I am honestly surprised about this. I sort of assumed that whole sector had been at zero for at least a decade.
Lmao what is “physical software”?
Physical software lmao
Is a robot physical software?
No, that is generally what we refer to as hardware. Arguably the whole point of the term software is to refer to the bits that aren’t physical in the overall system.
This is partially cause there’s less physical media and if you don’t buy it immediately on release it’ll probably cost more
People are struggling to pay rent and buy groceries. Entertainment will always be the first thing to cut.
This isn’t all software, this is physical media. No surprises here.
Right, and you can easily monitor sales and specials on Steam.
Everyone’s in here acting like this is happening because they’re getting rid of shops. The shops wouldn’t be going anywhere if people were using them.
People use digital media because it’s so much more convenient. I’ve moved house three times in the past four years and it was so much easier just having to move my console rather than lug a bunch of games with it. Plus I can buy them while I’m sitting on my arse and I don’t have to go to a shop or wait until the next day for a delivery.
People are using digital media because it’s convenient, not because the shops are closing.
Spot on. I’m digital only.
Yeah, who the fuck wants to deal with discs and shit like that? I moved to all digital before you could legally do it for basically all my media. It takes physical space and why the hell would you put up with switching discs and stuff? Just make sure you have enough storage for your shit and done.
By design. Cut all the middle men (including thousands of jobs in logistics, distribution and sales) and absorb all of that trickled down wealth upwards in the form of bonuses to the gents who annihilated an entire industry, not by lack of demand, but because the incentive structure is completely opposite to the interests of society at large.
Well, yeah, but people say they won’t pay 150 bucks for a game, so that stable 60 dollar price had to come from somewhere.
Honestly, it’s a lot of whiplash to see people paint this as a big corporate conspiracy and then turn around to defend Valve who, let’s not forget, invented the whole idea. It’s not like chain gaming retailers were a particularly strong force for good, either, but they did pay wages to more people than Steam, I guess.
It’ll be very interesting to see how much of this is people walking away from the Switch, coming back to the Switch 2 or just… you know, only ever playing Fortnite and Minecraft for their entire lives. The issues here are bigger and not a Sony conspiracy to steal trucker wages (although there’s that, too).
Valve didn’t invent the idea, piracy did. You could download full games years before any legal distribution channel allowed you to do so.
You could download games from multiple publishers years before Valve did it, too. Doesn’t mean Valve didn’t come up with the first, largest digital distribution platform for games that was then the template for every first party (and most of the digital media distribution in other media industries).
Best I can do for you is let you have that and agree that piracy invented it and Valve monetized it, which is actually worse?
Certainly means that large companies didn’t invent digital distribution as some form to eliminate physical distribution as an anti-consumer move. Consumers (via piracy) invented it for convenience.
What do you expect when there’s no physical media to buy anymore?
