> I can see this happening with games more after the death of physical media.

I saw a screenshot of something like this recently with the pre-orders of GTA VI.

They apparently "ran out of digital copies..." of something that doesn't exist yet.

This is unfortunately also all too common with UHD blu ray releases of old movies. Everything is a limited edition resellers price gouge them even more.

Hopefully emulation and piracy will continue to provide a reasonable check valve on this getting too far out of control. I don't personally engage in either at present outside of an old homebrewed Wii U, but I feel like the existence of those is important to remind the digital storefront/platform owners that at the end of the day they aren't actually the only game in town.

Either that or eventually we'll have to get some antitrust stuff happening to open these things up, though Epic's App Store lawsuit does not give me much hope in that direction.

I'd like to think I will also boycott any future generations of these gaming consoles, but the fact is that we'll get used to this as the new way of life at some point.

Our collective desire to play GTA 6 will outweigh our desire to "stick it to the man".

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I am in Europe but I just don't do launch prices on any platform or delivery form so I didn't notice that.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/606/

Gamers are notorious for accepting whatever abuse game companies and studios want to inflict, and then keep buying and buying. All the horrible anti-consumer technologies and business practices from DRM to games that are released unfinished, to kernel-level anti-cheats and rootkits, all are routinely done with video games because the industry knows gamers are fanatics and will put up with anything.

If gamers want to stop this, they need to stop rewarding these companies with their money.

99% of gamers who are mad about physical disk distribution going away will still buy the digitally distributed games.

Because they have almost definitely already factored in the loss from people boycotting vs the gain due to killing the resale market into their analysis. They are fully aware that some people are going to refuse to buy digital only

The unfortunate truth is that physical sales have been ever declining so the writing was on the wall

Edit: And you can't really compare the PS2 and PS5 in terms of competition. PS5 isn't just competing against other consoles, it's also competing against netflix, youtube, tiktok, any endless scrolling platform. There were much fewer options for entertainment in 2001 than there are now

I feel this in my bones and it's a great way to frame it. My last Playstation console was a PS2 and I've also opted out of recent generations. Historically, for me, one of the benefits of a console was that you could just pop the game in, and it would always work, simply and easily.

DRM, online checks, DLC that should have been part of the base game, digital-only games, etc have ruined all that, and if that's going to be the trend everywhere I'll just stick to a PC and Steam where I have a library of games built up over the decades.

I have a Switch and feel that Nintendo provided a decent experience on their recent systems, but with the advent of "game keys" or whatever they call it on the Switch 2, they've flipped to being even worse than the digital-only systems. At least Sony isn't (yet?) trying to sell you a license on a disc to try to fool you into thinking you own a physical copy.

The next console is going to cost at least 1000 dollars, right? There's simply no way to sell hardware at 300 million units now. So I think their strategy is to abandon the mass market and sell to price unconscious consumers who will also pay more for games.

Nintendo occasionally does 30% off sales on their published games through the eShop. There are a few active now: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/sales-and-deals/

A funny quirk of that is that the Mario and Rabbids games are always 90% off because they are not published by Nintendo.

> Although it's just anecdata, after spending $600 on the console, I certainly was dismayed to find 10-year old games only being sold at their original prices. Surely they should at least track inflation?

Honestly, Sony should just retroactively bill consumers for inflation. Since $60 in 2016 is worth almost $89 today, they should charge all the people who bought the game back then a $29 price adjustment. It's the the only fair thing to do for.

If consumers don't like that option, an alternative can be a perpetual $5/year subscription that additional provides in-game stickers.

What else tracks inflation like that? Do movies?