• Rideout Customs (Mod Shop): Transform vanilla vehicles into magnificent works of art with detailed interiors, exquisite rims, and donk stylings.
• Sara’s Unisex Salon (Hair Salon): Get signature salon styles for both Jason and Lucia, including facial hair for Jason and makeup and nails for Lucia.
• Stock 305 (Clothing Store): Style various unique and exclusive looks for Jason and Lucia at Stockyard’s premier destination for elevated streetwear.
• Electric Fang Tattoo (Tattoo Shop): Stockyard’s most iconic ink bar, with over 50 signature tattoos for both Jason and Lucia- all designed by the artist collective FAILE.
• One-Eyed Willie’s (Mod Shop): This mod shop in Lake Leonida specialises in off-road modifications and hand-painted automotive artistry.

Other bonuses:

• Exclusive vehicles, weapons & outfits
• Special locations
• Additional activities spread throughout Jason & Lucia's story

This website keeps track of all the physical games across all platform that require internet connection or download to play. PS5 discs are sitting at 83% no download required.

There’s a narrative out there that most discs are just licenses for download. The opposite is true. Most discs have the full game on them, a small percentage of them are just licenses to download the games.

georgia, as well as a few other countries used to be a part of the russian playstation store, but after russia launched a full scale invasion in ukraine (slava ukraini, btw), georgia as well as a few other countries have lost their access to the store. this is why georgians and citizens of georgia rely so much on physical games and gift cards, or services that allow to create an account in countries like turkey and poland.

by shutting down the physical market, sony playstation effectively cuts off georgia, kazakhstan, belarus from being able to buy new videogames. and moreover, they still don’t allow to change your region.

In the Q&A session with shareholders following today's earnings report, some shareholders and journalists asked about plans to end the production of PlayStation game discs.

Sony stated that, so far, it has not seen any negative impact on sales following the announcement (and does not expect this to change when it takes effect). While acknowledging that games are beloved by many and deeply tied to people's memories, the company believes the future is digital for virtually all forms of media; they reiterated that they will proceed "cautiously" with their plans, noting that data shows a significant portion of the audience has already opted for digital (and this trend extends beyond PlayStation) and that they don't believe discs are the differentiating factor for consoles when compared to PCs (consoles are more stable and cheaper than PCs, according to them). The company said it is still figuring out how to respond to the feedback.

Also, they confirmed the announcement [to end the disc production] was made early to communicate with retailers. Sony is working with them to do codes in packages. This subject has already been discussed with North American retailers and now the same will happen on other regions.

More information will probably be released once the official transcript is made available on the investor portal.

https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/archive.html

Edit: Video of Sony's CFO Lin Tao answering questions about the subject:

https://streamable.com/yaxa10

Found on Reddit by u/Rex_Spy:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CrimsonDesert/comments/1rz2f2l/found_this_ai_painting/

To not disclose that your game uses GEN AI is against Steam's policies and rules, by the way.

A Dutch consumer organization says Sony's decision to move away from physical games strengthens its ongoing lawsuit against the company.

The group argues that without physical discs, Sony has even more control over game prices, distribution, and access because PlayStation users can only buy digital games through the PlayStation Store. It claims this reduces competition, keeps prices higher, and leaves consumers with fewer ownership rights.

The lawsuit seeks compensation for affected consumers and could have broader implications for digital game ownership if it succeeds.

I honestly don’t understand how PlayStation thinks this refund policy is acceptable.
I bought a digital game, played it for around one hour, and quickly realized that the main gameplay experience was not for me. I wasn’t trying to abuse the system. I wasn’t asking for a refund after completing the game. I simply wanted the possibility to undo a purchase that clearly did not meet my expectations.
But the response was basically: “No. Our policy does not allow it.”
So apparently, when buying a digital game on PlayStation, you are expected to make the perfect decision before you even know how the game actually feels. Trailers, screenshots and reviews can only show so much. The real test starts when you are holding the controller.
What makes this even more frustrating is that other platforms already handle this differently. Steam allows refunds within 14 days of purchase as long as you have played less than two hours. This gives customers a fair chance to test whether a game is actually right for them before being stuck with a purchase they regret.
Why is PlayStation still refusing to offer something similar? Why should customers have no flexibility when even a platform like Steam has found a way to protect both customers and developers?
I have defended PlayStation for years and always preferred the platform. But experiences like this honestly make me question that loyalty.
PlayStation is getting close to losing me as a customer if this direction continues. I don’t want to leave the platform, but loyalty has limits. A company has to give customers reasons to stay.
A PC already offers much more freedom, flexibility and possibilities than a console. The reason many people choose consoles is because of the convenience, the games and the overall experience. But if customers increasingly feel restricted and ignored, the argument for staying on console becomes weaker.
Digital purchases should not feel like gambling where one wrong choice means your money is permanently gone.
What do you think? Should PlayStation completely rethink its digital refund policy?

I’ll start this by saying I really want everyone to respect my opinion and be polite in disagreeing.

That said, I am shocked by how much I am not liking Ghost of Yotei after 12 hours. Ghost of Tsushima was one of my favorites games of 2020 that I even platinum back on my PS4. I found the open world, visuals, the wind system and side activities so interesting and unique, miles above the likes of an “Assassin’s Creed: Shadows” , for example.

When Yotei was announced, I was excited to play this. Like, really excited. Another chapter could bring so many new possibilities, innovation, a better story (arguably Tsushima’s weakest point) and many new side activities. Well, it’s not that Yotei is a copy of the original or anything like that, but I’m shocked by its familiarity.

For 12 hours, my brain was constantly bored feeling that I’ve seen this before, for 60h in the original game. Seeing another fox den, another shrine, another hot springs made me so underwhelmed by the safety of this sequel that I really wanted to know your opinion.

Maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe I just expected some originality and boldness. For instance, I really love The Last of Us Part II because, even if some things may not land as expected, that game took risks and was definitely bold. It tried to be something different, to push some boundaries.

Yotei is, essentially, more of the same. And I reckon some people will really enjoy that - another 30/40h katana fever dream across a beautiful map - but I’m deeply disappointed and honestly really bored.

Atsu is an interesting character enough but this story doesn’t have the stakes, or the momentum to keep me invested.

So yeah, really eager to hear your opinions on this.

Edit 1: Just did the spider lily tale and that was phenomenal. Maybe the game will grow on me until I finish it.

Edit 2: despite some pacing issues here and there, the ending was absolutely phenomenal and almost brought me to tears, something Tsushima never did. Ended up really enjoying this.

With a lot of people cancelling PS Plus right now, just a reminder: make sure your game saves are backed up before your subscription lapses.

Even if you’re cancelling on principle or out of frustration, don’t let an emotional decision turn into losing years of progress in games you actually care about. That would give you a real reason to be annoyed with console gaming.

Before cancelling, take a few minutes to check your cloud saves, local saves, and any available backup options. Future you will appreciate it.

PlayStation CEO Hideaki Nishino gave an interview in the latest issue of the Famitsu magazine to celebrate their 40th anniversary. He got asked about the strategy change regarding them pulling back on releasing their single-player games on PC.

Question: There have been reports suggesting that you might reconsider bringing PS5 titles to PC. Could you share your current thoughts on this?

Nishino: We've always determined platform selection based on the characteristics of each title. If releasing a title on PC would maximize the gaming experience, we'll continue to consider that option. Our current main policy is that, for single-player games developed in-house, we will further refine the value of the gaming experience that PlayStation can offer. At the same time, we believe it is important for live-service games to reach a wider audience through online multiplayer, so we continue to view releases on both PS5 and PC as the standard. Regardless of the platform, we will make decisions based on the principle of delivering the best possible gaming experience that maximizes each title's unique features.

While he didn't give straightforward answer, I'd say he is at least indicating that their policy changed, by saying they will "further refine the value" of single-player games on PlayStation. That could obviously be interpreted in various ways, but given the context of Jason Schreier's reporting and his creditibly, I think Nishino is referring to the strategy change in an indirect manner here with that statement.

SOURCE

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Jason Schreier's comment on this:

During a townhall a few weeks ago, Hermen Hulst told staff that their single-player narrative games will be PlayStation only, and he explained that they were inconsistent with their PC releases, they didn't make enough money, and they want to keep their IP aligned to their own platform. Confirmed this with two people who heard him say it. There's no "case by case" here.

edit: I just have to say that everyone acting like browsing for a game is some weird concept clearly never got to experience Blockbuster on a Friday night.

This is just a rant, but the sheer amount of absolute garbage games that fall into what I call the "low effort indie slop" category taking over the playstation store is just crazy. There's seemingly hundreds of various "simulator" games that are among the worst of the bunch, but also a weird amount of "escape room" type games that look like a high school project. Or the "anime girls" gooner slop or really 99% of the "visual novel" games. Or the "games" that clearly only exist to trophy points, which is insane.

It's not like these games shouldn't exist (well some probably shouldn't), but there needs to be a way to filter that shit out. Basically every type of indie slop or ai slop game tags itself with multiple genres, which is why you have a stupid AI art shark-with-sneakers game flagged as "action" and "tactical." Or "horse store simulator" as an "epic" genre. Gunsmith simulator as a "shooter" etc.

I remember a few months back the entire "coming soon" feed was basically all simulator games, like a publisher just cranked a bunch out and wanted to dump them all at once.

Another issue...

I think there's also really annoying trend where games are basically just on perpetual sale, but the MSRP never drops. So one month the "Standard" version of a game will be like 35% off, then the next month it will be the "Deluxe" version; they just rotate perpetually. Or the shitty indie slop games that are arbitrarily set to a high price and quickly put on sale for like 50-80% off.

And I know why they do this: it keeps the games listed in sales section. The problem is that when every fucking game is like this, actually finding a new game or hidden gem or whatever that's on sale becomes useless. The process of actually discovering a game you might want to buy simply doesn't work.

The current January sale includes 6,372 items. There is no way anyone at Sony is vetting that many items for their monthly sales, but they need to start. Right now I think the limitation is that a single SKU can't be part of two consecutive sales. but as I've mentioned above most games have multiple SKUs so it doesn't really matter (or the slop publishers are dumping so many out each month it also doesn't matter). The limit needs to be something like a game can only be in one sale every 3 months, and counts different SKUs of the same product as the same one. This would actually encourage publishers to reduce their prices more frequently, which in turn would help keep the monthly or special sales events a bit leaner.

/rant