It’s not inflated. They’re not counting PS Plus downloads or anything else, unless you’re accusing them of lying to shareholders and breaking many laws.

The amount of people leaving physical media is not being outpaced by those picking it up.

When did Microsoft try to cut BC?

As I’ve explained in other comments, Microsoft was actually the most pro-consumer with their “all digital” plans. They were doing “physical as digital”, with the benefits of physical and digital.

The 85% stat isn’t a lie - it’s in their own financials that they release to shareholders, and they’re actually one of publishers with the least digital uptake. Xbox, Ubisoft, EA, etc all also release these figures and they’re higher. You can go to Sonys investor relations portal and check the figures out for yourself.

Physical media is not making a resurgence. It’s getting lower and lower every single year.

Sony will not abandon this plan because they have no reason to. It won’t affect their sales at all.

Also we don’t know how this will affect retail yet, that all depends on if they allow retailers to sell below the PS Store prices.

What exactly is your point?

Microsoft were doing their “physical as digital” plan which was literally the best digital-only system ever devised, and they were forced to ditch it by people who were too dumb to see the industry trends at the time, and by people who hate Microsoft/xbox.

Now no one gets that amazing “digital only” system.

It was keys in a box, but they had a framework to allow physical retailers to remove licenses from Xbox accounts and refresh the license key for resale. They also had a system for you to loan your digital games out to your friends via their gamertag. When you digitally loaned it to them, you could not play it and they could. Iirc it would automatically revert after 30 days if you didn’t extend, but you could choose how long to loan it for.

They abandoned it all after the ridiculous crashouts by people who couldn’t see where the future was heading, and now you get digital with no resale and no loaning.

Linux isn’t for people like that.

You just aren’t privy to the reason why they bought it.

I have a gaming pc that I upgrade too btw.

Consoles were always cutting edge up until the XB1/PS4 generation, and generations were only like 4-5 years long meaning they didn’t hang around long enough to get behind by much. Now they’re starting out years behind already, and hanging around 5+ years too long.

You’re alleging that they’re doing this. Zero proof.

3 companies can’t have a monopoly. It’s literally in the definition of the word monopoly.

Tens/hundreds/thousands of millions of dollars a year.

It’s got less performance than it should though. Why they chose to limit its power draw I have no idea.

How are Microsoft doing it?

PlayStation won’t die lol. The overwhelmingly large majority of PlayStation console owners buy digital games exclusively. They have a massive dedicated fan base who will buy whatever they release and defend it to their last breath too.

Eh, everything PS3/360 generation and earlier is basically available at perfect emulation, or definitely will be soon because of the existing emulators and their development.

95% of all games from the PS/Xbox generations since then have been on PC from day 1. Almost all of the Xbox first party games have been on PC since then as well. The switch has been emulated perfectly for ages.

This realistically leaves only a handful of Sony first party PS4 and PS5 games left, and the switch 2 which only just came out.

Don’t blame Sony for bungies mess. Sony got absolutely scammed by Bungie because they were desperately and panicking after MS accounted they were buying ABK.

Bungie have been a terrible studio for a decade at least. Microsoft turned them down when Bungie attempted to sell themselves back to them for a fraction of what Sony paid them only a few months later.

Sony only announced this now because of the upcoming Xbox layoff announcement. Typical “get all of your bad news out in front of the competitors worse news so yours is only in the news cycle for a few days” play.

Xbox’s “physical as digital” plans for the Xbox One were amazing. Bet the people who cried about it are now feeling pretty stupid.

While I applaud your decision, the market has spoken - 85%+ of all console game sales are digital. The overwhelming majority of people don’t care about physical games, especially in a time when the physical copies don’t even contain the full game due to storage constraints.

I’ve been digital-only since the day they made all games available digitally on the Xbox 360, because I don’t trade or re-sell games, ever, and I much prefer the benefits of digital. Most people are like me these days. It sucks for the people that aren’t, but they’re going to have to just move on or abandon their hobby.

It’s worth pointing out that Microsoft didn’t try the same thing. Microsoft tried to move to “physical as digital”, where they retained the benefits of physical copies such as resale and loaning.

That’s gog, not consoles.

The same is true of Xbox consoles btw. You can back-up your game files from your Xbox to a external hdd and transfer them back to your Xbox in 50 years time and play them even if they’ve been delisted and Xbox no longer exists.

They are still only licenses though, same with steam. Steam still has verification servers. If steam disappeared you are no better off than if xbox did.

The digital games you own are still playable.