4 ms·

I buy my Sony PlayStation games on physical media in six brick and mortar stores owned by three different brands in Belgrade, Serbia. There are also a few onlin

by pacija 5y ago

I buy my Sony PlayStation games on physical media in six brick and mortar stores owned by three different brands in Belgrade, Serbia. There are also a few online retailers who will send you the disc and you pay the delivery guy with cash. Sometimes I find a game at half the price at one store as compared to the others. I bought PS4 game three years ago in Oslo, Norway, and two years ago in Nicosia, Cyprus, both in different retail stores. I wouldn't say visiting any of thousands of reatil stores around the world, or ordering online from any of thousands of online retailers count as "only 1 way".

sokoloff 5y ago
How many ISPs provide transit for the bits from Apple’s app store? Sony has a bottleneck upstream of your retail purchase that’s analogous to Apple’s App Store bottleneck. The only thing I see that’s slightly different in your example above is the ability to resell the game once you’re done with it.
- pacija 5y ago
  No. You could then say "how many NIC manufacturers" or "how many UTP cable manufacturers" etc., as though all of them got their cut from Apple's app store (although one could reasonably argue it is true). If it is the same, why doesn't Apple allow third party stores even to re-sell apps from app store, competing on price and convenience? As this is what Sony does. I'm by no means fan of Sony, but these are two completely different situations.
  - dijit 5y ago
    Sony doesn’t care what happens to physical copies of the game once it’s sold, hence: resale is not competition. There’s no alternative to PlayStation getting their cut. And it doesn’t matter anyway because brick and mortar resales are going away, PS5 has a “digital only” version of the console, and Xbox had the same thing last gen.
swiftcoder 5y ago
Despite multiple retail outlets, there's still only 1 way for developers to get their game on the platform. Want to release only on physical media for PS or XBox? Have to go through platform cert anyway.
dijit 5y ago
All copies of those games were produced and sold by Sony. It doesn’t really matter who resells them, unless it’s a used copy then Sony has been paid — and it doesn’t mean that I as a publisher have an alternative “store” on the PlayStation or that I can print my own disks, which is what the parent stated.

by pacija 5y ago

sokoloff 5y ago

How many ISPs provide transit for the bits from Apple’s app store? Sony has a bottleneck upstream of your retail purchase that’s analogous to Apple’s App Store bottleneck. The only thing I see that’s slightly different in your example above is the ability to resell the game once you’re done with it.

pacija 5y ago
No. You could then say "how many NIC manufacturers" or "how many UTP cable manufacturers" etc., as though all of them got their cut from Apple's app store (although one could reasonably argue it is true). If it is the same, why doesn't Apple allow third party stores even to re-sell apps from app store, competing on price and convenience? As this is what Sony does. I'm by no means fan of Sony, but these are two completely different situations.
- dijit 5y ago
  Sony doesn’t care what happens to physical copies of the game once it’s sold, hence: resale is not competition. There’s no alternative to PlayStation getting their cut. And it doesn’t matter anyway because brick and mortar resales are going away, PS5 has a “digital only” version of the console, and Xbox had the same thing last gen.

swiftcoder 5y ago

Despite multiple retail outlets, there's still only 1 way for developers to get their game on the platform. Want to release only on physical media for PS or XBox? Have to go through platform cert anyway.

dijit 5y ago

All copies of those games were produced and sold by Sony. It doesn’t really matter who resells them, unless it’s a used copy then Sony has been paid — and it doesn’t mean that I as a publisher have an alternative “store” on the PlayStation or that I can print my own disks, which is what the parent stated.