If people actually read the claims... it's about fair business practices, this is why they are suing Sony:
> ... In the EU, it is forbidden for large companies to abuse their position to make more profit at the expense of consumers. Yet Sony does not fully abide by these rules.
>
> If you buy a digital game or in-game content, Sony will only ensure that you can do so through its own PlayStation Store. Sony keeps the market to itself in this way and can keep prices artificially high. This way you pay more, without getting anything extra in return. This is called the “Sony Tax.”
This is not a lawsuit about Sony "taking away my discs", it's something like "Sony allegedly used its control over the PlayStation ecosystem to restrict competition in digital distribution, allowing it to keep prices artificially high and harm consumers".
> Sony does not fully abide by these rules. If you buy a digital game or in-game content, Sony will only ensure that you can do so through its own PlayStation Store.
I have assumed that retail locations will continue to sell game codes, just not game disks, post disks going away. Currently there are games from like Just Dance that only include a game code in the retail box rather than game CD because of the way the game works (you're buying a dlc more than a game).
Maybe I'm wrong, but I would be surprised if PlayStation completely goes away from retail, for reasons including anti-trust, but also to encourage stocking the physical PS6 console.
It does seem like a reasonable middle ground would be something like selling a dongle that provides PIV attestation of ownership, that could be resold and could even be used across platforms. Of course, there’s no incentive for the console manufacturers to offer this.
You wouldn't even need a dongle if your license wasn't permanently bound to one account. It's not hard to transfer a license, but it's very undesirable for Sony, Microsoft, Valve, etc...
Game carts have always had "special chips" within them.
The NES and SNES for example had their famous lockout chips which gave Nintendo a monopoly on releasing games, except for the Activision/EA thing were they reversed engineered the chips.
I've heard similar logic to excuse Steam from this mess, because they grant (5000 with no guarantee of more) keys to publishers and developers to sell on other stores. But it really doesn't address the biggest concerns of digitization, like control and second hand market. Sony will just copy Steam and this will fizzle.
This is not a lawsuit about Sony "taking away my discs", it's something like "Sony allegedly used its control over the PlayStation ecosystem to restrict competition in digital distribution, allowing it to keep prices artificially high and harm consumers".
Sony sells their consoles at break even or sometimes at a loss. They hope to make money from their software sales.
Console business has always operated this way. This is why the PS5 launched at $400 and had the graphics horse power of a computer that cost $1,500-$2,000 in the year 2020.
So it makes absolute sense for Sony to "restrict competition" because that's literally the reason why a $400 PS5 was possible.
Can we please have some common sense here? I know this post could very well be unpopular here because HN crowd often detest companies trying to make money. Sony's console business does not always make a profit. There are often huge risks. For example, the PS3 era was a financial disaster. The Wii U era nearly broke Nintendo. Xbox overall has lost Microsoft money.
The tides are clearly pointing to non-physical game sales. PC gaming has long moved onto digital sales via Steam, GOG, Microsoft, etc. Mobile games are 100% digital. It makes sense for consoles to do this as well in order to stay profitable.
Let the free market choose. If physical console games are important to them, then Microsoft's next Xbox could capitalize or gamers can buy games for Switch 2.
Actually, I think the practice of selling the console at a loss only started with roughly the PS2 or PS3 generation. (The PS3 and later were very definitely sold for a loss, but I've been unable to track down verifiable statements for the PS1 or PS2.)
So let's say the breakeven price was $X. You're saying if they sell at ($X-$0.01)/unit then restricting competition is OK but if they sell at $X/unit then it isn't?
Am I representing your stance correctly and if so do you see any potential issues with this?
I still don't see how this is inconsistent with what I described. If your business is to sell consoles at >$X/unit then your business is to sell consoles at a profit. If it is to sell at <$X/unit then your business is to sell them at a loss and make up for it later at the gaming app store. Console businesses prefer the latter model nowadays; of course they can still always go for the former model too. So you believe the console businesses following the latter model should be able to restrict the app store but not those following the former. That means $X/unit is where you draw the line for the cutoff where they earn that right to restrict app store competition... how is this not what you're saying?
You are drawing a line I'm not drawing. There is no magic cut off.
My point is that cheap/subsidized hardware and a closed store is one viable business model. The other business model is expensive hardware and an open ecosystem, which already exists in the PC. Consumers should have a choice instead of forcing Sony into the PC model.
That makes no sense, I'm sorry. The criteria ultimately need to be clear so people know what is allowed and what is not. Either the fact that Sony has a sell-console-at-a-loss business model is why they deserve a pass for anticompetitive behavior... or it is not. In the first case (what you're arguing) then Sony indeed gets a pass like you want, but it comes with uncomfortable questions you apparently would rather avoid. In the latter case then you're not even divulging what criteria you're using. You can't just keep waving your hands around and repeating how poor Sony's entire business model is selling these at a loss while refusing to claim that that's your criterion, it makes no sense.
> Let the consumers decide what is best for them. Both business models should be allowed.
Yeah! And let's make sure the customers have the choice of whether flour should have asbestos in it! And whether watches should have radium dials!
Sorry, this only works when you've got a robust market with lots of competition. The console market is almost the textbook definition of a non-free market: only three players of any consequence, each of them giant, multi-hundred-billion-dollar megacorps, and with very few actual distinctions between them.
When one business model is more obviously beneficial to the megacorps—not just in terms of profit, but in terms of control—it's going to tend to dominate, regardless of "consumer choice". Let's make sure that we, the consumers, get to still have choices, shall we? And the only way to do that is with government regulation.
> Sorry, this only works when you've got a robust market with lots of competition.
It’s even worse than that. It only works with goods that are fungible and suppliers that are interchangeable. Otherwise it’s just a race to the bottom to build higher walls, increase friction and seek to extract rent from an audience that’s as captive as possible.
Indeed: and the most common good that is largely non-fungible is media.
Sure, if all I'm looking for is "entertainment", I can watch Star Wars or play Final Fantasy or read The Lord of the Rings. And for some people who enjoy gaming, they'd be just as happy with Call of Duty as they would with Battlefield as they would with some version of Halo.
But if I've heard about this new game Breath of the Wild and it sounds really cool, the only way I can experience that is, in fact, to play Breath of the Wild. And the only way to play Breath of the Wild is to have a Switch. And the only company that makes the Switch is Nintendo.
And while some of the other big names in gaming have been moving away from console exclusivity (which is an unqualified benefit to us gamers), the games themselves are still (largely) nonfungible.
> Sony sells their consoles at break even or sometimes at a loss. They hope to make money from their software sales.
I don’t have a strong opinion in this case (of the games marketplaces on consoles), but this argument is fallacious. The question would not be whether they’d always done it, it would be whether that’s legal. It is not difficult to find business plan that don’t work because of laws and regulations. Anything related to health and safety, for a start. Basically, if society thinks strongly enough that your business should not be run that way, then tough luck. Either change your business plan or die.
For example, if locking out competitors’ cartridges in your printer is ruled anticompetitive, then don’t do it. Just because HP has been doing it for 20-odd years is no excuse.
The law draws a line. Plaintiffs think that line was crossed, Sony thinks they it was not. We have mechanisms to arbitrate this kind of dispute, and I am not taking sides.
My point is that it can be perfectly legitimate for a law to outright ban or effectively prevent some business models.
Your other replies were insightful, but you're just getting emotional in this one. You like the sell at a loss model. Thats fine. Its not really relevant to whether or not it breaks existing laws.
Hmm but when that argument was applied to phones, Android essentially got punished for being more open than Apple - you actually can have other app stores on Android, therefore Google could be held accountable for anti-competitive actions in the Android app marketplace. Whereas Apple doesn't allow any third party app stores so there's no competition in the first place and they're fine!
Retarded logic but I feel like if you apply the same logic to Sony, they'll also be fine.
What the heck are you talking about? Both Apple and Google were hit by the EU anti-gatekeeping law. I am not going to engage with the rest since it's based on a supposition that is plainly wrong.
The argument is that on PlayStation, the only option you have going forward is via the 'PlayStation Store'.
Previously, you could buy a physical disc from GameStop, Walmart or trade with your friend. Now you are locked into one company. This isn't about digital or physical, its about there only being one option.
Your question drags in Steam (Valve) but I question how they operate even remotely like this? You can build or buy any PC, install Steam on it, or not. You can download games from 30 different platforms, including DRM free ones. You can still purchase some (albeit limited) games on disc from other retailers. You are by no means REQUIRED to use Steam. You can use any hardware (not just Valve hardware) and use any store. How does this relate?
Sony is in a way worse position than Steam and Apple. Apple makes high margins on every iPhone sale. Steam doesn't even need to make hardware. Meanwhile, Sony sells Playstations at cost or at a loss historically.
Exactly. This is stupid. Physical is dead, there’s no point in arguing otherwise. And you will not win. Sony never signed a contract with you saying they would keep making physical forever.
Hell they could pull an old-school Apple, stop selling the PS5, make a tiny change, call it PS6 and be done with you. They could even announce that digital games for the PS6 are also compatible with the PS5! Wow, aren’t they nice.
We need laws providing consumer rights. Nothing else will work.
I actually feel like Nintendo's game key cards are a reasonable compromise, or at least a step in the right direction. Trade-able, lend-able, sell-able, fully offline with no need to periodically auth with a server as long as you have the game downloaded already. They also let you transfer games peer to peer so you don't even need to get it from their servers.
The issue with full digital ownership is I don't see how it can be implemented without totally killing the original owner's sales. Imagine if you could resell games on steam and undercut the developers: no-one would buy from them anymore after the initial round of sales, as there's no practical difference.
People don't focus on improving digital ownership because that requires butchering the sacred cow of copyright and DRM. These are the root of the problems and no one wants to touch them.
That's not what TFA is on about at all, it's about the monopoly Sony has on selling digital games exclusively through their store. Physical discs don't enter into it.
I am reading a translation, so I might be off base, but not being a monopoly is not a defense.
EU competition regulations are not like American antitrust laws. They do not care about monopoly, and consumer harm is mostly a second-order effect. They care about competition, and punish anticompetitive behaviour and abuse of a dominant market position. "It’s not a monopoly" and "there are alternatives" are true, but that’s not all that relevant.
It's not a monopoly in the console market. There are two other competitors all of whom have roughly equal market share. And they are all walled gardens so Sony is not doing anything differently from its competitors.
What’s happening is people are realizing how bad current rights for digital goods currently are, and are revolting at this obviously related scenario.
What people don’t realize is that physical != ownership. I remember wanting to pop The Dark Knight on Blu-ray into my ps4 for a date night… except the license on the disc expired, so I had to call WB for a new one??? Go figure.
Still, it’s fine if people react this way. If nothing else, it sends a message to lawmakers about priorities.
Why not going with both? Choice is never bad for the consumer, even if the majority or sales is digital. I usually buy both and they just lost me, I won't buy into their dystopian store
While I'm all for sueing Sony, and digital games cost more than physical games sound wrong and shouldn't happen, I feel like they focus on the wrong thing to sue Sony for. Like someone mentions in this thread, this feels like sueing McDonalds for having a monopoly on Big Mac, and only sell Big Mac in their stores. I don't know what the alternative solution to this problem is, but this doesn't feel right to me. For me, I would rather focus on digital rights and access.
As a consumer, I agree that something feels wrong and should be illegal. I understand the intention of the case, but wrong execution, as in, what they're sueing for, is a tough case to win, and doesn't actually solve the problem, but maybe I'm just naive, and there's a precedent for this already in Netherlands or EU.
HP was a great company, and released HP48 ROMs into community curated public license at the end of the product life-cycle. To this day I measure every company by that decision to support customers when the company moves on to bigger and better projects.
For many years, Apple also had phenomenal customer support years after a sale. OS 7.5.3 could be installed decades after the product EOL.
Sony DRM just became Tying with extra steps, as consumers now rarely own what they pay for... especially on upgrades. With the loss of physical media, proof of sale and preserved license terms are now ephemeral. =3
I watched the English version video and it seems to have nothing to do with "Stop Killing Games".
I wish them well, but ... just stop buying Play Station? I can understand strong consumer protection for food, medicine, healthcare, basic services, utilities. But ... video game consoles? If you don't agree with "Sony tax" ... stop being a stupid sucker and don't buy their products?
So McDonald's has a monopoly on the Big Mac? Because you can go to Burger King (Xbox) or KFC (Switch) or Sonic (PC) as well but this group is arguing they want to have a Big Mac but not from McDonald's? Or actually McDonald's doesn't have a monopoly because you can technically buy a Big Mac from Uber Eats or Doordash?
This same kind of note seems to come up repeatedly in threads like this with no regard to a similar question ever having been thought up or discussed every other time the topic comes up. Different brands of course, but I'm not sure I've actually seen a net new discussion of this point here in years.
The usual answer is: If Sony raises the price of games in it's store, Sony denies 3rd party stores, and Sony removes the physical media option, then there are a significant number of people no longer able to consider open market dynamics in picking which low dollar game to buy next as they have massive (in comparison) investments in the platform.
McDonald's can certainly raise the price of a Big Mac, and McDonald's can certainly limit where it's sold to 1st party locations, but they don't really have the ability to bend the market to pay more than they'd like to for Big Macs because there is no platform investment. Like you say, people can go to Burger King and get a burger. It just doesn't cost hundreds of dollars to do so, making a few dollar increase have true market weight. You can also order the 3rd party burger from a number of places on those apps because there is no restriction that the person sold to is the only one entitled to a burger.
The part that leaves people debating is more "exactly how much interference is problematic rather than good business" than "what's the difference between A and B and doesn't that apply to every other situation too".
Their investment can still be used, though. The PS5 is compatible with 100% of their invested dollars. Just don't get a PS6. There was never any guarantee a PS6 would be backwards compatible.
Market freedoms are about the present/future, as that's the only time new purchases can be made. Removal of past purchased items is a completely different topic (outside it may relate to Sony and its Store).
> then there are a significant number of people no longer able to consider open market dynamics in picking which low dollar game to buy next as they have massive (in comparison) investments in the platform.
Nothing prevents them from selling their Sony console and moving on
How can they sell their PlayStation library with it? Sony'll ban accounts that even try and Sony isn't allowing physical libraries be built anymore. Replacing a platform starts to pick up a lot of extra baggage once the company behind it controls more than the platform itself, even if you count switching the literal base platforms like that as frictionless.
Ignoring the above for a moment, this is exactly the kind of "exactly how much interference is problematic rather than good business" debate I was referring to. Obviously it's harder to sell a PlayStation and get another system than it is to eat a different burger that day. And obviously this is easier than if the burger joints in the region collude to raise prices on Saturdays but how impactful is it? Well, that's precisely the debate. Most side long before "it'd be impossible for an individual to do anything at all about it" but even that isn't universally held.
Your analogy falls apart somewhere for me but I can't pinpoint the exact correction to make your analogy work for me. Either way I agree. If they don't like only being able to buy digital PS games via Sony's platform, go to one where they can.
That's not the fight I'd personally focus on. I'd personally focus on them revoking digital access after you've "purchased it". Then again, I don't have a game console and I don't "buy" digital media. I either rent via streaming subscription or own the physical.
They make games, they just don’t make all the games. Similar like a grocery store having their own brands in the shelves, you don’t expect to be able to buy these at other shops.
And yes the upfront costs being subsidized is exactly the point.
The PS5 was breaking even less than 6 months after its release. They don't subsidize anything. BTW, Nintendo also don't subsidize it. The BOM of the Switch 1 and 2 is lower than the total price including the margins for retailers!
Shops and distributors take a big chunk. The shoppe price is not given in whole to manufacturer if it was who would be paying the shoppe rental and employees ?
I can see why you might think that, but that is not what this article claims or what Sony said.
The CFO said this in 2021:
“But the profitability of PS5 in -- there was this view of reaching breakeven point in June, but PS5 breakeven point for standard edition, more correctly on standard edition, that's how we explain the situation. And it's been progressing according to the plan. Overall, hardware profitability and peripherals hardware profitability, including peripherals, as we have been saying, is proceeding smoothly.”
And PCMag is inferring this means ONLY the $499 edition of the console which they previously suggested could become profitable later. It doesn't mean every edition of the PS5, and things have changed since 2021.
And Sony said it was having losses on consoles as recently as 2024.
As far as I can tell, despite Sony saying they would like the consoles to be profitable, they are still subsidized as of right now in aggregate. Perhaps some models are more profitable than others.
If McDonalds were the only restaurant allowed to sell food within a particular market, and you couldn't buy food there from anyone else, then yes, your analogy would work. Otherwise it doesn't. A closer analogy would be Apple or the old company store model in company towns. In fact, why didn't you go with those?
yes, that's called a differentiated product in economics and it confers market power the same way any other monopoly does, Sony controls the Playstation ecosystem, Apple its ecosystem and it gives them leverage over the consumer, those products are not commodities.
That's why pharmaceuticals, patented medical devices or cable and broadband providers are regulated, see net neutrality legislation. Which exists exactly to commoditize information access in a market that's dominated by differentiated providers so they can't exercise their gatekeeping power to drive prices between you and online services up.
I don't see the point. It's a private, for-profit entity that controls a walled garden platform that they invented, developed and commoditized. It was always a walled garden, never advertised as anything otherwise. All video games have been a license to play since the days of Pong, unless explicitly indicated otherwise. We never owned the actual software and by buying the game, we agreed that our access to the software could change at any point in the future. Does this lawsuit hope to upend ~60 years of contract law?
I'm too small brain to understand the whole monopoly in my own business aspect. Because they are not arguing about game exclusivity, you can buy the same game most of the time on Xbox, Switch, PC (and if not that's an entirely different story) but the fact they want to buy on that platform (Playstation) but from a different store (not Sony). Can't wrap my head around that logic.
Taking Switch as an example, I can buy digital games at Walmart or Amazon. For instance, Amazon might have a sale where their price for a given digital game is ~10% lower than Nintendo's eShop.
yay suing Sony! I think that countries should start disallowing hardware sales where the user doesn't have the root key. We are not renting the hardware, we are buying it.
Just stop buying their consoles. That'll piss them off a lot more than suing them. Get a steam machine and it'll play 99% of the playstation library. It's not like they have a monopoly on gaming
Okay so if I understand this correctly they want Sony to compensate (Dutch) customers because Sony no longer sells digital download codes/game keys to third-parties? If they started doing that, would they still have a case?
For example, Nintendo does sell digital download codes, so this line of thinking doesn't apply to them? Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Or is this about 3rd party app stores again?
There are already class-actions against Sony in the US and UK for what appears to be this exact thing (using their dominant monopoly position to charge high prices) so it's not surprising to see it pop up in other jurisdictions this late in the game.
I don't know how the specifics would work, but if they reversed course immediately, they would have still caused some harm to some consumers during a specific amount of time.
I have mixed feelings about this campaign. Their main ask is that Sony give up exclusivity for the Playstation store, which prevents anyone selling PS games without Sony's approval (and a 30% cut of revenue generated); their main argument is that Sony has total market domination makes it subject to specific EU rules.
I would like if there were other options besides the PS store for PS software, because the hardware is very nice and there are a lot of cool things developers could do with it if they didn't have to worry about compliance with Sony's narrow view of what constitutes digital entertainment and how big a company has to be to be an acceptable media partner. For example it would be nice to use a Playstation for non-game activities (math explorer, sci-fi style news dashboards, weird physics simulations) or have the choice to connect to the Criterion Collection and enjoy obscure media curated for other film snobs like myself, or...
On the other hand, if any malign software infects individual users' Playstations, or undermines the experience of other users who interact with the first group - eg participants in multiplayer games who are impacted by cheating or some sort of exploit - who is going to get blamed? Of course, it will be Sony. They could say 'well we warned you not to use XYZ app store and the only reason XYZ app store exists is that EUrocrats forced us to allow it on our beautiful platform', but no matter who is actually at fault it would be a huge hit to the Sony brand.
Say what you like about the economic and philosophical shortcomings of walled gardens, the reality is that most people find them preferable to a Plants vs Zombies type free-for-all, and I find it hard to blame companies for making a profit by catering to the garden-enjoyers rather than the wilderness-enthusiasts. The latter are after all free to just use some other computing/entertainment platform like Xbox, Steam, etc.; the argument made by campaigners is that they want all the quality of engineering, manufacturing, and access to top games that Sony makes available now, but also the possibility of breaking the hardware and/or the business model that brought it to market. I really think that when it comes to consumer technology, if you don't like the way the company operates you should just not use their products.
I don't think that potential reputational damage should be used as an excuse for monopolizing software distribution. Sony can have a tightly curated PlayStation Store and build its reputation around it without that necessarily implying that nobody else may sell software for the hardware. "Bad third-party software might exist" (we have examples of that existing on the PS Store anyway, but I digress) is an argument for giving consumers ways to distinguish trusted software from untrusted software, not automatically an argument for eliminating the competing distribution channel altogether.
I would rather have a right to unlock. Make it law that Sony can't prevent alternatives OS installation. Then when you get Arch running on a PS5 you can install Steam on top
This would help but doesn’t solve the problem these people want solved (Sony being able to take away games after purchase and reselling games being impossible because the games are all digital)
Even when the PS3 supported Linux, Sony didn’t give OtherOS full access to the GPU. So I doubt you’d get any benefit running Steam on a hypothetical Linux-powered PS5.
> A right to unlock would mean that you get full access to your own hardware.
That very much depends on the wording of such a law. My point is that you can guarantee that console makers will look for a loophole to cripple their “unlocked” hardware.
> No real reason to buy a Sony system anyway, PC will always win in the long run.
I’m not the one suggesting people should buy consoles to unlock them
Why not buy a PC if you want a fully unlocked hardware platform? You can install Linux on it or whatever is supported.
No. What you actually want is a $400 console that sells at a loss or break even and has the graphics power of a $1,500 - $2,000 PC hardware and you want to be able to install anything on it.
How the heck does that make any sense financially for Sony? Common sense is often lacking in gaming communities.
I couldn’t care less about this campaign and the waste of resources and attention on it. Might as well sue Lego because I want backwards compatibility with the wooden blocks from 1950 or something.
The translation feature of Safari on macOS worked well enough for me. I would assume that functionality exists on another browser/OS, maybe yours has it?
So they want Sony to be required to sell slightly discounted codes to resellers who then sell them to consumers? How does that matter to anyone besides resellers? I guess the resellers could pass some of that discount on to consumers? This seems like a pretty irrelevant concern since Sony is has no state granted or effective monopolies in game sales, they aren't a common carrier, they aren't benefiting from access to public right of ways or other exclusivity that gives them a market advantage that citizens need to be compensated for. I don't think this matters and I don't care about this.
It matters to consumers because businesses have greater financial power to pressure Sony into reducing prices than individual consumers.
Additionally, businesses will not only sell Sony codes. They won't be like car dealerships, tied to 1 manufacturer. Due to this, they'll have even greater incentive and negotiating position to pressure Sony as if Sony doesn't want to play ball, the sellers can start promoting non-Sony products to consumers.
With direct sales only, Sony can have perfect vertical integration: they make the console hardware, they make the custom OS, they own the game publishers, they own the developers, and they own the store that sells games too. That's beneficial only to Sony.
How do they have any power over Sony at all? Sony is telling them we don't even want to sell you codes at all, we don't want your business, go away. They have 0 leverage, Sony isn't going to negotiate with them. Sony will charge them the max they are allowed so that they can't make a profit and stop trying to resell.
i can think of 3-5 bigger issues hitting the games industry than this. It's a sort of bike-shed issue that everyone can pile onto. I'm sure people have a lot of angst over the decline of games, and this is an easy focal point. But I would like the other issues addressed.
Ballooning budgets, unnecessary hardware upgrades, un-skippable cutscenes, low player expectations, distracting or subversive narratives, pathetic mechanics, and so on.
"Stop Killing Games" is pure gamer slopulism. This idea is even sillier and more pointless than the last couple. There is a ton of competition in the games industry for games, platforms, hardware, etc.
You can sue whoever you want. But this reads of backpedaling and righteousness to me.
The quote below are not my words, but are from a prior comment on HN, which I think are relevant.
```
I in no way mean this to be rude, but I think a big part of why the EU isn't in the same galaxy as the US in the realm of business in general, is in some part, the knee jerk reaction to turn to the government to make products and services better.
Governments cannot make you an alternative, they can only make something that already exists, different (usually worse).
I have zero interest in creating in the gaming space, however, my gut reaction would be to start down the path of how I could create competition to companies that rug pulled their games.
And yes, I get that "just make a competitor" is easier said than done. But at least by going down that road, you end up with more games, better games, and people learning skills throughout the process. And who knows, maybe one is a mega success.
Sure, you can stand there pounding your chest for "democracy," but I contend that those who are building their own things are practicing it far more than those who are demanding others make things for them.
```
2 Points; Regulation is not the antithesis of Innovation, Monopolies break the Game.
This point keeps coming up, regulation in europe stifles their innovative capacity, with silicon valley's companies brought up as show horses. Outside of tech I'm not sure what other "business" the US is so dominant in. In tech, so much can be attributed to network effects and compounding interest (loosely speaking) that it can't be so trivial to say anyone else with less regulation can mimic it.
You can't beat monopolies with innovation. You beat monopolies with regulation, but even then left unchecked monopolies and the entrenched wealth it generates can overcome regulatory bodies and subvert their intentions.
Consoles have been a captive market since after the video game crash of 1983, and that's in part what has help the industry come back on track, by having manufacturers keep crap out of their platforms. They still have that level of control on physical disks, you can't sell a game on a Playstation unless Sony approves it, and always with some kind of DRM / copy protection.
A captive online store is just the natural evolution. Many on-disk games today are not completely on the disk, there is an online component somewhere and should it shut down, the game will not survive. The model where you buy a game and can use it and resell it for as long as the console and the media survive is already a thing of the past, pure online sales is just the final nail in this coffin.
But there is also a bright side. With the exception of Nintendo games, exclusives are not really a thing anymore. Almost every game come out on the PC, an open platform. It is a market that Steam dominates, but unlike with consoles, no exclusivity here. There are even DRM-free platforms like GOG, so you can put your games on your own media and save them for as long as you want.
The manufacturer controlled model of game consoles that Sony and Microsoft represent has served us well since 1983, but it is not the only way anymore, I would even say it is becoming a thing of the past. They are not killing games, they are killing themselves, or maybe dying of old age.
Nobody is questioning consumer behavior, consumers would buy bread with sawdust if it was cheaper, they don't because we have standards to protect consumers that makes it illegal to sell it. This is the same principle but with a more subtle harm.
So you agree that consumers mostly see the sticker price and don't think much about the quality of the product, therefore there must be protections ensuring that the product is at least fit for purpose.
If people actually read the claims... it's about fair business practices, this is why they are suing Sony:
> ... In the EU, it is forbidden for large companies to abuse their position to make more profit at the expense of consumers. Yet Sony does not fully abide by these rules. > > If you buy a digital game or in-game content, Sony will only ensure that you can do so through its own PlayStation Store. Sony keeps the market to itself in this way and can keep prices artificially high. This way you pay more, without getting anything extra in return. This is called the “Sony Tax.”
This is not a lawsuit about Sony "taking away my discs", it's something like "Sony allegedly used its control over the PlayStation ecosystem to restrict competition in digital distribution, allowing it to keep prices artificially high and harm consumers".
> Sony does not fully abide by these rules. If you buy a digital game or in-game content, Sony will only ensure that you can do so through its own PlayStation Store.
I have assumed that retail locations will continue to sell game codes, just not game disks, post disks going away. Currently there are games from like Just Dance that only include a game code in the retail box rather than game CD because of the way the game works (you're buying a dlc more than a game).
Maybe I'm wrong, but I would be surprised if PlayStation completely goes away from retail, for reasons including anti-trust, but also to encourage stocking the physical PS6 console.
Unlike a disc, you can't use the code without going through the PlayStation Store. And you likely cannot resell it, either.
You can't buy a non-Sony PlayStation, I guess they'll argue it's similar.
It does seem like a reasonable middle ground would be something like selling a dongle that provides PIV attestation of ownership, that could be resold and could even be used across platforms. Of course, there’s no incentive for the console manufacturers to offer this.
You wouldn't even need a dongle if your license wasn't permanently bound to one account. It's not hard to transfer a license, but it's very undesirable for Sony, Microsoft, Valve, etc...
That would be kind of impressive if Sony had a "used digital games" marketplace and took a cut of every trade, without sending any to the publisher.
Game carts have always had "special chips" within them.
The NES and SNES for example had their famous lockout chips which gave Nintendo a monopoly on releasing games, except for the Activision/EA thing were they reversed engineered the chips.
Game cartridges but with TPM inside? What is not to like?
Why on earth would I go to a game store to buy a code?
Because they have a better price?
How can a physical store that pays rent possibly beat a website that costs $10/month to host?
The physical stores already beat that website despite offering physical discs in physical cases.
For how long ?
I've heard similar logic to excuse Steam from this mess, because they grant (5000 with no guarantee of more) keys to publishers and developers to sell on other stores. But it really doesn't address the biggest concerns of digitization, like control and second hand market. Sony will just copy Steam and this will fizzle.
Console business has always operated this way. This is why the PS5 launched at $400 and had the graphics horse power of a computer that cost $1,500-$2,000 in the year 2020.
So it makes absolute sense for Sony to "restrict competition" because that's literally the reason why a $400 PS5 was possible.
Can we please have some common sense here? I know this post could very well be unpopular here because HN crowd often detest companies trying to make money. Sony's console business does not always make a profit. There are often huge risks. For example, the PS3 era was a financial disaster. The Wii U era nearly broke Nintendo. Xbox overall has lost Microsoft money.
The tides are clearly pointing to non-physical game sales. PC gaming has long moved onto digital sales via Steam, GOG, Microsoft, etc. Mobile games are 100% digital. It makes sense for consoles to do this as well in order to stay profitable.
Let the free market choose. If physical console games are important to them, then Microsoft's next Xbox could capitalize or gamers can buy games for Switch 2.
> Console business has always operated this way.
Actually, I think the practice of selling the console at a loss only started with roughly the PS2 or PS3 generation. (The PS3 and later were very definitely sold for a loss, but I've been unable to track down verifiable statements for the PS1 or PS2.)
Sega Dreamcast sold at a loss. I'm sure there were others in the past as well.
Pretty sure the SNES and megadrive were sold at a loss as well.
Nintendo does not sell hardware at a loss. That's one of their quirks.
But they do sell hardware at very tiny margins and have to rely on software sales to keep the business going.
So let's say the breakeven price was $X. You're saying if they sell at ($X-$0.01)/unit then restricting competition is OK but if they sell at $X/unit then it isn't?
Am I representing your stance correctly and if so do you see any potential issues with this?
No, I'm not saying that.
I'm saying that the business of gaming consoles is to not make money on the hardware or even make a loss in hopes of making money on software.
There are gaming businesses that make a profit on hardware such as Nvidia GPUs, AMD gaming CPUs, etc. Consumers should have a choice:
- Expensive gaming hardware but more choices for gaming app stores
- Cheap gaming hardware but only one gaming app store allowed
Let the consumers decide what is best for them. Both business models should be allowed.
I still don't see how this is inconsistent with what I described. If your business is to sell consoles at >$X/unit then your business is to sell consoles at a profit. If it is to sell at <$X/unit then your business is to sell them at a loss and make up for it later at the gaming app store. Console businesses prefer the latter model nowadays; of course they can still always go for the former model too. So you believe the console businesses following the latter model should be able to restrict the app store but not those following the former. That means $X/unit is where you draw the line for the cutoff where they earn that right to restrict app store competition... how is this not what you're saying?
You are drawing a line I'm not drawing. There is no magic cut off.
My point is that cheap/subsidized hardware and a closed store is one viable business model. The other business model is expensive hardware and an open ecosystem, which already exists in the PC. Consumers should have a choice instead of forcing Sony into the PC model.
That makes no sense, I'm sorry. The criteria ultimately need to be clear so people know what is allowed and what is not. Either the fact that Sony has a sell-console-at-a-loss business model is why they deserve a pass for anticompetitive behavior... or it is not. In the first case (what you're arguing) then Sony indeed gets a pass like you want, but it comes with uncomfortable questions you apparently would rather avoid. In the latter case then you're not even divulging what criteria you're using. You can't just keep waving your hands around and repeating how poor Sony's entire business model is selling these at a loss while refusing to claim that that's your criterion, it makes no sense.
I'm arguing that what Sony is doing isn't anticompetitive behavior at all. Period.
> Let the consumers decide what is best for them. Both business models should be allowed.
Yeah! And let's make sure the customers have the choice of whether flour should have asbestos in it! And whether watches should have radium dials!
Sorry, this only works when you've got a robust market with lots of competition. The console market is almost the textbook definition of a non-free market: only three players of any consequence, each of them giant, multi-hundred-billion-dollar megacorps, and with very few actual distinctions between them.
When one business model is more obviously beneficial to the megacorps—not just in terms of profit, but in terms of control—it's going to tend to dominate, regardless of "consumer choice". Let's make sure that we, the consumers, get to still have choices, shall we? And the only way to do that is with government regulation.
> Sorry, this only works when you've got a robust market with lots of competition.
It’s even worse than that. It only works with goods that are fungible and suppliers that are interchangeable. Otherwise it’s just a race to the bottom to build higher walls, increase friction and seek to extract rent from an audience that’s as captive as possible.
Indeed: and the most common good that is largely non-fungible is media.
Sure, if all I'm looking for is "entertainment", I can watch Star Wars or play Final Fantasy or read The Lord of the Rings. And for some people who enjoy gaming, they'd be just as happy with Call of Duty as they would with Battlefield as they would with some version of Halo.
But if I've heard about this new game Breath of the Wild and it sounds really cool, the only way I can experience that is, in fact, to play Breath of the Wild. And the only way to play Breath of the Wild is to have a Switch. And the only company that makes the Switch is Nintendo.
And while some of the other big names in gaming have been moving away from console exclusivity (which is an unqualified benefit to us gamers), the games themselves are still (largely) nonfungible.
Playstation, Switch, Xbox, PC, Steam Machines, Steam Decks, iOS, Android, iPad, MacOS, VR headsets, GeForce Now, Luna.
How many more choices do you need to allow Sony to exclusively sell their own software on their $400 MSRP hardware?
Mobile gaming absolutely dwarfs Playstation in revenue by the way: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/video-games-industry-rev...
Let's bring back common sense to gaming.
> Sony sells their consoles at break even or sometimes at a loss. They hope to make money from their software sales.
I don’t have a strong opinion in this case (of the games marketplaces on consoles), but this argument is fallacious. The question would not be whether they’d always done it, it would be whether that’s legal. It is not difficult to find business plan that don’t work because of laws and regulations. Anything related to health and safety, for a start. Basically, if society thinks strongly enough that your business should not be run that way, then tough luck. Either change your business plan or die.
For example, if locking out competitors’ cartridges in your printer is ruled anticompetitive, then don’t do it. Just because HP has been doing it for 20-odd years is no excuse.
If locking out competition in your own platform breaks the law, then nearly no business is legal.
Common sense needs to prevail.
The law draws a line. Plaintiffs think that line was crossed, Sony thinks they it was not. We have mechanisms to arbitrate this kind of dispute, and I am not taking sides.
My point is that it can be perfectly legitimate for a law to outright ban or effectively prevent some business models.
Sony sells the PS5 for $400 that can produce the graphics of a $1,500 - $2000 PC.
In return, only Sony can have an app store in the Sony hardware. No! This business model is not allowed!
Just yikes. Like I said, let's bring back some common sense.
Your other replies were insightful, but you're just getting emotional in this one. You like the sell at a loss model. Thats fine. Its not really relevant to whether or not it breaks existing laws.
Hmm but when that argument was applied to phones, Android essentially got punished for being more open than Apple - you actually can have other app stores on Android, therefore Google could be held accountable for anti-competitive actions in the Android app marketplace. Whereas Apple doesn't allow any third party app stores so there's no competition in the first place and they're fine!
Retarded logic but I feel like if you apply the same logic to Sony, they'll also be fine.
What the heck are you talking about? Both Apple and Google were hit by the EU anti-gatekeeping law. I am not going to engage with the rest since it's based on a supposition that is plainly wrong.
So Apple in the EU allows for alternative app stores?
Yes, with some caveat ("notarization" and "core technology fee").
Yup. https://rileytestut.com/blog/2024/04/17/introducing-altstore...
Yes, and they've spent extraordinary amount of time snd resources to be as maliciously compliant as possible.
So it's surprising to me that this is against the law.
Is it an EU law, or a Dutch one?
Does that mean this also applies to Apple, Steam, etc.?
The argument is that on PlayStation, the only option you have going forward is via the 'PlayStation Store'.
Previously, you could buy a physical disc from GameStop, Walmart or trade with your friend. Now you are locked into one company. This isn't about digital or physical, its about there only being one option.
Your question drags in Steam (Valve) but I question how they operate even remotely like this? You can build or buy any PC, install Steam on it, or not. You can download games from 30 different platforms, including DRM free ones. You can still purchase some (albeit limited) games on disc from other retailers. You are by no means REQUIRED to use Steam. You can use any hardware (not just Valve hardware) and use any store. How does this relate?
I'm also not required to purchase a PlayStation.
The explainer video said Sony is breaking the law (which one?), so they're suing them to get rid of the platform fee.
How does a platform make money without a fee? That's why I invoked Steam and Apple.
Sony is in a way worse position than Steam and Apple. Apple makes high margins on every iPhone sale. Steam doesn't even need to make hardware. Meanwhile, Sony sells Playstations at cost or at a loss historically.
Going digital was inevitable, i'd rather focus on making digital ownership better than fight to restore discs or game codes to 3rd parties
Exactly. This is stupid. Physical is dead, there’s no point in arguing otherwise. And you will not win. Sony never signed a contract with you saying they would keep making physical forever.
Hell they could pull an old-school Apple, stop selling the PS5, make a tiny change, call it PS6 and be done with you. They could even announce that digital games for the PS6 are also compatible with the PS5! Wow, aren’t they nice.
We need laws providing consumer rights. Nothing else will work.
I actually feel like Nintendo's game key cards are a reasonable compromise, or at least a step in the right direction. Trade-able, lend-able, sell-able, fully offline with no need to periodically auth with a server as long as you have the game downloaded already. They also let you transfer games peer to peer so you don't even need to get it from their servers.
The issue with full digital ownership is I don't see how it can be implemented without totally killing the original owner's sales. Imagine if you could resell games on steam and undercut the developers: no-one would buy from them anymore after the initial round of sales, as there's no practical difference.
People don't focus on improving digital ownership because that requires butchering the sacred cow of copyright and DRM. These are the root of the problems and no one wants to touch them.
Plenty of people want to address those problems, but politicians don't since they get bribed not to.
That's not what TFA is on about at all, it's about the monopoly Sony has on selling digital games exclusively through their store. Physical discs don't enter into it.
I am reading a translation, so I might be off base, but not being a monopoly is not a defense.
EU competition regulations are not like American antitrust laws. They do not care about monopoly, and consumer harm is mostly a second-order effect. They care about competition, and punish anticompetitive behaviour and abuse of a dominant market position. "It’s not a monopoly" and "there are alternatives" are true, but that’s not all that relevant.
It's not a monopoly in the console market. There are two other competitors all of whom have roughly equal market share. And they are all walled gardens so Sony is not doing anything differently from its competitors.
Sony's gaming business is tiny relative to iOS gaming business.
What’s happening is people are realizing how bad current rights for digital goods currently are, and are revolting at this obviously related scenario.
What people don’t realize is that physical != ownership. I remember wanting to pop The Dark Knight on Blu-ray into my ps4 for a date night… except the license on the disc expired, so I had to call WB for a new one??? Go figure.
Still, it’s fine if people react this way. If nothing else, it sends a message to lawmakers about priorities.
Why not going with both? Choice is never bad for the consumer, even if the majority or sales is digital. I usually buy both and they just lost me, I won't buy into their dystopian store
While I'm all for sueing Sony, and digital games cost more than physical games sound wrong and shouldn't happen, I feel like they focus on the wrong thing to sue Sony for. Like someone mentions in this thread, this feels like sueing McDonalds for having a monopoly on Big Mac, and only sell Big Mac in their stores. I don't know what the alternative solution to this problem is, but this doesn't feel right to me. For me, I would rather focus on digital rights and access.
It is not a new phenomena, and would be illegal in any other physical market. =3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
As a consumer, I agree that something feels wrong and should be illegal. I understand the intention of the case, but wrong execution, as in, what they're sueing for, is a tough case to win, and doesn't actually solve the problem, but maybe I'm just naive, and there's a precedent for this already in Netherlands or EU.
HP was a great company, and released HP48 ROMs into community curated public license at the end of the product life-cycle. To this day I measure every company by that decision to support customers when the company moves on to bigger and better projects.
For many years, Apple also had phenomenal customer support years after a sale. OS 7.5.3 could be installed decades after the product EOL.
Sony DRM just became Tying with extra steps, as consumers now rarely own what they pay for... especially on upgrades. With the loss of physical media, proof of sale and preserved license terms are now ephemeral. =3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)
I watched the English version video and it seems to have nothing to do with "Stop Killing Games".
I wish them well, but ... just stop buying Play Station? I can understand strong consumer protection for food, medicine, healthcare, basic services, utilities. But ... video game consoles? If you don't agree with "Sony tax" ... stop being a stupid sucker and don't buy their products?
So McDonald's has a monopoly on the Big Mac? Because you can go to Burger King (Xbox) or KFC (Switch) or Sonic (PC) as well but this group is arguing they want to have a Big Mac but not from McDonald's? Or actually McDonald's doesn't have a monopoly because you can technically buy a Big Mac from Uber Eats or Doordash?
This same kind of note seems to come up repeatedly in threads like this with no regard to a similar question ever having been thought up or discussed every other time the topic comes up. Different brands of course, but I'm not sure I've actually seen a net new discussion of this point here in years.
The usual answer is: If Sony raises the price of games in it's store, Sony denies 3rd party stores, and Sony removes the physical media option, then there are a significant number of people no longer able to consider open market dynamics in picking which low dollar game to buy next as they have massive (in comparison) investments in the platform.
McDonald's can certainly raise the price of a Big Mac, and McDonald's can certainly limit where it's sold to 1st party locations, but they don't really have the ability to bend the market to pay more than they'd like to for Big Macs because there is no platform investment. Like you say, people can go to Burger King and get a burger. It just doesn't cost hundreds of dollars to do so, making a few dollar increase have true market weight. You can also order the 3rd party burger from a number of places on those apps because there is no restriction that the person sold to is the only one entitled to a burger.
The part that leaves people debating is more "exactly how much interference is problematic rather than good business" than "what's the difference between A and B and doesn't that apply to every other situation too".
Their investment can still be used, though. The PS5 is compatible with 100% of their invested dollars. Just don't get a PS6. There was never any guarantee a PS6 would be backwards compatible.
Market freedoms are about the present/future, as that's the only time new purchases can be made. Removal of past purchased items is a completely different topic (outside it may relate to Sony and its Store).
> then there are a significant number of people no longer able to consider open market dynamics in picking which low dollar game to buy next as they have massive (in comparison) investments in the platform.
Nothing prevents them from selling their Sony console and moving on
How can they sell their PlayStation library with it? Sony'll ban accounts that even try and Sony isn't allowing physical libraries be built anymore. Replacing a platform starts to pick up a lot of extra baggage once the company behind it controls more than the platform itself, even if you count switching the literal base platforms like that as frictionless.
Ignoring the above for a moment, this is exactly the kind of "exactly how much interference is problematic rather than good business" debate I was referring to. Obviously it's harder to sell a PlayStation and get another system than it is to eat a different burger that day. And obviously this is easier than if the burger joints in the region collude to raise prices on Saturdays but how impactful is it? Well, that's precisely the debate. Most side long before "it'd be impossible for an individual to do anything at all about it" but even that isn't universally held.
Your analogy falls apart somewhere for me but I can't pinpoint the exact correction to make your analogy work for me. Either way I agree. If they don't like only being able to buy digital PS games via Sony's platform, go to one where they can.
That's not the fight I'd personally focus on. I'd personally focus on them revoking digital access after you've "purchased it". Then again, I don't have a game console and I don't "buy" digital media. I either rent via streaming subscription or own the physical.
It’s that there is a large upfront cost (buying a PlayStation) which isn’t in the analogy.
Additionally, many of the games are already on different platforms (PC), just not any other consoles.
I think the biggest thing is that Sony doesn’t actually make the games (they don’t have the kitchen nor the cooks), they just sell it.
So a more apt comparison would be a grocery store, I think.
The large upfront cost is lower than it would be because its subsidized by buying the games for it!
Sony does make the games, they have many excellent first party studios!
What are you talking about!
They make games, they just don’t make all the games. Similar like a grocery store having their own brands in the shelves, you don’t expect to be able to buy these at other shops.
And yes the upfront costs being subsidized is exactly the point.
Not quite. Grocery stores make common products and clones.
Sony’s 1st party stuff is (often) exceptional. It’s the reason an Xbox or PC isn’t a complete replacement.
I can only respond to what you actually said which was "Sony doesn’t actually make the games" and "they don’t have the kitchen nor the cooks".
The PS5 was breaking even less than 6 months after its release. They don't subsidize anything. BTW, Nintendo also don't subsidize it. The BOM of the Switch 1 and 2 is lower than the total price including the margins for retailers!
Shops and distributors take a big chunk. The shoppe price is not given in whole to manufacturer if it was who would be paying the shoppe rental and employees ?
This is a conversation about Sony, not Nintendo. As far as I can tell from current data, Sony is still subsidizing PlayStation consoles overall.
Sony stopped subsidizing the PS5 8 months after launch.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/sony-says-499-ps5-no-longer-sells...
I can see why you might think that, but that is not what this article claims or what Sony said.
The CFO said this in 2021:
“But the profitability of PS5 in -- there was this view of reaching breakeven point in June, but PS5 breakeven point for standard edition, more correctly on standard edition, that's how we explain the situation. And it's been progressing according to the plan. Overall, hardware profitability and peripherals hardware profitability, including peripherals, as we have been saying, is proceeding smoothly.”
And PCMag is inferring this means ONLY the $499 edition of the console which they previously suggested could become profitable later. It doesn't mean every edition of the PS5, and things have changed since 2021.
And Sony said it was having losses on consoles as recently as 2024.
Sony, like Steam, aims for zero/minimal profit on hardware. Slightly missing such a 0 target sometimes is different than an explicit subsidy.
> The large upfront cost is lower than it would be because its subsidized by buying the games for it!
This isn't true anymore.
As far as I can tell, despite Sony saying they would like the consoles to be profitable, they are still subsidized as of right now in aggregate. Perhaps some models are more profitable than others.
I can imagine that BK’s “have it your way” branding does enable the occasional off-menu Big Mac style burger sandwich transaction.
If McDonalds were the only restaurant allowed to sell food within a particular market, and you couldn't buy food there from anyone else, then yes, your analogy would work. Otherwise it doesn't. A closer analogy would be Apple or the old company store model in company towns. In fact, why didn't you go with those?
No, they're arguing that you shouldn't have to make your home kitchen a McDonalds franchise in order to eat Big Macs in it.
>So McDonald's has a monopoly on the Big Mac?
yes, that's called a differentiated product in economics and it confers market power the same way any other monopoly does, Sony controls the Playstation ecosystem, Apple its ecosystem and it gives them leverage over the consumer, those products are not commodities.
That's why pharmaceuticals, patented medical devices or cable and broadband providers are regulated, see net neutrality legislation. Which exists exactly to commoditize information access in a market that's dominated by differentiated providers so they can't exercise their gatekeeping power to drive prices between you and online services up.
And thats the solution. Not lawsuits. Regulation.
This lawsuit is trying to enforce an existing EU regulation.
Lawsuits are how regulations are enforced...
I don't see the point. It's a private, for-profit entity that controls a walled garden platform that they invented, developed and commoditized. It was always a walled garden, never advertised as anything otherwise. All video games have been a license to play since the days of Pong, unless explicitly indicated otherwise. We never owned the actual software and by buying the game, we agreed that our access to the software could change at any point in the future. Does this lawsuit hope to upend ~60 years of contract law?
I'm too small brain to understand the whole monopoly in my own business aspect. Because they are not arguing about game exclusivity, you can buy the same game most of the time on Xbox, Switch, PC (and if not that's an entirely different story) but the fact they want to buy on that platform (Playstation) but from a different store (not Sony). Can't wrap my head around that logic.
Taking Switch as an example, I can buy digital games at Walmart or Amazon. For instance, Amazon might have a sale where their price for a given digital game is ~10% lower than Nintendo's eShop.
It wont be long until Nintendo takes over the complete sell process. It seems strange they have let others take their commission for so long.
yay suing Sony! I think that countries should start disallowing hardware sales where the user doesn't have the root key. We are not renting the hardware, we are buying it.
Just stop buying their consoles. That'll piss them off a lot more than suing them. Get a steam machine and it'll play 99% of the playstation library. It's not like they have a monopoly on gaming
Okay so if I understand this correctly they want Sony to compensate (Dutch) customers because Sony no longer sells digital download codes/game keys to third-parties? If they started doing that, would they still have a case?
For example, Nintendo does sell digital download codes, so this line of thinking doesn't apply to them? Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Or is this about 3rd party app stores again?
There are already class-actions against Sony in the US and UK for what appears to be this exact thing (using their dominant monopoly position to charge high prices) so it's not surprising to see it pop up in other jurisdictions this late in the game.
I don't know how the specifics would work, but if they reversed course immediately, they would have still caused some harm to some consumers during a specific amount of time.
I have mixed feelings about this campaign. Their main ask is that Sony give up exclusivity for the Playstation store, which prevents anyone selling PS games without Sony's approval (and a 30% cut of revenue generated); their main argument is that Sony has total market domination makes it subject to specific EU rules.
I would like if there were other options besides the PS store for PS software, because the hardware is very nice and there are a lot of cool things developers could do with it if they didn't have to worry about compliance with Sony's narrow view of what constitutes digital entertainment and how big a company has to be to be an acceptable media partner. For example it would be nice to use a Playstation for non-game activities (math explorer, sci-fi style news dashboards, weird physics simulations) or have the choice to connect to the Criterion Collection and enjoy obscure media curated for other film snobs like myself, or...
On the other hand, if any malign software infects individual users' Playstations, or undermines the experience of other users who interact with the first group - eg participants in multiplayer games who are impacted by cheating or some sort of exploit - who is going to get blamed? Of course, it will be Sony. They could say 'well we warned you not to use XYZ app store and the only reason XYZ app store exists is that EUrocrats forced us to allow it on our beautiful platform', but no matter who is actually at fault it would be a huge hit to the Sony brand.
Say what you like about the economic and philosophical shortcomings of walled gardens, the reality is that most people find them preferable to a Plants vs Zombies type free-for-all, and I find it hard to blame companies for making a profit by catering to the garden-enjoyers rather than the wilderness-enthusiasts. The latter are after all free to just use some other computing/entertainment platform like Xbox, Steam, etc.; the argument made by campaigners is that they want all the quality of engineering, manufacturing, and access to top games that Sony makes available now, but also the possibility of breaking the hardware and/or the business model that brought it to market. I really think that when it comes to consumer technology, if you don't like the way the company operates you should just not use their products.
I don't think that potential reputational damage should be used as an excuse for monopolizing software distribution. Sony can have a tightly curated PlayStation Store and build its reputation around it without that necessarily implying that nobody else may sell software for the hardware. "Bad third-party software might exist" (we have examples of that existing on the PS Store anyway, but I digress) is an argument for giving consumers ways to distinguish trusted software from untrusted software, not automatically an argument for eliminating the competing distribution channel altogether.
Announcement post: https://xcancel.com/StopKilingGames/status/20868405145197285...
Silly idea.
I would rather have a right to unlock. Make it law that Sony can't prevent alternatives OS installation. Then when you get Arch running on a PS5 you can install Steam on top
This would help but doesn’t solve the problem these people want solved (Sony being able to take away games after purchase and reselling games being impossible because the games are all digital)
Even when the PS3 supported Linux, Sony didn’t give OtherOS full access to the GPU. So I doubt you’d get any benefit running Steam on a hypothetical Linux-powered PS5.
A right to unlock would mean that you get full access to your own hardware.
No real reason to buy a Sony system anyway, PC will always win in the long run.
> A right to unlock would mean that you get full access to your own hardware.
That very much depends on the wording of such a law. My point is that you can guarantee that console makers will look for a loophole to cripple their “unlocked” hardware.
> No real reason to buy a Sony system anyway, PC will always win in the long run.
I’m not the one suggesting people should buy consoles to unlock them
Why not buy a PC if you want a fully unlocked hardware platform? You can install Linux on it or whatever is supported.
No. What you actually want is a $400 console that sells at a loss or break even and has the graphics power of a $1,500 - $2,000 PC hardware and you want to be able to install anything on it.
How the heck does that make any sense financially for Sony? Common sense is often lacking in gaming communities.
That’s dumb. Why should you have to unlock?
Because that's the only way Sony doesn't have a monopoly on what software you can run on your hardware.
PC gaming lets me shop from Steam, GOG, etc.
I can't do any of that on a closed system.
No it’s not.
Laws are.
Why ask that the fire doors in a building are unlocked when it’s on fire? Maybe they just shouldn’t ever be locked.
Ok. Even then you'd only be able to install specific PS5 software. Which no one can build without a license from Sony.
You could easily make the law require you have that ability.
Sony is about to meet a community that's spent 30 years routing around unfair mechanics and doesn't plan to stop now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUHyYkPnJv0
I expected this to be geohots diss track to Sony (https://youtu.be/9iUvuaChDEg)
I couldn’t care less about this campaign and the waste of resources and attention on it. Might as well sue Lego because I want backwards compatibility with the wooden blocks from 1950 or something.
No english translation?
The translation feature of Safari on macOS worked well enough for me. I would assume that functionality exists on another browser/OS, maybe yours has it?
Viva La Resistance!
So they want Sony to be required to sell slightly discounted codes to resellers who then sell them to consumers? How does that matter to anyone besides resellers? I guess the resellers could pass some of that discount on to consumers? This seems like a pretty irrelevant concern since Sony is has no state granted or effective monopolies in game sales, they aren't a common carrier, they aren't benefiting from access to public right of ways or other exclusivity that gives them a market advantage that citizens need to be compensated for. I don't think this matters and I don't care about this.
It matters to consumers because businesses have greater financial power to pressure Sony into reducing prices than individual consumers.
Additionally, businesses will not only sell Sony codes. They won't be like car dealerships, tied to 1 manufacturer. Due to this, they'll have even greater incentive and negotiating position to pressure Sony as if Sony doesn't want to play ball, the sellers can start promoting non-Sony products to consumers.
With direct sales only, Sony can have perfect vertical integration: they make the console hardware, they make the custom OS, they own the game publishers, they own the developers, and they own the store that sells games too. That's beneficial only to Sony.
What prevents Sony from charging the retailers $60 for the code to a $60 game?
Congratulations, you can buy anywhere you want. You don’t have to buy from Sony. It just costs more.
Yeah, that’s gonna be real great for making games cheaper for you.
How do they have any power over Sony at all? Sony is telling them we don't even want to sell you codes at all, we don't want your business, go away. They have 0 leverage, Sony isn't going to negotiate with them. Sony will charge them the max they are allowed so that they can't make a profit and stop trying to resell.
i can think of 3-5 bigger issues hitting the games industry than this. It's a sort of bike-shed issue that everyone can pile onto. I'm sure people have a lot of angst over the decline of games, and this is an easy focal point. But I would like the other issues addressed.
Ballooning budgets, unnecessary hardware upgrades, un-skippable cutscenes, low player expectations, distracting or subversive narratives, pathetic mechanics, and so on.
"Stop Killing Games" is pure gamer slopulism. This idea is even sillier and more pointless than the last couple. There is a ton of competition in the games industry for games, platforms, hardware, etc.
You can sue whoever you want. But this reads of backpedaling and righteousness to me.
The quote below are not my words, but are from a prior comment on HN, which I think are relevant.
``` I in no way mean this to be rude, but I think a big part of why the EU isn't in the same galaxy as the US in the realm of business in general, is in some part, the knee jerk reaction to turn to the government to make products and services better. Governments cannot make you an alternative, they can only make something that already exists, different (usually worse).
I have zero interest in creating in the gaming space, however, my gut reaction would be to start down the path of how I could create competition to companies that rug pulled their games.
And yes, I get that "just make a competitor" is easier said than done. But at least by going down that road, you end up with more games, better games, and people learning skills throughout the process. And who knows, maybe one is a mega success.
Sure, you can stand there pounding your chest for "democracy," but I contend that those who are building their own things are practicing it far more than those who are demanding others make things for them. ```
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47130596
2 Points; Regulation is not the antithesis of Innovation, Monopolies break the Game.
This point keeps coming up, regulation in europe stifles their innovative capacity, with silicon valley's companies brought up as show horses. Outside of tech I'm not sure what other "business" the US is so dominant in. In tech, so much can be attributed to network effects and compounding interest (loosely speaking) that it can't be so trivial to say anyone else with less regulation can mimic it.
You can't beat monopolies with innovation. You beat monopolies with regulation, but even then left unchecked monopolies and the entrenched wealth it generates can overcome regulatory bodies and subvert their intentions.
Why not just stop buying Sony instead?
Consoles have been a captive market since after the video game crash of 1983, and that's in part what has help the industry come back on track, by having manufacturers keep crap out of their platforms. They still have that level of control on physical disks, you can't sell a game on a Playstation unless Sony approves it, and always with some kind of DRM / copy protection.
A captive online store is just the natural evolution. Many on-disk games today are not completely on the disk, there is an online component somewhere and should it shut down, the game will not survive. The model where you buy a game and can use it and resell it for as long as the console and the media survive is already a thing of the past, pure online sales is just the final nail in this coffin.
But there is also a bright side. With the exception of Nintendo games, exclusives are not really a thing anymore. Almost every game come out on the PC, an open platform. It is a market that Steam dominates, but unlike with consoles, no exclusivity here. There are even DRM-free platforms like GOG, so you can put your games on your own media and save them for as long as you want.
The manufacturer controlled model of game consoles that Sony and Microsoft represent has served us well since 1983, but it is not the only way anymore, I would even say it is becoming a thing of the past. They are not killing games, they are killing themselves, or maybe dying of old age.
Nobody is questioning consumer behavior, consumers would buy bread with sawdust if it was cheaper, they don't because we have standards to protect consumers that makes it illegal to sell it. This is the same principle but with a more subtle harm.
Consumers would buy bread with sawdust and then, upon learning about it, expect the sawdust to come out and the price to stay the same
So you agree that consumers mostly see the sticker price and don't think much about the quality of the product, therefore there must be protections ensuring that the product is at least fit for purpose.