Heretical Thougts

[Gabriel]

My slim PS3's disc drive crapped out on me. Everything still works on it except the optical disc drive. I plan to get it fixed, but I had been planning on purchasing a second PS3 anyway, so I bought a superslim. I have the new system all set up, and the old one can still do everything except play physical games. It caused me to consider some radical ideas.

 

Because I didn't remember I could hook the two PS3s together with an ethernet cable and do a complete system transfer, I manually downloaded all my content and installed all my games to my new system. This has the side benefit that all my content is also still on my old system and still playable. On the downside, there are some games with locked saves which I could not move over, and as these are games where I use physical copies, I have to start them over from the beginning. X-Com was one of these locked saves. If I had purchased the download version of the game, I could still return to my old game and complete it on my old system. Since I insisted on a physical copy, I can't access my saves on that old system.

 

The most vulnerable part of a modern system is the optical disc drive. In fact, lots of people who are PS2 collectors have installed mods and hard drives allowing them to run all games without physical discs. Let's take the argument at face value that they did it for their stated purpose of installing the games they own and saving wear and tear on the optical drive. The same holds true for downloaded games on the PS3. Playing downloads instead of physical discs (even as keys) saves wear and tear on the optical drive prolonging it's life.

 

Then we come to the issue of DRM. The PS2 backup proponents have a big advantage. They can reinstall their games if the hard drive or system craps out. On the other hand, if the PS3 gets the yellow light of death and the PSN servers have been shut down, there will be no way to recover the content downloaded and signed to that PS3. But how often does a PS2, not just it's optical drive, actually die? Is it really that big of a concern?

 

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the PS3 is like most other historical disc based consoles. Now that we're into the later designs, the primary point of failure is the disc drive. Most dead disc systems aren't actually dead. They're like my slim PS3. They just don't play physical discs. This renders older systems useless as they rely entirely on the optical disc drive, but more modern systems have the hard drive to fall back on. When the optical drive was the only method to load the games, the death of that component meant the system was dead. This is no longer necessarily so. So, purchasing downloadable games instead of physical copies becomes a preferable option, because it sidesteps the most likely avenue of system failure. Who cares if the optical drive dies? Blu-Ray and DVD movie players are cheap. All the games will be on the hard drive and will be playable regardless of the functionality of the optical drive. Long live DLC!

 

So, there's my heresy. Thoughts?

[VW]

I think optical drives are actually pretty reliable overall, it's just that Sony's haven't been in the PS3 generation. I had my launch gen PS3 optical drive die on me a month after its warranty run out and three friends of mine all had PS3s of various vintages have their optical drive fail. I have not heard of this kind of drive failure with Xboxes or blu ray/DVD players in general so I am inclined to blame Sony for using inferior parts. Hard drives also fail so I don't think you are that much better off relying on them.

[cimerians]

So, purchasing downloadable games instead of physical copies becomes a preferable option.

 

For me it is since I don't have the physical space for games anymore.

 

There are conditions:

 

I didn't like Microsoft's former Xbox One plan but I can live with what is currently there now....which I guess will be on Xbox One.

 

PSN is the worst and the best of them. They limit you to two machines, the interface stinks etc. but PS Plus makes it better than even Steam.

 

Steam is my preferred digital method (even though they allow Publisher DRM) and the best of all is GOG (DRM free).

 

I will not touch Origin (EA) and I only have one digital game through Uplay (yuck).

[MagitekAngel]

While it is unfortunate that your optical drive crapped out, in my experience the hard drive is at least as vulnerable - if not more - to failure as the optical drive. Ultimately both are going to fail eventually. That being said, if you could have backups of your backups, then we would be rolling.