this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
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I mean, except it's not a conspiracy. The death of physical media is an actual tragedy because digital media is nowhere near as free.
It's to the point where much of the media I love is actually not available legally and officially for physical ownership, in some cases becoming actual lost media physically, and not available for purchase or even download anymore.
Companies absolutely want to control the consumption of media in more restrictive ways that they can control, it's not a conspiracy, it's the actual truth.
DRM, always online, digital only, subscription services - they are all designed to remove you further and further from being an owner.
Everything from video games, music, movies...all entertainment media is moving in this direction and it's an actual tragedy.
Or... they're stopping production because there's very little demand. Nah, that can't be it.
If you think the demand isn't there, you're out of touch. It's certainly true that many consumers are choosing digital content, but it's largely driven by it not having inconvenienced them so far too.
Everyone I'm seeing who lost the 3DS and Wii U stores, or lost access to all the games in their account, or even people who purchased media they can't download and access again is realizing how big this problem is.
I found 8 brands of DVD±R discs—none of them Sony—before I stopped counting. If you think one company stopping production is going to stop people from using physical media, or that demand hasn't been falling for years, YOU are the one who's badly out of touch.
Let me spell it out for you: as long as there is demand, someone will find a way to make money filling it. No company, no matter how evil it is, can remove a product category from the market just by leaving the market. Suggesting that a company choosing to stop making a commodity product is an attempt to prevent you from having access to said product is nonsense no matter what company and product you're talking about, because such a plan could never work.
How many headphone jacks do you see today? All it takes is one big player, and adoption can fall just like that.
And yet you can still buy phones with headphone jacks. Because there is demand for them. The reason you didn't see many is because the demand is a lot less than what Lemmy users would have you believe.
But adoption has fallen so significantly that you have to rely on listicles to find what you're looking for. The same could very easily and quickly happen with optical discs, and if I may be afforded an anecdote, I've seen exactly one optical disc brand in the last decade (Verbatim). And that's when shops have them available, which is extremely rare nowadays.
They might not go away completely, but just like with headphone jacks on phones, you'll have to scrounge for them. Same with if you want a display that's less than 6", or a physical keyboard. (Or a floppy disk...!)