind the pharmaceutical industry is worth billions to a select few, and keep in mind back when Eli Lilly's Twitter was hacked and posted insulin, a substance that costing some people over $1000/month just to live, would be free, their stock dropped 4.37% the next day.

Like I said, I'm no medical anything but like with previous products that have claimed to be medically beneficial, I think it's worth at least taking a step back and looking at what someone stands to gain by claiming something vital is simple versus what those who claim otherwise stand to lose.

After all, I think we've all heard the story of the doctor who, in a fit of desperation, cured his wife's cancer with bicarbonate of soda and then did so with more of his patients before being sued by Big Pharma.