A local gaming expert is warning of the changing landscape of media and its possible effects.<\/p>\n
Garreth McGrath, VP of Sandbox Gaming, is sounding the alarm following an announcement from Sony revealing its intention to stop creating physical discs for games and to focus solely on digital media. According to McGrath, there are more cons than pros.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they remove the ability for physical game sales, it\u2019s essentially creating a digital monopoly for these companies so, Sony and Microsoft are going to be in a position where what they say goes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking to VOCM Open Line\u2019s Brian Callahan, McGrath warned of the end of game-sharing \u2013 a practice whereby individuals trade discs through friends, or rent games at a store or library. By ensuring the only copies of your game are digital, it would have to be purchased new in order to be played. Not only does this limit the kinds of ways that people may play, but it could completely kill second-hand games.<\/p>\n
On top of that, licenses can be revoked \u2013 and that\u2019s something that\u2019s already been seen on streaming services. <\/p>\n
\u201cSony is partnered with the production company and the distribution company StudioCanal,\u201d McGrath says \u201c\u2026and recently StudioCanal pulled their licenses from Sony and, as part of that, everyone who bought a movie at StudioCanal, where the license was for, got a notification on the PlayStation saying that you don\u2019t have a license to this anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is a silver lining, according to McGrath \u2013 not all gaming companies are following the same path. Many companies, including Nintendo, have so far committed to continue making physical cartridges for the time being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A local gaming expert is warning of the changing landscape of media and its possible effects. Garreth McGrath,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":826982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,269876,185074,269873,269875,269877,269874,61,269870,269871,269872],"class_list":["post-826981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-listen-to-vocm","tag-news-radio","tag-news-radio-st-johns","tag-st-johns-fm-radio","tag-st-johns-local-radio","tag-st-johns-radio-station","tag-technology","tag-vocm","tag-vocm-590","tag-vocm-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}