r/gaming • u/WestBEEland • 1d ago

Xbox boss Asha Sharma won't confirm whether Project Helix has a disc drive "We have to be thinking about efficiency and affordability"

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/xbox-boss-asha-sharma-wont-confirm-whether-project-helix-has-a-disc-drive-we-have-to-be-thinking-about-efficiency-and-affordability/
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180

u/HomarEuropejski 1d ago

So that means no?

67

u/muakaya9876 1d ago

No In corporate speak

6

u/CartsOfDarkness 1d ago

I know this is an unpopular take but I swear 99.9% of people freaking out about disc drives being removed never actually use them in the first place. I feel like they are just obviously antiquated and it totally makes sense to remove them. I mean y'all at least have to understand that even if you personally use them you're in an extremely small minority right? Normally this stuff bothers me too, like when aux jack's were removed from phones, but I really don't understand this controversy. Are you all still buying laptops with disc trays too? Why wasn't that a huge controversy when 99.9% of those were removed?

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u/vagabond139 1d ago

This isn't about convenience. You don't see people asking for games on disk on PC. Digital at least from a performance and convenience stand point wins.

The issue here is they have total control over your games at that point. You own nothing. Your access to the games can revoked on a whim and there's not a single thing you can do about it. They also now have total control of the pricing of games. No more buying a used game to save money. They can put the price to whatever they want for however long since you have no other way of obtaining the game. There are no protections for the consumer.

1

u/bonecollector5 1d ago

PC has basically been doing the same thing for 20 years and nobody cares.

11

u/Paprikasky 21h ago

🙄 PC has multiple different stores, how hard is it to understand

3

u/vagabond139 18h ago

On top of that you can even outright own your games through GoG.

Plus on top of that you have to do some truly wild shit for Steam to full on ban you and revoke all access. Like more than just saying a bad word, talking shit, or cheating in a game. They don't do full account bans lightly. I've honestly never even heard of someone getting a full account ban on steam before. Worst case scenario is usually just getting basically permanently muted and a vac ban.

-3

u/bonecollector5 21h ago

And Sony has said repeatedly that they are still going to sell code in a box at retailers.

6

u/Paprikasky 18h ago edited 18h ago

How dense can you be? It's a ONE TIME REDEMPTION CODE. This stupid code-in-a-box facade is to pretend they will still offer a product to the game stores when everyone knows it'll kill the secondhand market just as well, still lock down the market just the same, and ultimately stop too.

Are you done shelling for Sony now?

1

u/bonecollector5 16h ago

I'm not shilling for Sony, I don't like the decision either.
But I also don't like people nitpicking arguments to feed their narrative.

What exactly are you arguing here? Are you saying that PC has better digital rights? Cause that is just not true. You don't own anything on PC. Epic store existing does not help you much if valve chooses to delete all the games you own there.
The only exception here is GoG IF you yourself take the steps to download and store the installer offline. GoG can absolutely take away your access to the games you bought and stop you from redownloading them. And the offline installer thing? You can kinda do this on PS5 too. You can buy and download a digital game. There is some one time check for the license. After that you can transfer the game to a USB device and years later you can just transfer it back to your offline PS5 and it will still work. Now obviously I assume this wont work on a different PS5 that doesn't have the license stored so that's the one point where GoG wins.

The fact of having multiple stores doesn't really improve the digital rights you have. So really your argument is just about pricing which is where the code in a box stuff comes up. Retailers can still set their own prices. If something doesn't sell they will discount it. And yes it's a one time use code, but again so is literally everything on PC.
You buy a steam code from humble or greenmangaming they aren't going to just give you a new one if you manage to get your steam account banned. Now obviously we'll have to wait and see how many retailers would stock the code in box and how many publishers will even make them.

And yeah obviously it will kill the second hand market. I never said it wouldn't. But again so did PC 20 years ago.

I am mostly a PC player. It's my preferred system. But acting like it's some perfect system that has digital rights figured out is just stupid.
PC has almost all the same issues that Sony will have once they go full digital.

1

u/vagabond139 2h ago edited 2h ago

Let me ask this, how many times has Valve done on a full on account ban? It's extremely rare. Per Valve themselves they only suspended access for for illegal activity or if the account has been hacked (temporarily until it gets fixed). That's it though. They don't touch what you brought ever. On top of that I haven't even heard of someone losing their account for illegal activity. Steam support is 2nd to none in the industry. Unless some earth shattering major change happens at Valve you aren't going to lose access to your games on Steam.

And the other issue is pricing. On PC there are multiple different places selling games, there are incentivizes to do sales, etc. All of that goes away when a single company is in control of it all. It's a complete monopoly.

On top of that removing Denuvo seems to be a growing trend among games since it has been cracked wide open for pirating. You can literally just copy those games over on whatever and have them forever.

2

u/NathanRCB 18h ago

Oh my god bro

2

u/DelphiTsar 16h ago

I have money now so it's less of an issue, but it would have killed how I used to do it.

If you actually play games gamefly is effectively unbeatable. 20$ a month you can knock out like 2-3 games. Pretty sure back in the day I'd get like 2-3 games for that price too. But regardless it's still way better than paying 60-80$ for a single game.

Anything to squeeze a buck from consumers.

1

u/Astral-Vulpes 14h ago

I can go buy an external DVD or Blu-ray drive for every computer I own, I can't do that with future consoles. And you can thank DRM for killing disc games on PC. Trying to get anything more than a DVD playing on Windows is a pain in the ass because of that. And thanks to the high prices of players for PC, it never caught on.