optical media bad

That's not exactly how CRT's worked. They portrayed colors differently. Many people preferred their more vibrant colors. They effectively worked in inverse to today's TV in the sense of subtracting vs adding light / colors. I wish they still made them

Eh, that's just the shitty organic medium they cheap out with. Metal dyes (M-Disc Blurays are 100GB good for 100 years, fine even for modern games) are great, shame they're artificially expensive.

Newer glass or quartz optical discs with femtosecond lasers are good for 360TB for 100K years (claimed) in a similar footprint. See also M$ sitting on 'Project Silica' for most of a decade.

Shame corpos don't want the CD burning revolution to happen again, just imagine what sneakernet would be like if you could fit all of Netflix in the palm of your hand burned on a USB peripheral.

I have faith in you!

I really don't want more plastic garbage. Just give me the files.

Funny thing is, I don't want ownership. I don't want to own things.

But I want to share things, so I don't want to rent them either.

A shortcut to actual ownership

If the physical media game requires a server connection, how is it ownership, exactly? The corpo can still effectively take away the product from you by shutting down the servers. Or banning you.

"Plastic stuff" doesn't give you rights. Laws give you rights.

The ability to trade or barter it again after purchase.

Fair point

We actively avoid those games that require server connections

This is the way. Also, nice game selection on the left. Would love a physical, still haven't bought it.

Currently I'm collecting hucards. It's awesome 😁

But yeah optical discs, rather not interesting for collecting (bland + rotting).

Embrace the MiSTer master race!

Not disagreeing with your sentiment but you're not right about old consoles.

All consoles starting with the NES had authenticator chips to cut down on piracy. Arguably the only reason the medium survived is because of the manufacturers tightened control over the flood of low quality games, knock offs, and theft. The Nintendo Seal of Approval was a necessity to buyers because it said the game wasn't shovelware garbage.

What's happening today with licenses, access control, and long-term renting from the corpos isn't fundamentally different, just more pervasive. But now we have all the shovelware too.

Also those carts DO just disappear as their RAM dies. The discs last longer, but I bet you have PS1 games that won't read anymore.

Thankfully, not all games need to phone home

I'm guessing they have some sort of hot swappable port, either external or built into case.

Sorry, I can't hear your complaint over Steams per game sales outstripping all other consoles

I have not! I'm going to have to investigate this further but it may actually be a perfect solve for what I'm doing.

tradition is expensive

I understand the sentiment, often I hold on to things I’ve bought that I ideally should replace or move on from but I don’t like the idea of throwing away something that is still functional and could potentially be used by someone else, except other than holding a big yard sale it’s just not worth it trying to give it away for small things individually, maybe if there was a business that collected stuff from you and became a central repository for others to come borrow it that would be nice, I know there are some power tools and equipment libraries out there and some libraries let you rent baking and other kitchen items

Physical media alone does not guarantee that. You need a legal framework that forbids mandatory online activation. Actually better forbid them from binding a physical game at all cause or you should never connect your console to the internet.

But if we manage to get those rights we can also get the right to transferable software in general.

So what makes a game on a disk that does not require internet connection to run/activate better than a game distributed GOG style where once you get the game it also no longer requires an internet connection?

That's true for games not on physical media as well.

My comment on old consoles not preventing you from playing physical games was only in regards to originals, not pirated ones.

I am well aware that physical media actually provides more ways for vendors to limit control of software/games by the users. Both practical and even legal hurdles.

I agree that physical media won't last forever and even when they do the hardware that runs them might not work anymore.

So?

Those games distributed through a platform like GOG also won't phone home, so where's the difference?

So you do acknowledge that it's not the medium of distribution, but rather the setup of the game itself that matters?

GOG don't sell games on consoles?

Are you just refusing to answer the question because you know you would have to cede your point...?

I did answer, the difference is GOG don't sell games for consoles, so GOG alone are not the solution.

The discussion isn't about a specific platform, it's about physical vs digital media. Therefore you didn't answer the question.

If you're getting stuck on the "but it's GOG, it's different", replace that with literally any other digital distribution platform, because that is irrelevant to the question.