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Sony & MS aided in the decline of discs by making a disc drive an expensive add on and having every game need an online connection or day one update to fix bugs.

I'm sure they had a marketing plan of making $90 bucks off a $10 buck disc drive and then go "oh wow, look, only 30% of people spent an extra $100 bucks!"

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It also enables them to effectively kill the used game market when you have to buy all games new through their store (or a code). You can’t even share a game with a friend, unless you share their whole account, which is way more friction.

Yep, then they can offer "share with a friend for a week just 5 bucks" at some point and we can all act like it's some revelatory experience :(

They were also following consumer trends, digital purchases were already getting very popular before they introduced diskless versions of the consoles.

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