It's like corporations don't know how to do anything but enshittify anymore

Its like they saw how much Xbox has been sucking and thought "hold on, instead of building on this market lead, I bet we could beat Xbox in enshittifying!"

Don't forget they also paid $3.6 Billion for Bungie just to shut down their most popular game and put all their hope in their new extraction shooter that's been struggling. No new games in dev or even green lit. Also they just layed off a bunch of people.

I can’t speak to market trends, but I can say this 100% makes my PS5 my last Sony console. I’ve bought every one, and the only reason I continue to buy them is so I can collect exclusives on disc for my collection.

A digital only console is just a bad, expensive gaming PC. I already have a good expensive gaming PC, so I’ll just buy games digitally there.

They are also lobbying to make hosting you own videogame server illegal: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/esa-bafflingly-declares-private-minecraft-servers-illegal-in-stop-killing-games-hearing-we-consider-it-piracy-we-have-lawsuits/

Sony is part of ESA.

Don't forget that they've halted PC ports for their games, including shitcanning nearly-complete work on Ghost of Yōtei.

definitely end of an era.
I'm not buying a console without physical media.

Sony can kill the second hand market if they want, but that was the last thing that differentiated them from Steam. Good bye Playstation, i'll remember you fondly.

To reduce costs on printing and to reflect Sony's vision, they are dropping the L from the name of the console.

A funny anecdote from outside gaming land:

Sony mirrorless cameras, even MEGA expensive ones, have this quirk where they can’t film 30P HEVC video.

The A6700 for instance, can record 24, 30, 60 h.264, but only 24 or 60 h.265. The A7C II is particularly handicapped, with only 24 h.265.

The $7000 A1 flagship is the same. It doesn’t make any sense; all their hardware supports it.

Why?

Well, people kept asking Sony, and someone finally got a response:

https://us.community.sony.com/s/question/0D54O00007B6m2ISAR/why-sony-a7s-iii-doesnt-support-25-or-30-fps-in-h265-codech265-is-available-for-24-50-60-100-120-fps-but-not-the-once-ive-mentioned-aboveplease-sony-update-this-h265-is-going-to-get-more-and-more-popular-with-new-powerful-laptops-coming?language=en_US

Hello, Sony's commitment to customer satisfaction is our top priority. The reason for that is that we determined the current product specifications from our analyses of target users and available technologies. For XAVC HS, we envision users enjoying HLG movies by connecting the camera to an HDR (HLG) compatible BRAVIA TV over HDMI, and 60p is what we view as the default setting for playback with it. To record movies in higher quality in 4K/30p, we would recommend selecting XAVC S and XAVC S-I, 10-bit 4:2:2 sampling, either Long GoP and All-I codec. Could you tell us how creators such as yourself want to use HEVC at 30p so we can provide feedback to our design team?

I found that oddly enlightening.

“Well, it’s not optimal for a BRAVIA TV over HDMI, so why would users want this? Why is it worth it for us to waste half a kilobyte for this option in the UI?” Sony cannot fathom anything outside that.

It makes that whole list in OP’s post make total sense. It’s not even cynicism on their part; with that mindset, what would they need a disk player for? What value is Bluepoint is a business review?

They literally cannot understand why PlayStation users would want any of those things. It’s outside the domain.

Time to double down on retro gaming and buying second hand. Industry wants to burn I say let it.

Why are people still buying shit from Sony? It would be less work to just flush your cash directly down the shitter.

End of an era for just about everything. Streaming is all enshitified. The job market is shit. Democracy is falling apart. Decades of progress being undone. It's just the way it will be until people get sick of all this shit and start doing things differently and move on. All the great old companies are dead. Either turned to zombie brands or run by zombies. I remember how excited I was to buy my first Sony Trinitron, my first walkman, my Sony component stereo, first PlayStation.

It warms my heart to see that EVERY comment on Sony's blog post about it is negative. Hope the decision ends up biting Sony in the ass, but even if not, at least people weren't silent about it.

EDIT: and they're being yelled at everywhere else on the internet that people can post, as well. Good.

So, this means mandatory proprietary hardware just to play the four or five true permanent exclusives that will be on the PS6 throughout its entire lifetime, given that everything else will eventually come to PC, and you don't actually own any of your digital content, meaning that they can revoke your access to your purchases without notice at any point if they choose to do so.

People will still buy it though, that's the saddest part.

Yeah, that’s the end of PlayStation for me. Hopefully someone else will come out with something decent.

Just get a console they said. Console just works they said. Why get a PC when it won't work in a year they said.

This is why I don't buy consoles. I can use a controller on my computer which is upgradable and not subject to one individual company dictating what I can and can't do.

I don't pay $70 for a game I can't even sell after using it.

I’m not one of those people who pretends they will play a physical disc game for the rest of their life

I do however like physical for two reasons. Firstly, the price, how tf can you justify charging more when you are cutting out all of the middlemen and listing on your own online store. Secondly, resale. I can buy a game, play it and resell.

If the tradeoff on going digital was that games were 50% cheaper, then I’d be happy. I wouldn’t have to hoard games and I’d have the convenience of digital.

The entire reason I've ever bought consoles and games was because I could get used games at a bargain and also sell my old consoles and game collections when I'm done with them. I can't imagine that I'm the only person who looked at it this way.

Now console producers pull shit like this when they can't even claim to be more user friendly than PC because SteamOS is a real competitor.

Well I guess it was good while it lasted, at least until the last few years when greed fully took over. Microsoft is already on it's last leg and Sony and Nintendo are going to follow eventually.

Yea the era of giving the "big 3" any of my money

Ahhh, remember this PS4 promo video (YouTube for sharing physical games vs Xbox)? Pepperidge Farm does.

I feel like defending consoles is a lost cause at this point. We can’t trust any of the big 3 anymore.

Meh, I’m done with consoles. The exclusives will come to emulators eventually, and there will be plenty of PC games in the meantime.

Really scary to see where the industry is headed! I've started purchasing games on GOG whenever possible so as to put my money towards an actually good source in the industry but it doesn't feel like enough.

These companies are constantly pushing the boundaries of what they can get away with and it feels like we just gotta take it at this point.

I especially feel bad for the console gamers as they have very little options to get around this and switching to PC is unfortunately more expensive than ever.

If buying does not equal owning something, piracy can't equal theft. At this rate, what's the point of consoles?

I bought every PlayStation ever released. I will not be buying this one. Consoles are supposed to get cheaper over time. The gaming sector is going to go tits up and I hope it does.

I was an XBox guy, and didn't get into Playstation at all. But it was always clear that they were excellent consoles. At a certain income level back in the day, you'd get an XBox or a Playstation, but not both. If you had a smidgen more money to spend, Nintendo had you covered.

I have no emotional fealty to Playstation in any way, but what a shame to see all three formerly awesome systems now competing to see who can enshitify more effectively.

I guess we're never gonna get to see that super futuristic PS9 that was envisioned back in that old PS2 commercial.

The price increase part is sort of out of their hands. They are a small player in the chip game.

Other parts are all them all shit.

Playstation customer since my first job at McDonalds let me buy the original first model PSX, all the way through the PS5

fuuuuuuuuck you Sony. I've got a PC and you can eat 10 tons of my shit right now with this and your cancellation of PC support. We'll see who wins.

They're also shutting down PS3 and PSVita store access, to add insult to injury.

Nintendo winning this console generation with the Switch 2 was not on my bingo card.