If buying does not equal owning something, piracy can't equal theft. At this rate, what's the point of consoles?

The loss of physical media in addition to the rest of their terrible decisions solidified that I'm done with Sony. Still on the PS4, but I see no need to give them any future support.

It really sucks that between this and the death of personal computing at the hands of the AI bubble, my main hobby is becoming unaffordable.

they make their product and service worse but they're still trying to fight the console wars in 2026 like that japanese soldier who fought ww2 for 30 years after japan surrendered

I don't understand why anyone would choose to buy a console after this. The only draws of consoles was the turnkey hardware, which you can generally get with Proton now, and access to physical games, which won't be a thing soon. Now it's just a locked-down PC with a DRM storefront that makes you pay a subscription to pay online games and which may or may not have backwards compatibility from system to system.

Maybe that's just the PC gamer in me talking. Are there any advantages to console anymore? Like, a single benefit?

There is no point to consoles anymore. It used to be that consoles were easy to use and cheaper while PCs were more expensive and complex. That is no longer the case. Computers are stupid easy now and consoles have become too expensive. Nintendo excluded they are the only ones doing old console case where it is for children.

Can anyone come up with a single example of an industry that's not getting simultaneously worse (and/or smaller), and more expensive?

Closing bluepoint is madness. That studio was really good at remastering games

People don't care. Most just want to feed on SoMe. A bunch even voted Trump as President - impressed that humas has survived this long

They're betting on consumers being too impulsive and stupid to care, and... they're probably right. Nothing's stopped them before, this likely isn't a new line in the sand for them.

Just the second great video game crash, not quite a secret landfill of E. T. Games but this is just as bad imo

Yet another common PlayStation L

I'm gonna miss them as they were the only way of playing paid games via Playstation 4 since you couldn't buy digital games via PS Store if you were living in an unavailable country.

End of an era for just about everything. Streaming is all enshitified. The job market is shit. Democracy is falling apart. Decades of progress being undone. It's just the way it will be until people get sick of all this shit and start doing things differently and move on. All the great old companies are dead. Either turned to zombie brands or run by zombies. I remember how excited I was to buy my first Sony Trinitron, my first walkman, my Sony component stereo, first PlayStation.