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Comment by erinnh | Hacker News Reader

Really helpful comment.

Mind explaining what you mean (preferably without being insufferable)?

Increasingly, the situation for console games is the same as for PC games. So you're also only licensing the game, need to be online to at least authenticate or even always to play, etc.

There probably still are games where you can just insert the disc into an offline console and start playing, but the trend goes in the other direction.

EDIT: I'm obviously talking about modern consoles. Get a used PS2 and some games and play to your heart's content!

I can see the trend you’re talking about, but the vast majority of games on consoles I can buy, put into my console and play without being online. Some games are obviously always online, some are just straight broken without patches, but the majority are just ok without internet. So I find that, currently, my point stands.

Absolutely fair.

As long as there are physical releases in the first place, that option will probably never vanish completely. Personally, I'm more "concerned" about the Indie/AA scene - when there's no physical release in the first place, I can't even visit the ship down the road to buy it. But that's independent of the PC/console divide, so I'm just rambling now.

Absolutely. But I do find that this actually gotten somewhat better in recent years with distributors such as Limited Run Games and the like (even when I loath them sometimes for their FOMO tactics) have often made possible small runs of physical editions of games, that would likely not have seen a release otherwise.

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