Agreed to the author’s opinion at the end:
You don’t own the games installed in the console. Physical media requires Sony’s hardware’s validation. Now you start to not even own the hardware anymore. And all that being slowly normalized for decades, drop by drop, and just now the situation seems to be reaching a breaking point.Also impressive Sony didn’t keep pulling a Nintendo after the Bleem Emulator case. Imagine how bad it is to be able to run a game outside of the native hardware. /s
I paid $30-something a month for an Xbox Series X and GamePass for 2 years. And I got to keep the Xbox!
(Xbox All Access. It’s no longer offered. And you saved $20 if you did it, at the original price of GamePass Ultimate, $15/month, it’s since doubled in price since they told Congress buying Activision would lower prices for consumers.)
Let me guess, if it isn’t in 100% mint condition when you return it, you get to pay for it, including a service fee of 150€ for their inconvenience.
“You will own nothing and you will be happy”
Furniture rental services are the devil’s work, it really is.
Semi-related, my family had rented furniture before. We had rented like this bedroom set and a wardrobe. It’s ludicrous to be into doing that. That’s why I thrift for furniture. Will I ever come across a PS5 thrifting? Probably never, not unless it’s just the shell of the console itself but even then someone will take it.
Only use-case I’ve had for rental was when I was at a military school for five months. My roommate and I needed a TV in our barracks room, but there wasn’t much point in buying a TV (each of us had TVs back home), so we rented one for five months. It was great. One of us also bought a Wii (dating myself here), so it was a great time.
That’s about the only case I can think of renting furniture/appliances. If you are temporarily someplace and can’t thrift an item at a reasonable price.
Folks here jest, but this business model is coming to PCs next. Bookmark my words!
(Literally, you can right-click the perma-link to this message and have quick access to it later so you can reply, “Damn, you were right!” And post the link to big PC vendors suddenly offering a similar services because DRAM and GPUs have become so expensive, normal people can’t afford to buy PCs anymore)
Sorry, you don’t get any points for this prediction, because it already exists.
No, because PC is an open platform, not dependent on specific hardware.
People used to rent their televisions because the technology was too expensive to own outright. It’s weird that this business model is becoming viable again, and specifically for hardware that’s been in circulation for a while. I appreciate that Sony are just looking at ways to expand their player base, and i’d presume some of the economic drivers are out of their control, but I don’t think this should be encouraged or tolerated.
It’s viable again because well… gestures vaguely at everything
HP just launched a laptop ‘subscription’ service too. It’s a rather disgusting sign of the times. Companies would love for this to become the norm, because renting is a highly profitable game. Get that sweet money coming in month after month. And you are right; we must not encourage them.
I’d rather save up and go to the second-hand marketplace than line a corpo’s pocket by renting.
