What’s hottest in the game circle recently “Last Survivor 2” is absolutely unwilling to sell, and sold 4 million copies within 3 days of opening, setting a new PS4 first-party game sales record. However, there was a huge controversy that followed, and the gap between a player rating as low as 4.6 and a media rating as high as 94 also pushed the game to the forefront.
This momentum even overshadowed the PlayStation 5 that Sony recently released. PlayStation has accumulated more than 400 million sales in the 25 years since its birth, making it the best-selling home game console brand of all time. And this time the digital version of PS5 became Sony’s first game console to cut off the optical drive, which naturally attracted much discussion.
CD this shareholder style
There is a saying in “Dream of Red Mansions”, “For all family matters, either the east wind suppresses the west wind, or the west wind suppresses the east wind.” In the last century, floppy disks were definitely the most popular mobile storage devices. A few. However, the commonly used 3.5-inch floppy disk has a capacity of only 1.4MB, and the access speed is slow and unstable.
Later, larger and more stable discs appeared. This shareholder style naturally overwhelmed the west wind of the floppy disk, and the optical drive became a desktop and notebook. Standard.
In terms of being a carrier of physical games, the breakthrough of the disc is slightly difficult. In the 1980s and 1990s, Nintendo became the absolute hegemony of the game field with its best-selling FC and SFC. However, the “rights” and “commissioned production fees”, which accounted for 30-35% of the game price, made third-party game companies miserable. When it was about to enter the era of optical discs, Nintendo, which started to develop the N64, turned against its partner Sony, so Sony, who first set foot in the gaming industry, decided to develop the console alone.
Unlike Nintendo, Sony has strongly supported third-party game companies. Nintendo’s third parties have developed games for PS. PS, which uses optical discs as the game medium, has a larger capacity and a large amount of high-quality games, making it a winner in the next-generation console war. Later, Sony’s game consoles used optical discs, and even PSP also used a smaller UMD, so the optical drive became an indispensable hardware.
Even Nintendo Wii uses a CD
East wind yesterday, west wind today
Even if you don’t play games, you can also notice from the computer that the original optical drive is a necessity. Nowadays, no matter what size of laptop it is, it is almost disappeared. Even the person who saves the machine may not install the optical drive. . After all, except for the departments with extremely high security requirements, the CD-ROM is really useless for ordinary users.
Picture from Visual China
Compared with the fact that the public has become accustomed to the fact that there is no optical drive for laptops, the acceptance of game consoles without optical drives is not so high. Although the Yusanjia game consoles have been able to download digital games for a long time, they still keep the optical drive. It wasn’t until last year that Microsoft’s pure digital version of the Xbox One S was released, the optical drive was completely out for the first time, and Sony this year was not far behind in removing the optical drive on the digital version of the PS5.
Why should I remove the optical drive? Behind this is of course the majority of players who vote for the digital version of the game every time. Jim Ryan, President of Sony Interactive Entertainment, said in an interview that many consumers only buy digital products. That being the case, it does not seem like a bad idea to sacrifice an optical drive in exchange for a thinner body and lower price.
Where is the digital version of the game? For players, in addition to low prices, downloading digital games is much faster than the express delivery time of physical games. After opening the platform, members not only have exclusive game libraries, they can even receive games for free every month. Rounding is to make money. For manufacturers, although the selling price of the digital version is slightly lower than that of the physical version, it only needs to be divided into platforms. In fact, the profit is higher.
More than games
But is this really enough to make the optical drive disappear from the game console?
Just like the older generation’s distrust of online payment, players from the era of physical games only have that kind of real “acquisition” when they hold the disc in hand, seeing the game lined up on the table The sense of accomplishment is not comparable to the virtual game library. As a derivative of physical games, the second-hand transactions between players are also impossible to achieve in the digital version.
After losing a sense of freshness in a game, whether it is to exchange games with other players or sell “return” directly, this is colder than digital games. It’s better to lie in the game library. For the digital version of the game, unless the overall “change the court”, from Sony to Microsoft or Nintendo, even sold with the host with an account, otherwise the money to buy the game is equivalent to playing in the water.
In addition to games, some gamers also use game consoles to play Blu-ray audio and video discs. The PS series has always attached importance to optical drives. At that time, the Blu-ray playback function of PS3 even impacted its DVD sales.
Ten years ago, Sony performed similar operations to the digital version of PS5 on PSP go, canceling the UMD drive that lasted for many years. Users can only store and obtain games through its own 16GB storage and online game store. However, for gamers in 2009, many UMD game discs accumulated through hard work have been completely abolished, and the server speed that is not fast enough when downloading online games must be tolerated, plus 16GB seems not small but actually not enough. Storage space, all kinds of unsuitable make players complain.
Ten years later, when the physical version of the game is gradually declining, and the digital version of the game is popular, the faster download speed and larger storage space seem to prevent Sony from repeating the same mistakes of the past, and the dual version also gives users sufficient Choosing space, all of this seems natural.
However, for the old players from the era of Sega Saturn and the original PlayStation, the game is almost equal to the disc. Every time the thick disc package is opened, it seems that I saw myself who carefully put the disc into the disc drive. .
However, when new players grow up in the digital age, discs and optical drives driven by the feelings of old players will lose the necessity of their existence. Even cloud games are challenging the status of the game console, and the possibility of remaining in the players’ hearts forever Only memories?