EmptySpace
Banned
What about the ownership and archival aspect?
ever heard of netflix? or the million other streaming/rental services?
you can even rent ebooks now. rent movies off of youtube.
in fact, i'd say renting games and streaming them is yosp's master plan. streaming will be the norm...powerful local machine will cease to exist just like you can stream crysis on a shitty laptop. in the future there will be no perceived differences between playing games locally or over the internets. these naysayers are ignorant of tech, the same way some people thought 56k dialup speeds can't get any better and faster.
i say there will be a ps5, but majority of the games will probably be digital copies and that's where streaming games adoption will skyrocket. or if google fiber forces shit companies like comcast/time warner to catch up to the likes of japan and korea internet speeds then we might not see ps5 anymore.
as for archival, it'd be way better since software lasts as long as there's a digital copy stored somewhere. physical copies cost money to manufacture, ship, distribute, etc. companies will charge 60 bucks but will get way bigger profits because 1) no retailer middleman, retail copies are actually bought by gamestop at 45-50 bucks from publishers then they shoulder the shipping/diatribution. by cutting off retail the profit margin is bigger. 2) more environment friendly, no need to manufacture anything, less contractual liabilities, less headaches.
and again, this further eliminates 2nd hand market. in the end, we can only hope that rental prices are reasonable and game prices are lower (except for ea. ha).
games will become a service. much like tv shoes, books, music, and movies now.