My local Costco has had them for months. You have to buy it in a bundle with an extra controller and a game (and maybe a few other things), but it’s at MSRP for all those things.
Going through the hassle of wasting time and nerves to pirate games that are very cheap to get after a few months after release or in sales is beyond my comprehension.
This is Hacker News after all. Tinkering with stuff like this has gotten people into soldering, emulation, PCB design, low level coding, etc., which then gets you into software/computer/electrical engineering.
It's not just about saving 50 bucks every now and then. At least for some, it's about satisfying intellectual curiosity as well.
A bit off topic, but I recently bought my first Xbox (series x) after owning every generation of PlayStation since launch. There were 3 reasons I opted for the Xbox: availability, aesthetics of the device itself (in my opinion the new PS5 is hideous), and most importantly Xbox Game Pass.
I am amazed at the number of high quality games on there for a relatively small monthly fee. Buying one new game at full price is the equivalent of around 6 months of game pass. So for the same price I can either have 2 new games a year, or have access to hundreds of games.
Subscription services like that make piracy completely redundant. Game pass is spotify for games, and I haven't bought or pirated music since I started using spotify
With an active life it took me more than two years to reach 140 hours of gameplay in horizon zero dawn. I have enough games to play until I am dead and beyond.
Game pass is nice if you aren't picky about what games you play. But if you feel like playing a game that's not on game pass, you are paying for nothing.
The biggest benefit to Game Pass that is seldom acknowledged is having the same game library for everyone. My friend and I can play together with hundred of titles to choose from, without having to convince one another to spend money.
We like this so much we sent an older Xbox One to a third friend with the idea to get him to buy Game Pass so we can all play together.
I dread the end of this early growth period for Game Pass.
Microsoft is much better about backwards compatibility and preservation than Sony, too. I have a library of Xbox and Xbox 360 discs I can just put in my Xbox Series X and still play, often with improvements. I can even still buy many titles from those generations digitally and play them on my Series X.
Meanwhile, Sony's missing many landmark titles from two generations, and your only option for playing PS3 games on a PS5 is streaming.
"I have a library of Xbox and Xbox 360 discs I can just put in my Xbox Series X and still play, often with improvements."
Not to take away from Microsoft's achievement (and commitment) here, but of course much of that is dependent on remote servers to supply the necessary patches, or in some cases going so far as to just treat the original disc as a DRM dongle that enables an entirely image to be downloaded.
This is backcompat that allows you to play titles from the last twenty years right now, and that's still a huge improvement over anything Sony or Nintendo have done in the last generation or so [1], and reflects the degree to which Microsoft sees that as a killer feature of Steam. But it's not super likely that this will still work in another twenty years— the only archival-quality solution is keeping the old hardware working or hoping for the best with emulation.
[1]: But do note that a Wii U can natively play Wii games, and can be jailbroken to natively play Gamecube games, since all three systems are iterations of the same underlying platform. The launch versions of Nintendo's handhelds always supported at least one prior generation of game card/cartridge as well. And of course the initial "fat" SKUs of PS2 and PS3 could both play the generation of games immediately prior— and none of this required internet access.
AFAIK you cannot even use an Xbox for the 1st time without connecting it to the internet. PS on the contrary you can pop a game and it runs offline. But it seems they have been working on removing these constrains which are truly crucial for preservation in the future.
Indeed... So many PS3 games I missed out on because of Sony's negligence. They used to be better. The PS2 included PS1 hardware inside it. Early versions of the PS3 included PS2 hardware.
Cramming a PS3 on the PS4 made no sense, unless you wanted a 599 dollars console vs a 399 dollars.
PS3 had a shaky launch precisely for that reason, it launched at 599. The PS4 launched at 399 (a hundred bucks cheaper than the Xbox One btw and one the reasons it got a massive lead since the beginning)
Sometimes the game simply disappears from the store front but you can find it in your library. Sometimes it disappears from your library too, and you can request it via some process (https://delistedgames.com/get-your-games-back/). Sometimes you need to write the company in order to get a new key to whatever platform it is still available.
I looked at the games mentioned on the landing page and it's mostly online games whose servers are getting shut down. While that sucks and we should totally have the right to host our own servers without some asshole corporation C&Ding them, this isn't what I was talking about.
I have hundreds of video games. On steam I think it's over 200 titles. I can't tell if something I purchased ever disappeared from there. What I do know is I have lots of titles on my account that aren't sold on Steam anymore. Some GTA games with the original soundtrack, several EA titles that used to be sold on Steam once upon a time.
Is there a way to use this site to check my gaming accounts to see if I lost any games?
This is FUD, titles don't disappear from your Ps5 library when they get delisted.
If you buy a single player game digitally you should continue to have access to it for the life of the console as long as you aren't banned for doing something like disputing a credit card charge. (Which admittedly is a concern.)
Different provider (Steam) but related to your comment on disputing charges:
I returned a faulty game as is my legal right under UK law, Steam said they didn't allow that because they had their own much more restrictive rules. Eventually, I raised a PayPal dispute and PayPal choose to refund me (the amount was ~£1). They retaliated with restrictions to my account ... such restrictions as retaliation for fair exercise of rights granted by law is something that needs addressing.
I've noticed that game libraries, like Steam, now explicitly try to remove consumer rights with a click-thru pseudo-contract that directly contradicts UK law (roughly 'you give up rights to a refund'; whilst the Consumer Rights Act explicitly applies to digitally supplied goods).
Just thought this was a related point of note. Suppliers of intangible media have a little too much free rein.
There was a demo for a horror game called P.T. on PS4 made by Kojima. It got cancelled and the demo was eventually delisted from libraries preventing players from re-downloading it. The only way to play it is if you already downloaded it prior to delisting and never uninstall it. For a short while there was a way to download it via a web link, but Sony eventually shut that down.
It did disappear from your library, it just wasn't auto-uninstalled from your system. But you can never ever download/install it again. That's why systems that have it installed already go for so much money on eBay.
You are technically correct but I did write "if you buy a single player game digitally..."
Nobody bought P.T.
The Scott Pilgrim game was delisted on the Ps3 when the license expired, and I can still download and play it today. Being delisted just means new customers can't buy it.
There's no way Sony's terms of service allow developers to pull games from the library after purchase, that would be a remarkable business failure on their part given how much leverage they have in negotiating the TOS with developers.
If we’re talking about PCs you could buy an old office PC on eBay for $150 with a 7th gen Intel CPU and 16 GB of RAM and play a glut of low power games, retro emulators, etc. And if you’re willing to shell out another $150 for a 5 year old GPU you’ll be able to run just about any game, albeit on the lowest settings most of the time.
That's a very American view on prices. Multiply those by 10 for Brazil.
It's cheaper to fly to America and buy game consoles or PC hardware and fly back than it is to buy them in Brazil. Just be sure to hide your price tags from customs (or have a nice little bribe ready)
A stand, chain lube + cleaner, tubes+tube patch kit, chain brush, floor pump, chain drive tool, cable cutter and a set or two of wrenches/screwdrivers cost you more then a 200/300 euro switch plus at least one 60 euro game?
And you bought these? You didn't inherit all this stuff from your grandparents together with an "Oma fiets" or two when you born?
jokes aside, I do imagine that you might have more specialized tools. specially if you're working with some of the older sport bicycles that need love.
not really, e.g. music can be much cheaper to start (find an old guitar/digital keyboard) though get expensive if you want good instruments later on, i guess. sure ash cheaper than my shooting habit tho :)
True, to a degree. I won't ever pay 10-15€ for a 10 year old pc game but paying 1-3€ to have it in my steam library and not have to deal with wine/proton by hand is often worth it.
It's not just that, it's to enable emulation. I'm not sure how pirated games would fare anyway in an online world nowadays, but getting emulators running is very interesting to me.
In Bolivia when I was teen, I loved to go to the markets and buy pirated PS2 games. Each one would be about 10 bolivianos. (Around $1.50 ish?)
Without these pirated games myself and all of my friends and people I knew would not have been able to play games period. Imagine buying a $60 + import tax for ONE GAME on a Bolivian salary? Ludicrous.
I'm very happy the PS5 will finally open and allow gamers in third world countries to play. The PS3 and PS4 to my knowledge never had that freedom the PS2 did back in the day.
Also note that there are thousands of games that are free to play on PCs. There are even lots of old commercial games that can be downloaded for free now, legally.
Just because you can't afford a particular game doesn't mean that there aren't other options. As a teen I couldn't afford every game I wanted either.
I got a PS2 as the big birthday present. Back then the free PC games were KNIGHT online, gunbound, Gunz online, Tibia.... slim pickings. Today kids have Fortnite and such, I agree.
It is if you just don’t play current AAA games. I mainly do my gaming on a WiiU. Console and everything cost me $100 used. It plays pretty much every Nintendo game ever made short of the switch titles. Games are very cheap and of high quality.
A good table saw costs more than a gaming set up and it only does one thing. You will need more than one type of saw. You might need a planer, a drill press, a lathe. The list keeps getting bigger.
Or maybe you want to do machining(high end hobby), now you need a garage which will cost you ten thousands of dollars or you rent one for a hundred or maybe four hundred dollars per month. Then you need machines which cost more than 5k dollars and you guessed it, you will require multiple machines like that.
Not to mention you can buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 for about $150 on eBay with a bundle that includes dozens of game discs. These consoles are over a decade old but they still hold up fantastically well.
I don't know about you but I started programming because of Minecraft and learning about running a business by playing prosperous universe and this gave me some insights that make me suspect that money and it's non neutrality is the biggest unrecognised problem in economics. Remember economics 101 doesn't even have the concept of money or time. In fact econ 101 is an utopia that we want to reach, not how economics works in practice.
Positive reinforcement is worth more than people complaining that you are wasting your time by doing the wrong thing. People on HN say you should be curing cancer instead of building a factory in factorio. The former is a poorly defined multidimensional non linear search space with high chance of failure, the latter is a well studied problem with tutorials and guides. That is negative reinforcement.
Lots of hobbies are essentially "useless". The focus on being constantly "productive" seems toxic to me.
If you enjoy a hobby then it's not useless, enjoying it is the point of a hobby! So enjoy playing video games, growing houseplants, playing golf or whatever hobbies you have without feeling guilty about not producing as much as you could.
Eh, it depends. Every hobby has its benefits and its drawbacks.
I learned a ton of English, strategy, stress management, shortcut keys, programming and whatnot from games. Some games also took a lot of my sanity, sleep, relationships with living beings, etc. :)
Don't feel bad enjoying a hobby. The universe is your playground.
Maybe no shockingly obvious “improvements” but I’ve noticed friends and family who don’t game have a much harder time following the gps while the gamers usually have it on silent and glance every now and then with no issue. I bet there are a lot of mini things like that gaming improves.
Wait until you hear that some people don't even have indoor plumbing, 24h electricity and enough protein to eat, let alone extra income to waste on children's entertainment.
