N4G comments prove we'd let people get away with murder!

Today there was an article by Kotaku (yeah, THAT Kotaku) that made light of a Japanese tweet by Sony that might have mentioned something about the upcoming PS4 not supporting CD’s. Just a rumor, and no one else has brought this up to my knowledge, so in my mind, unless we get some more confirmation one way or another about what’s going on here, then we probably should write this off as Kotaku being Kotaku (seriously, guys, get off of whatever grudge you have against Sony already: it’s been 7 years since they got you for violating NDA about Home, and you’re the reason we even HAVE these abusive and restrictive embargos and NDA’s now).

But this is not what is the most troublesome. Hell, if that’s all it was, then yeah, I usually ignore Kotaku anyway. Brian Credente has proven on several occasions to me personally that he’s not a real game journalist. Hell, I would suspect he could join Geoff Knightley in the Doritos aisle.

But what really is bothering me is in the comments section of that story on N4G. Holy crap, are we ever ready to, if God forbid this were actually true, bend over and lube it up for Sony to royally rape us in ways we could never imagine. This happened with Microsoft when they were screwing us over in the hardcore games department and closing down first party studios so they could get more money to spend on buying up third party games and exclusive DLC. And now we’re doing this again. Oh, and I highlighted Microsoft’s screwing over because if I didn’t, I would get accused of somehow being anti-Sony. Hell, I might just be by even bringing up the article as a negative for me in buying a PS4 if true.

But back to the article itself, the comments were saying things like “who buys CD’s anymore” or being smart ass about it and bringing up cassettes, VHS, and 8 tracks as things that the PS4 would not support, either. They were even insulting those that might want the PS4 to include CD support.

Really? Is THIS what we have become? Not only have we become a bunch of elitists who cannot take a joke when it’s actually a joke, as we’ve proven in the Funny or Die article that I wrote about, but now we’ve become tolerable to anything and everything that a company does regardless of what rights they trample on, what sense or lack thereof that a decision makes, or what inconvenience it will cause. I’ve never seen so many people willing to let people screw them over congregate in one place. Why do I let it bother me? Perhaps this is the type of crap companies read and think that they speak for the rest of us. Believe I’m just a Chicken Little? Well, think of the many things in the gaming market that has happened because some idiots decided to never shut up and never be mature about what they said.

People whine and cry about the Gamestop business practices. Many are valid points about the CHAIN! But the end result? We don’t care that the industry is using this as a reason to try to take out the ENTIRE used game market! Do we say “no, that’s NOT okay?” NO! Of course not, we condone and encourage THAT to. As long as it means Gamestop gets put out of business and those people who we think don’t know a single damn thing about games are out of a job to pay for college or their house or food or whatnot, then why should we care? Let’s let Microsoft put in that restriction in the Nextbox! Let them continue to get exclusive DLC that doesn’t sell third party games on their system anyway! Close down those first party studios that are giving you real exclusives that are actually good! Who cared about Age of Empires anyway? It only spawned three or four games! We didn’t really care about that game that we bought the second it hit shelves! Nope! Hell, we’ll buy anything that says Microsoft on it! C’mon, Microsoft! Which PS4 third party exclusive game will you make sell out because you’re too addicted to me too ware? We want to know so we can wait longer for the game that will be subpar on your platform that can’t actually handle the game! We’ll play it anyway while you make us keep that copy when you suckered us all in when we realize that your version sucks...oh, wait, it doesn’t. Microsoft knows no wrong! I forgot!

Do I even HAVE to get into the Sony hacking debate? Hell, how hot button of a topic is that not because Sony had an issue with Homebrew or whatnot, it’s because we made it into one because we’re too immature or too irrational to think with reason. Insults to ANYONE who dared to even question what Sony did to try to stop whatever they were stopping were met with so many insane comments (that never got moderated in any sort of way and even got someone promoted TO moderation. Thanks a lot, Cat!). Hell, people on this site told Sony to drag Geohot all around the world (which they did) to get him to not be able to fight Sony? What, did they even know that if Sony actually fought him in a fair legal battle, they might lose? What were they so scared of? If Sony was actually in the right in that case, then why did it matter WHERE the case was tried at, and why did it matter WHO Hotz hired on his legal team? But enough with the questions! Go ahead, Sony. Take away something for no good reason. Fight that piracy by restricting the console more and more when you know it’ll happen anyway! Fight that Homebrew that you have no real reason to be scared of! Hell, we only want to pirate games! There’s not any REAL programmers who can prove that they understand the PS3 Cell structure that everyone kept saying was a bitch to develop for! There’s no way anyone sitting at home making some small game could possibly prove a triple A developer that’s whining about Cell development being too hard wrong! And we don’t care how much goodwill Anonymous meant to do when they called you out? Hell, what have they done, anyway? That girl in Steubenville, Ohio, deserved to be raped by half of the high school football team! How dare they stick their nose in their business that would’ve never gotten the attention it did…err…DIDN’T, deserve, and how dare they stick their nose in your business when you’re doing such a good job protecting us against…whoever it is you’re protecting us from! I’m sure those are some bad people you’re protecting us from! Worse than mass murderers and serial rapists…oh, wait!

Yeah, let’s keep letting these people screw us over! Let’s eat that cake that they would let us eat rather than the bread that we SHOULD be eating but the emperor won’t let us have! We don’t need to stay healthy!

But thing is, I’d rather not get screwed over all the time! I’d rather think for myself, and I’d rather say enough is enough. We should have consumer rights, we should be able to call out companies, especially those that we like, and we should grow the hell up and think about what we post. This is not 4chan, and you don’t have the anonymity that you might think you do. These are real people you troll, real people whose rights you approve to be trampled upon, and these are real people who have real brains that should be able to think for themselves.

So yeah, this really troubles me that we’ve came to this point. Yeah, it could’ve been going on for such a long time (and judging from how people were just letting the RIAA and MPAA trample over rights in the anti-piracy lawsuits and ideas to curb it, I would say that you’d be correct in that assumption), but the beauty of the internet is that with such issues with communities, you get to actually see it happen then realize that this sort of crap has been going on. You’re just now seeing it first-hand, though.

But has it been THIS bad? Probably not. Bandwagons probably weren’t as easy to start riding because you didn’t know they existed until your mind was made up. Why? Because of the internet giving you access to said bandwagon much quicker. Back in the day, you probably might’ve heard several different opinions about Microsoft’s DLC practices, or about the used game market, or about the Sony hacking debate, or about this CD issue. It’s a lot easier now to not only know they exist, but also to see that if you don’t join up, you’re going to be eaten alive by said bandwagon, with no one willing to help you get them to let you even breathe on your own.

You see, you might find it better to move your music or whatever digitally to the PS4 (we’ll not even get into how disastrous such a decision from Sony would be to those that still own PS1 discs of games), but for me, I have a bunch of CDs that I haven’t ripped to my hard drive yet, and I have no immediate plans to. I’m pretty sure anyone with a brain could figure out why if I just said I have so many. It would take me somewhat over a day to get everything in my collection done, and that’s assuming that something doesn’t go awry to some of the files during the process. Not to mention that if, God forbid, my disc drive fails for any reason (I’ve broken the CD tray off of mine some months ago, and about five months later, I finally got around to fixing the damn thing…only because I needed to install Windows 8), then I’m royally screwed there because I haven’t gotten around to buying a new CD disc drive for my computer. So, once that happens and I buy a PS4, I would have to connect it to my network, internet, whatever. I do that, hope my internet/network doesn’t crap out, and I’m transferring. That’s a lot of risk involved.

Or I could use a thumb drive. Only one issue: the capacity of drive, coupled with how much music I actually have (again, I said I had a lot of CDs, and more that I can thank iTunes for), and how big some music files can be, I would have to have my stick make several trips to and from the PS4 and my computer (I have now at least 5TB worth of hard disk space: 250GB boot drive, a 1TB and 2TB internal drives, and one 2TB external, and my case can hold three more…my USB drive is only 2GB by comparison).

Now, compare that to what I could do with a CD enabled PS4: pop the CD into a drive that, if it fails, I know it’s not my fault (though knowing how reliable Sony’s PS3 hardware was to work, I can assume it’ll be the same next gen). Copy the music directly to the PS4 hard drive, and eject the disc. Done! No having to worry about network issues! No having to run back and forth! Plus, quality issues from ripping the music from one format to another would not matter. We’ll know what quality the PS4 can get music into if it would support CD formats. It might not be as simple if you do it the hard way.

And assuming that Sony nixes CD support, how would that stop piracy to begin with? You have Torrents that can download entire albums. Those are on your hard drive, and you can transfer those the exact same way as people who are commenting on that article are saying they would rather do now. I know I own my copies of the CDs I have because I bought them from Amazon, went out to the store for them, whatever! I paid a lot of money for those discs. Are you saying that I have no right to use them directly into my PS4 because they are scared of someone burning a CD and putting that into the PS4 to rip? You know, maybe some of these comments should stay, because it would show Sony just how dumb that idea is and how easy it would be to get around that. Hell, if that all they had to do, then you’re actually doing them a favor, according to those that are commenting.

Of course, this is for those files that we download to begin with. Not to the music that’s already on a disc. If it’s already on my computer, then I’m not going to go through the trouble of burning, THEN ripping. But if it’s music that’s on a disc to begin with, then I shouldn’t need to do those extra steps, and it does nothing to stop anyone.

So, why are we accepting this? Of course, Kotaku could be anti-Sony and making this all up (they’ve bitten on stupid crap before), so we should wait for further info before we get all crazy here. My rage isn’t directed at Sony per se (though I’ve had bones to pick with all console makers this gen, don’t get me wrong), but at those that are willing to let things happen. You wouldn’t let anyone else, retailer, boss, whatever, get away with screwing you over (assuming they were allowed to to begin with), so why let these companies do the same. From always-on DRM and used games when we let them take advantage of something that didn’t take that extreme of a measure to deal with, to things that we’re told prevents an imaginary issue that such only screws people over without doing anything to stop any actual problem but we shrug shoulders and say “oh well” to, we deserve to be the ones buying the lube for said companies if we let this stuff happen.

Hell, at this rate, we might HAVE to ask if the PS4 supports cassettes. That might be the only thing we would be allowed to use if this sort of thing keeps up.

(NOTE: By the way, that girl actually didn’t deserve to get raped. No one does. If you actually thought I was not being sarcastic, then you proved how correct I am)

[Derekvinyard13]

Ps4 using cassette tapes...u bad mouthing SONY?...REPORTED!

Good read dude enjoyed it.

[Megaton]

"...regardless of what rights they trample on"

Your "right" to play CDs? Go find a 90's Walkman. I think all public trash cans are required to contain at least one at all times. Or do what everyone else did a decade ago and rip your CD collection to your computer.

I get the people who are angry over backwards compatibility. I get the people who are angry that more people aren't angry over backwards compatibility.

This... I do not get. It's silly.

[ZombieNinjaPanda]

Logical progression of technology: The smarter it gets, the worse it gets. Apparently our consoles are getting to the point where they cannot play DVDs or CDs or any lesser formats but similar any longer. And yet people are okay with this, offering up excuses. Why is it that Sony Bluray players can play CDs, DvDs, Blurays, but the console removing it is fine? I would think the ability to play similar formats would be an industry standard in 2013, not something we have to fight for or look back in time and remember as "the good old days".

The point of this blog is that people shouldn't so vehemently be defending the removal of features from their products. That, you should get Mega.

[Megaton]

Who's vehemently defending the supposed removal of CD support? Seems more like casual indifference to an antiquated format being left behind.

[JD_Shadow]

Do me a favor and go read the comments that I'm referring to: http://n4g.com/news/1182964...

You'll see why I even made this to begin with!

[smashcrashbash]

I get why people are disappointed by no BC but angry? I am sure as a grown person you understand that Sony would prefer to divide their profits between PS3 and PS4 instead of risking having a ton of unsold PS3s when their console is released. The PS3 only now started to become profitable the other day and to put the PS4 out there could very well put the sales of the PS3 at risk. It is a calculated business decision. I know BC would be nice too but Sony is just not ready to toss aside their hardware in favor of the PS4 yet. And they have no obligation to. They didn't stop production of the PS3 and they are giving us options to play PS3, PS2 and PS1 games on the PS4.It's fine for you buying the product to say 'Just toss aside the PS3 and make the PS4 compatible' but business wise that is a bad idea. Nintendo only did it because they were finished with the consoles they left behind but Sony isn't finished with the PS3 yet. So why risk it's death from competition from the PS4 when you can sell both and get twice the profit especially if the plan is to lower it's price?. I know people will jump to disagree but as I have said before, if you were in their shoes and not outside looking in you would understand.

[theEx1Le]

I'm sorry but the business argument shouldn't be brought into especially when we have to look at it from our perspective, which is consumer.

I do not want to(and won't), in five years be purchasing re-releases of my favorite PS3 games because production has stopped on PS3 hardware. BC should be standard from a consumer perspective, especially during those months as an early adopter, when console launches are notorious for game droughts.

Also the point of this blog i get. The constant removal of cheap and easy to include features (or even to pinpoint Sony's one directly, an obscure feature removed after the fact) that would make peoples mind more at ease over the purchase of hardware is also mind boggling. These features might only appeal to few, but in the end those few can add up to potential customers.

Even if a lot of people think CD's in particular are obsolete, they still make up a hellova lot of the music industries sale worldwide and like the OP, I'm sure there are other that wouldn't just shrug off the omission of such a feature.

[matgrowcott]

I'm going to keep saying this over and over until it sinks in with everybody who doesn't understand what they're saying about backwards compatibility...

PS4 BC would not be cheap or easy. There is no way on earth to emulate a cell processor. No computer could do it, no matter how beefy. This is not a feature they've decided to just hold back - it's literally not at all possible. There's a good chance it will NEVER be possible.

What? Just stick a processor into the PS4? After people so readily accepted the extra cost of this feature in the PS3? Oh, then they complained because to lower costs they took it out? Well, hey, looks like Sony can't win either way...

The logo on the front doesn't make a difference. From a tech point of view, you might as well be asking for Sony to include a 360 emulator as well. Is that something you'd like? Is that something you can feasibly see happening?

[smashcrashbash]

Wait wait. You guys are serious about the whole CD thing? Are you joking? Back then when we switched almost completely from cassettes to CDs did you honestly expect the company to keep supporting the lesser and outdated format forever? Why? No one complained when Nintendo completely dropped the N64 cassettes in favor of the Gamecube discs but because Sony decided to forgo BC or CDs suddenly they are the bad guy? They have no obligation to give us BC no matter what you believe you deserve.

It is not always as easy as you claim and it costs more money to include it.And if they do charge you more people will be back here complaining about why Sony is selling their system for so expensive. You don't see Nintendo with slots all over the Wii U supporting every game they had since the NES. There is a difference between wanting service from a company and being completely ridiculous.Each feature they add on cost them more and more and at same time you want them to keep down the costs and sell it to you for peanuts. Time goes by and technology changes and you expect every company to just keep scraping together old tech to graft on to the new one no matter how difficult or unreasonable it is? How is it it is okay for Nintendo to be making you download older stuff instead of supporting it physically but Sony is evil for doing the same?

This is the point I always make. A business is a complex creature and people always talk as if it is an ice cream parlor or a lemonade stand that can add your give you sprinkles or extra sugar just because you say so.CDs are a dying format. No one really wants them anymore but you want them to pay what ever extra it costs just because a few people might want the feature? That is not business.That is immature fanboy talk. I am sorry. I know the whole companies are greedy and evil blah blah blah but you are being equally greedy to be asking the company to increase cost and sell you the console at a cheap price with no profit for them.A companies main goal is to make a profit not to pander to every unreasonable demand from their customers whether you like that fact or not. Just because you think a company is greedy or evil doesn't excuse being unfairly unreasonable or ignorant.Look at bit like this. Suppose for argument 1% of the people who buy a PS4 still play CDs. And then lets suppose all together the cost of letting the new drive run CDs and connecting it with the PS4's new architecture costs $8.00. And you manufacture 10 million PS4s. That is 8.00 extra you have to spend costing 80 million dollars just to satisfy 1% of the people while the rest don't even give a damn.

You see what I am getting at? They are spending extra for a tiny percentage of your customers.It doesn't matter if you believe it doesn't matter. When you the company look at the books it will add up and it will matter. It's the same thing with what cause the hack that people made such a big deal about when it wasn't. It sounds reasonable to people to be spending extra cash making systems with a feature that not much people use just to satisfy the ten people that use it but it isn't.The hackers didn't really care either but saw it as a stepping stone as an excuse to hack the PS3 so everyone would be on their side. If you want the PS4 to be affordable and cost effect you have to let them draw the line somewhere.They can't give you EVERYTHING and you still want it to cost pocket change.They are trying to be as reasonable as possible in the terms of costs and features but that doesn't mean you have the right to be as unreasonable as possible. You don't see Apple making CD players do you? Why do you think that is? Because CDs are a dying format.Obviously Sony sees it too and it won't be long before they stop using CDs completely.They already seem to be banking on Bluray discs

[JD_Shadow]

Having PS3 BC on a PS4 might not be as easy because look what putting full PS2 BC did to the PS3. Remember the 599 US DOLLAR fiasco? Part of it was because there was full PS2 hardware inside the PS3 in addition to PS3 hardware along with everything else they included in it. It was a beast, but at the same time, took them way too much money to make. Selling it at 599 the way they were, they would have to sell the higher end version of the system AND five games just to break even on one system sold, before they even saw a penny in profits from the system. Part of why they are squeamish to do BC this time.

But still, having no CD drive in there (I don't suspect this'll be the case: the official spec sheet of the PS4 says that the system will read DVDs) would be a silly move. What purpose will it serve? As I said, it wouldn't curb piracy in the slightest, and the cost of adding CD support would be far cheaper than adding, say, BD support (which they obviously are: it's a 8x speed BD player in there). Unlike the music formats that came before it, CDs are still a fairly recent tech that many people still have a good bit of. Yes, no one uses cassette tapes anymore, but how long ago did those become irrelevant? You don't see anyone that still owns cassettes as a primary source of music (might see them still have the cassettes from when they were primary, but they don't go out to buy anything on them now). However, you will find a majority of people who still have a vast collection of CDs that they were buying before Napster and eventually iTunes became THE place.

Plus, I was checking on Newegg.com about how expensive CD drives for computers are now. The most expensive one was one they had was a CD/DVD Burner combo (can't get one without the DVD part, which makes me even more suspicious about the Kotaku story because since when does a DVD drive NOT have a CD reading component in it anymore?) was for 40 bucks. And the majority of the rest ranged from 10-20 bucks. This should tell you that adding the tech isn't even that expensive to do. If it's such an ancient tech as we're saying it is, then how would it increase the cost of anything if they did include it?

Again, this is assuming that Kotaku isn't full of shit in the first place? They have a bad history of yellow journalism, and comparing what was being told to have been said with what the spec sheet of the PS4 says, one has to wonder how the DVD drive wouldn't read CDs. If it didn't, one would have to wonder what Sony's reasons for it would be. Maybe 10 years from now it would make sense to no longer have a CD reader in it, but when many still own and/or buy CDs? Really?

[theEx1Le]

@smashcrashbash, I'm not saying that I personally care about the CD, I couldn't care less but that doesn't mean people like you who dismiss it are right because you wouldn't miss it. And obviously not reading my comment right as I never said BC was a cheap feature. At that point I was referring to the inclusion of a CD playback because the fact is it is cheap and simple to include. You keep going to the business part of this. Why? Its not your job to worry about that? (unless it is then debating this with you would actually be pointless). Your one job as a consumer is to get the most for your money. Sure company loyalty is all good and that but whats the point if you think there should be more to the machine your paying good money for, yet pay it anyway. Its also worth noting that while CD's are on the decline and digital is on the rise, Physical formats were still the dominant factor in music sales last year.

I want BC in my PS4, why wouldn't I? I never anywhere in my comment said that they must do it! I did however say that I wouldn't support paying for re-released games which if trends from this generation follow on to next seems likely to happen.

Also I would really love to see what part of my comment you find "immature fanboy talk"? I agreed in principle with the what the blog was referring to and that makes me a Fanboy?

[Godchild1020]

I understand where you are coming from, but will the inclusion of being able to play CDs really make the system play PS4 games better or would it really make a difference on how you play games on it. It seems like you want a Multimedia device, than a gaming system. As a gamer, as long as the GAME SYSTEM plays games and I can enjoy playing the game that I buy on it, I don't care if it plays CDs or not.

Times has changed and most of us have moved our CDs on to our computers, Ipod(s) and flash drives, etc and put our CDs up and/or in storage. We are not worried about our GAME CONSOLES playing CDs. Where was the drama or article when we learned that the Wii couldn't play DVDs or CDs or the consoles before the Wii from Nintendo.

I understand that you would like to have the PS4 play CDs, but just like any item that can be bought, they don't last forever. And if it really is a problem, play your games on PC or the next Xbox. The PC will always be able to play CDs.

[Software_Lover]

The piece really has nothing to do with CD's as a whole. It's basicly about the Tyranny that we accept. First it was niche features. Then Backward compatibility. Then card slots. Then other things.

Pretty soon, you will not to be able to even play a game without some type of social media account. Maybe not with the ps4/720 but definitely after that it could be a possibility.

It's a slippery slope. It's just like the IRS. When the IRS was first implemented, they promised that it would only take 1% of the income of those making a certain amount and then a higher percentage for those making over 500,000. They promised the American people that it would never go over that. Well, look where we are now.

[steve30x]

One of the things that makes me laugh about N4G is when you post something with actual proof you still get disagreed with. For instance A guy started waffling on about how 8GB wont make games look better and that most graphics cards only have 2GB ram with the Nvidia Titan being the only Graphics card that has 6GB of ram so I told him wrong and posted links that the AMD 7970 has 3GB of ram and theres a 6GB version too but I still got disagrees

http://n4g.com/news/1183665...

[DragonKnight]

Barring that your comment is off topic, you have to understand that people may not be disagreeing with your proof. They could be trolls, but they could be also disagreeing with what they perceive to be your stance on things. That individual said games won't look better, those disagreers could think you're saying they will. Just ignore the disagrees.