Tao said the company plans to “minimize the impact” of rising memory costs by focusing on “monetizing the installed base” and growing software and network services revenue.

Maybe something lost in translation but that sure sounds like gouging existing customers to me.

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[–] 86 points 5 months ago (1 child)

gouging is exactly what they plan to do, will do, and will continue to do until people start realizing how broke they really are, and CANCELLING ALL subscriptions for everything. rent nothing, Subscribe to nothing. take your money back

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  • [–] 18 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I agree in principle but "rent nothing" is an absolute that millions of people without the down payment for a house cannot get behind.

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  • [–] 10 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    The thing is that a lot of companies are pursuing this model, rent everything and people own nothing. All TV, movie, and music streaming is a replacement for physical media, gaming services have been headed this way for years, even cars are headed down this path. All big companies have their hands in consumers pockets and are competing for those subscription $$$.

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  • [–] 37 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    Good that their bootROM keys weren't leaked or anything like that. Would be a REAL shame if a jailbreak came out.

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  • [+] 22 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)
    [–] 21 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Seen someone else comment it...

    What if AI is being used as either a scapegoat or the excuse for the "you will nothing and ne happy" thing?

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  • [–] 20 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Lots of people are suggesting that, and the shoe fits.

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  • [+] -10 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Ah yes all the tech companies in the world are conspiring together sure sure

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  • [–] 19 points 5 months ago

    It doesn't even need to be all the tech companies, only a handful of very large companies have a stranglehold on this technology, and corporations conspire on shit like this all the fucking time. Its not even remotely a stretch to think that.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago

    More like a plan B but it‘s an inevitable consequence from the AI bubble and the general tech boom. All the money is in companies and companies have all the money so they have to shuffle it around to increase profits. Even if it‘s just on paper.

    We, the normal consumers aren‘t interesting to tech giants anymore because we‘ve been utterly wrung out already. The only thing we‘re good for at this point is hustling in a never ending subscription hell in total dependency.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago

    I have a different conspiracy theory.

    I think they're planning on the reduced human population that's already underway in America.

    See, the boomer generation at it's peak was bigger than Gen-X, the millenials, and Gen-Z combined. But, people die. And the youngest boomers are 70 years old.

    The next 30 years will see a massive population collapse, and we've already entered the collapse of the work force of that generation.

    Which means for the next 30 years, everybody else is paying for the boomers social security. But when it comes time for our time on retirement, we're not going to have the same support they did. Boomers will be dead, Gen Z is statistically having less kids (and I get why, but it still means less social security income).

    So their plan is to regulate all the work to AI, and take all the profits. The problem is, it's a really stupid plan. It doesn't matter how advanced AI is. It will never fully replace humans. Which means the concept of work will always need to exist. And the end result is, I think they're preparing to figure out how to get AI to do enough of the jobs, and then enslave the people to do the rest.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago*

    It’s absolutely both.

    Fucking gaming, forget gaming for a second. That is small potatoes.

    Imagine if you will, all businesses and citizens storing their documents, photos, schedules, calendars, emails, contacts, social graphs in the cloud. We’ve know how toxic monetization of social media profiling has been, but again forget that, small potatoes.

    Business move their storage to the cloud. Hundreds of thousands of AI agents scour over and summarize all of that data - not the LLMs designed to dazzle the public but purpose-built ML models designed to analyze financial reports, engineering whitepapers, patent applications, mission statements, insider information. You can see markets move in real time. You can gauge who is going to beat you and who is going to crash and burn before they do. You can see where the dark money is coming from - whether it’s on your side or not. You can discern where opposing political messaging is reaching people, and dissect how they’re interacting with it. You can hold all of society hostage.

    Cameras move their storage to the cloud. Hospital systems. Cars beam constant telemetry. There’s nowhere to hide, it’s a constant prison and if you even appear to be getting out of line, it’s over for you.

    We’re not there yet but this is what they’re building. Trump is mad that America broke up his pedo ring and his revenge is putting us all in a demented techno prison.

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  • [–] 19 points 5 months ago

    You should read "Increase PS Plus prices"

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  • [–] 18 points 5 months ago

    Oh man, for some reason I thought the title was going to end with:

    by boosting software and network service efficiency.

    Of course, they're just talking about offsetting the costs, not actually about reducing them. 🫠

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    ...by monetising the installed (user) base...

    I assume PlayStation users have higher prices for games and subscription services to look forward to. Probably even "ad-supported" tiers, if they don't already have them.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    PS+ is an expensive fucking joke compared to what you get on Gamepass, last I recall. They’re already overpriced.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    When on sale, it’s about $100 for a year of access to a general library of games. Xbox Game Pass never goes on sale, costs at least $15 a month now, and doesn’t even have many of the singleplayer exclusives Sony puts out. So this comment seemed completely the wrong way around to me.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Oh, I didn’t know it had developed into that. Last I dealt with Sony a few years ago they wanted $60/year for multiplayer access only (plus the two shovelware games a month, but come on) and like $170/year for the full suite which had maybe a few games that I wanted to play, but they dropped all the Konami titles. I guess they’re on par now for shittiness — good to know.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago*

    Ps plus on ps3 gave decent games, I bought like 2 while I had it. Saints row 2, starhawk, mirrors edge, etc. were all ps plus titles. When it became a requirement for ps4 it became worse but still had some gems like rocket league at launch. (Loved the predecessor supersonicacrobaticrocketpoweredbattlecars splitscreen on ps3, would go on sale for like a dollar)

    Ps5 era has kinda sucked tho.

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  • [–] 13 points 5 months ago

    They stole our data to build it. Now they want to charge us to invest in it. The audacity of the billionaire has no bounds.

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  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago

    So games and PS+ are going to go up in price?

    Fuck that.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago

    I've been thinking of canceling PS+ anyway. I've had it since PS3, but I don't play on PS5 much anymore and the only reason I've kept it is my son occasionally plays the PS5.

    Sony just gave me a good reason to cancel.

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  • [+] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)
    [–] 6 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Sony had patented streaming game assets on the fly to reduce hardware space in the past few times. I don't know how it goes but those "bought and owned" titles can also be trapped deep in subscription ecosystem.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I mean I can see it now on the game cases, in fine print: "requires constant Internet access and a current PlayStation network subscription".

    And then we'll all be saying we thought Nintendo's game-key cards were bad.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago*

    What's extra lame is that if I pay for the multiplayer game, I have to subscribe to the service to play the game.

    But if I get a multiplayer game that is FREE TO PLAY, I don't need the subscription to play it.

    That is fucking bullshit and, if anything, should be reversed.

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  • [+] 5 points 5 months ago*
    [–] 5 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I'm sitting on a vast library of games I barely touched - as well as classics I return to even after 20+ years.

    I don't need to buy your shit. But you need me to buy it.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I mean you could just take the loss? But I guess shareholders wouldn't be happy about that.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Sounds like they are taking the loss. Subsidizing the increased cost of production with funds from online subscriptions...

    Let's talking about how much of a joke it is that consoles need an additional subscription to go online.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Good, until I can still play offline without issues.

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