Converting Your Game Collection From Physical to Digital

Celcius

Celcius

°Temp. member
During the ps3 era I was buying mostly physical games and then the next gen I started buying exclusively digital games (except for one or two imports that weren't available locally). I'm in the process of converting my physical library to digital by waiting until a ps3 game goes on sale on Steam or the PlayStation store for cheap and then I buy the digital version and sell my physical copy to reduce my clutter / shelf usage. The ps3 games I already own digitally are totally fine and I keep them but otherwise if there's a new port available on Steam/PS5/PS4 then I make the switch. Eventually I guess I'll get down to a few exclusives like 3d dot game heroes or MGS4 that aren't available on any other platform and then I'll just keep those discs. I wish the ps3 store still had sales as there are a few ps3 exclusives I want to convert to their digital version.

Has anyone else gone through the process of switching to all digital?
 
Last edited:
I was a pure Sony fanboy through the 360 and PS4 gens, so i have all physical games on PS3/PS4/PS5.

I highly suggest grabbing a Series S with an external hard drive and making a bigass wishlist of PS3/360/PS4/XBONE era games, then wait til the new sales drop every week.

Series S because of it's huge backwards compatible digital Library, of course.
 
For console, I still think physical is the way to go. I fear one day my Steam account gets locked, or hacked or something. There goes 500 plus games.
 
on playstation the last disc i bought was in december 2013 just after i got a PS4. so all my playstation library is 100% digital. same for PC obviously and Xbox.

Switch i have some cartridges. at first i was buying all my games physically but recently decided to move some of them over to digital. my rule is if it's a Switch exclusive i'll buy a physical copy and if it's multi platform i'll buy digitally. so games like botw, animal crossing, shin megami tensei v are physical and persona 5, witcher, nier automata are digital.

the most recent one was Persona 5 Strikers. i sold that on ebay and bought it digitally during the sale.

i did think about selling my zelda, ac, smtv, mario, switch sports cartridges and buying digitally but it's too much money to throw away. i'll just keep the cartridges.

whatever nintendos next console is i'm going 100% digital on it.
 
JayK47 said:
For console, I still think physical is the way to go. I fear one day my Steam account gets locked, or hacked or something. There goes 500 plus games.
Click to expand...
don't do anything to break their rules and make sure to set up the authenticator/2fa and you'll be fine.

steam has been around for over 19 years now. there are plenty of people with accounts from then and have no problems. my account is almost 9.
 
I wish there was an actual option you can REALLY convert games to digital if you already have a physical copy. Like back in the day when you were buying a blueray movie on disc and they still pack in a digital code in case you want it digital.
 
SEGA_2012 said:
Never! Physical media forever !
Click to expand...
physical media isn't going to be around forever though.

sony and microsoft are warming people up to a digital future. microsoft put out an all digital xbox one last gen and now has the all digital series s. sony has an all digital ps5 and rumoured to be releasing another all digital console later this year.

i wouldn't be surprised if PS6 has no disc drive at all.

plus think of the money they could make forcing everyone to pay $70-80, having control over sales, and effectively killing off the second hand market.

enjoy your physical discs while you can
 
Another thing I considered was disc rot, scratches, etc… with some disc based games getting pretty old at this point.
 
AeonGaidenRaiden said:
I wish there was an actual option you can REALLY convert games to digital if you already have a physical copy. Like back in the day when you were buying a blueray movie on disc and they still pack in a digital code in case you want it digital.
Click to expand...
that'd be cool but why should they?

why sell two copies for $70 when you can force people to pay $70 twice.

seriously i do agree with you they should include a digital code with any physical game but they aren't your friend and they want your money.

and blu ray movies are different. they are cheaper than games. movies make $ from being in theaters, home media, and streaming. so they can afford to be cheaper and throw in a digital code. games only make money for publishers when they are sold for the first time. doesn't make sense to sell two copies for the price of one.
 
The only physical games I have left are a few PS4 ones that I'm not done with, yet. Once I finish them they'll go on sale, and no more physical games. I also plan on selling all my Blu-Rays and going exclusively to iTunes Movies.

Once the PS5 Slim with no disc drive releases, it will be on my wish list.
 
Celcius said:
Another thing I considered was disc rot, scratches, etc… with some disc based games getting pretty old at this point.
Click to expand...
that is a valid argument. yeah you need to take care of your discs. they can be scratched, cracked, shattered, burned, lost, stolen etc

disc rot is real but i don't know if it's worth worrying about. i'm not sure but i thought it was expected they'd take like 50-100 years (depending on how they are stored) before they rotted.

i have some games from 20+ years ago for my PS1 and they still play fine on my PS2. i have them all backed up just in case though.
 
angrod14 said:
The only physical games I have left are a few PS4 ones that I'm not done with, yet. Once I finish them they'll go on sale, and no more physical games. I also plan on selling all my Blu-Rays and going exclusively to iTunes Movies.

Once the PS5 Slim with no disc drive releases, it will be on my wish list.
Click to expand...
if we're also talking movies then i've been moving to digital as well.

i do still have some blu rays but i got rid of a lot of them recently. at first i thought about replacing them with 4K discs but it was going to be too expensive and anyway i didn't have a 4K player and wouldn't have one unless i got a console.

so i decided to just start buying movies digitally. no need to worry about getting a player and digital is much cheaper. i recently bought the 4K set of Harry Potter for £35. physical box set is £60. i also got the LOTR extended set. can't remember what i paid but it's definitely not as much as what the discs cost.

i'm buying them all through Apple TV/iTunes. they seem to have the highest quality.
 
nightmare-slain said:
if we're also talking movies then i've been moving to digital as well.

i do still have some blu rays but i got rid of a lot of them recently. at first i thought about replacing them with 4K discs but it was going to be too expensive and anyway i didn't have a 4K player and wouldn't have one unless i got a console.

so i decided to just start buying movies digitally. no need to worry about getting a player and digital is much cheaper. i recently bought the 4K set of Harry Potter for £35. physical box set is £60. i also got the LOTR extended set. can't remember what i paid but it's definitely not as much as what the discs cost.

i'm buying them all through Apple TV/iTunes. they seem to have the highest quality.
Click to expand...
The whole "4K Blu-Ray" format release was -ironically- the thing that made me quit physical movies. I spent years carefully curating a BD collection that is now being treated as obsolete because a new format is on the market. They pretend people to repurchase the same movies again in the new hot format. Someday 8K will apear and the process will repeat, and so on, so on. I'm not getting into that money pit.

It has always been like this. First VHS got surpasssed by DVDs, then Blu-rays, now 4K Blu-rays, etc. Meanwhile, the HD movies I purchased on iTunes got automatically upgraded to 4K, with no aditional cost. And I can bet my ass that when 8K streaming becomes a thing, they will be upgraded to that too.

I know it technically doesn't have the same quality as a 4K disc, but it gets really, really close, and it's only getting better:

 
I'm actually in the process of doing the absolute opposite OP and it's the most fun I've had related to gaming in years.

The adrenaline of getting a great bargain, the joys of opening the cases and reading the manuals, the nostalgia of picking up games from your childhood and all the memories flooding back, the feeling of accomplishment seeing all my favourite games stacked nicely upon shelves within my room. It just feels so much more satisfying than seeing all the games on a list of "My Games" on a screen within my Steam or PSN account.

I'm not banning Digital from my life, I love digital and it has it's pros for sure! But right now I'm falling back in love with having everything physical, and it's resparked my love for gaming when all seemed hopeless.
 
Last edited:
Celcius said:
During the ps3 era I was buying mostly physical games and then the next gen I started buying exclusively digital games (except for one or two imports that weren't available locally). I'm in the process of converting my physical library to digital by waiting until a ps3 game goes on sale on Steam or the PlayStation store for cheap and then I buy the digital version and sell my physical copy to reduce my clutter / shelf usage. The ps3 games I already own digitally are totally fine and I keep them but otherwise if there's a new port available on Steam/PS5/PS4 then I make the switch. Eventually I guess I'll get down to a few exclusives like 3d dot game heroes or MGS4 that aren't available on any other platform and then I'll just keep those discs. I wish the ps3 store still had sales as there are a few ps3 exclusives I want to convert to their digital version.

Has anyone else gone through the process of switching to all digital?
Click to expand...


I did as much as possible on the PS3. It's a bummer they only have 1 of 3 though for the Motorstorm and Resistance series.
 
I went all digital back in 2012, haven't regretted it even once. Just so much less clutter and bullshit around, and far more convenient.
 
Celcius said:
Another thing I considered was disc rot, scratches, etc… with some disc based games getting pretty old at this point.
Click to expand...
I've been a big physical-only proponent for a while now, but this is my biggest fear, especially for my 90's game systems. I haven't seen any disc rot so far (knock on wood). I think my luck mostly has to do with the fact that I live in a dry climate 4,000 feet above sea level, and my game collection is in my basement. Even without the threat of high humidity, I know it's just a matter of time before the discs become unusable. It gives me some hope that I have music CDs from the 80's which still work perfectly, but then I've heard that game discs were not well manufactured and are more susceptible to disc rot and data corruption.
Anyway, I've been looking into Terraonion and other mods for these old consoles to get all the games onto one hard drive so I'm not 100% dependent on the discs. There are some cons to that as well, but still a very promising solution.
 
I went full digital at the beginning of the PS4 and Xbox One era. I then got so accustomed to the convenience that I took my entire collection to GameStop and traded it all in for cards to use on their digital sales. I replaced most of my PS3 titles and all of the 360 ones…especially when 360 was my primary console that I played.
I'm glad I did this as the backwards compatibility updates were coming out and it was like Christmas each month!
 
Celcius said:
Another thing I considered was disc rot, scratches, etc… with some disc based games getting pretty old at this point.
Click to expand...
Disc rot is what made me switch to digital only late in the 360/PS3 era. Been full digital ever since, with 2FA enabled so I don't need to fear having my account stolen.

I sold a lot of my older games, and used that money to buy older digital releases as they went on sale.

There's no simple path unfortunately. The best time to get started is now. Over time, your library will grow. Just watch for sales.
 
AeonGaidenRaiden said:
I wish there was an actual option you can REALLY convert games to digital if you already have a physical copy. Like back in the day when you were buying a blueray movie on disc and they still pack in a digital code in case you want it digital.
Click to expand...
Back in the day?

They still offer this. Almost all the 4K Blu-Rays I buy contain digital codes.
 
Quasicat said:
I went full digital at the beginning of the PS4 and Xbox One era. I then got so accustomed to the convenience that I took my entire collection to GameStop and traded it all in for cards to use on their digital sales. I replaced most of my PS3 titles and all of the 360 ones…especially when 360 was my primary console that I played.
I'm glad I did this as the backwards compatibility updates were coming out and it was like Christmas each month!
Click to expand...
I am jealous. Mortal Kombat (2011) is backwards compatible on Xbox, but it was delisted. I wish I had the forethought to do so. Having the physical disk is okay, but digital is the way to go.

To the OP's point, I did go digital for the games that I was playing on the XB360 that also had XB1 versions, like Destiny and TitanFall. Now I sortof do the opposite. I buy everything I play digitally and buy the physical versions to leave unopened on my shelf just for the look and to double dip/support the games I like best.
 
Corporations like sony and microsoft would love if you all go full digital. Then they'd be able to dictate the prices as they please in their walled gardens. One example: I picked up diablo 3 eternal evil edition as a physical copy for 11 bucks 3 years ago. Right now, it's "on sale" on the xbox store for 20 bucks. Only digital = higher game prices.
 
Last edited:
NEVER.

I prefer to own my games.
Cool Cat Deal With It GIF by sheepfilms
 
Celcius said:
During the ps3 era I was buying mostly physical games and then the next gen I started buying exclusively digital games (except for one or two imports that weren't available locally). I'm in the process of converting my physical library to digital by waiting until a ps3 game goes on sale on Steam or the PlayStation store for cheap and then I buy the digital version and sell my physical copy to reduce my clutter / shelf usage. The ps3 games I already own digitally are totally fine and I keep them but otherwise if there's a new port available on Steam/PS5/PS4 then I make the switch. Eventually I guess I'll get down to a few exclusives like 3d dot game heroes or MGS4 that aren't available on any other platform and then I'll just keep those discs. I wish the ps3 store still had sales as there are a few ps3 exclusives I want to convert to their digital version.

Has anyone else gone through the process of switching to all digital?
Click to expand...
I haven't done so deliberately....well, lately anyway....I was kinda thinking of going digital and just buying physical copies of games that I have been following for ages when they are on sale but I never got around to actually buying the physical on sale so...I guess F for effort lol
 
Last edited:
I also did this back in late PS3 era. I waited until my games were on sale on ps store, prob around 60-70%, i sold my physical copies at local store, and bought PSN wallet codes from the same store. Then i digitally bought the same games and there were some euros left in wallet, too.
Best transaction i still remember was when i gave a physical copy of tekken 6 for 19 euros and the digital price was 5 🤘
 
Last edited:
All digital since the end of the PS360 generation.
Dead Space 3 was the last xbox game on disk.
Ratchet and Clank all 4 One was the last PS game on disk.
Diablo 3 was the last PC game on disk.
The 3DS Is actually the last machine I buy cartridges for.
The Switch has been all digital.

I would like to trade in my disk collection for digital codes. I have a sizable collection that I used to have on shelves but have since had to box them up out of sight.
 
Went fully digital about a year or 2 before the PS5 came out on PS and been fully digital on PC since 2014.

I no longer have a Switch but was fully digital on that as well, my 512gb SD card now lives in my 512gb Steam Deck so I have double storage.
 
Two words for me: never digital

I do own digital games. But these are the free ones or that were extremely cheap during black friday, holidays etc
 
I've been 100 percent digital since the release of xbox one.

I see no reason for physical release. They can potentially be damaged and with digital then me and my Gf can play the games at the same time at the cost of one game.

Wish I did the same with Xbox 360 because I want overlord but it's no longer available on the store and it's hard to find in my area I hate physical so much because of that tbh.

Been 100 percent digital on pc since steam store launched but thays because the market has changed to that.
 
I bought most of my games on PS4 digital, but then I realised I can save money AND sell them if I buy them physical. Most games are cheaper physical and/or used so I'm going back to physical this year. Don't need the games sitting on a shelf collecting dust once I pltinumed them…
 
Meicyn said:
Disc rot is what made me switch to digital only late in the 360/PS3 era. Been full digital ever since, with 2FA enabled so I don't need to fear having my account stolen.

I sold a lot of my older games, and used that money to buy older digital releases as they went on sale.

There's no simple path unfortunately. The best time to get started is now. Over time, your library will grow. Just watch for sales.
Click to expand...
Disc rot 😂

There's CDs from the 80s that are still intact and operate just fine. Time eventually catches up to all things, sure, but it's kinda weird to act like you're worried about this issue when it's kind of a self imposed one.
 
I did it during PS4. Same as you said: purchasing the digital version in offers and selling then the physical copy.

Problem with that is now my digital versions of Bloodborne, God of War and other show the ugly red banner of "Playstation Hits" in the PS4/PS5 library. And I hate that, because it doesn't have sense in digital.
 
If anything past consoles have taught us is that cart based consoles will seemingly last forever - you might need to replace a capacitor or two.
But cd/disc based consoles will eventually fail. The precision moving parts and all that just are not built to last.
My gamecube laser died and I take immaculate care of my collection.
Some might say: 'replace the cd drive'. Good luck finding functional cd drives for these specific consoles 20 years down the road.

For modern consoles (outside of switch), I switched to digital in the tail end of the PS360 era - buying digital stuff when they went on sale - many for $2-5 bucks. I remember buying stuff like Metal Gear Revengenace and Binairy Domain for 3 bucks.

Then of course - someone, somehow will figure out how to make optical disc emulators for all of these consoles in due time.
 
Last edited:
NeoGAF is split in two, regarding the decision between digital or physical games.
To those buying physical games, where do you find the space ?
I own around 1000 games on PS ecosystem, around 300 games on PC (Steam/Epic), around 150 games on Switch (digital all). I ve also gone full digital on music (Spotify mainly).
I live in 80 sqm with wife and honestly cant imagine where i would put all that
 
I did this back when I switched over to PC. Traded/sold off physical console copies, while buying a discounted PC copy.

I still do it today as I'm slowly replacing my PS4 games as they arrive on PC.
 
SumJester said:
Those who think disc rot will set in quicker than server shutdown for cost saving are just fools
Click to expand...
My copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga disc 2 with disc rot says hello. I literally cannot get my Sega Saturn to recognize the disc because there are tiny pinholes that appeared. Disc rot also occurred on my copy of Sonic 3D Blast.

I guess I should just go buy another copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga off ebay for $900.

I don't know why this is even a discussion anyways, who the fuck are you to dictate to me or anyone else how we should purchase games, digital or otherwise.
 
Last edited:
Meicyn said:
My copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga disc 2 with disc rot says hello. I literally cannot get my Sega Saturn to recognize the disc because there are tiny pinholes that appeared. Disc rot also occurred on my copy of Sonic 3D Blast.

I guess I should just go buy another copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga off ebay for $900.

I don't know why this is even a discussion anyways, who the fuck are you to dictate to me or anyone else how we should purchase games, digital or otherwise.
Click to expand...
This is in terms of lifetime, you basically picked a game from a non-digital era with no legal digital equivalent. What the hell are you hopping to achieve?
And who's even forcing your hand in the first place on your choice besides yourself?
 
Last edited:
Meicyn said:
Meicyn said:
hey google what is disc rot

Disc rot - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org

oh
Click to expand...
Click to expand...


Still doesn't change it's something that's mostly overplayed. Feel free, enjoy your digital collection it's kind of a joke to imply that suddenly some phenomenon (it's not) that's going to destroy every single piece of disc based media. The reality is it might happen, it might not but it's still a safer bet than trust all your collection into companies that can at a moments notice cut off access to stuff you paid for.
 
Last edited:
angrod14 said:
The whole "4K Blu-Ray" format release was -ironically- the thing that made me quit physical movies. I spent years carefully curating a BD collection that is now being treated as obsolete because a new format is on the market. They pretend people to repurchase the same movies again in the new hot format. Someday 8K will apear and the process will repeat, and so on, so on. I'm not getting into that money pit.

It has always been like this. First VHS got surpasssed by DVDs, then Blu-rays, now 4K Blu-rays, etc. Meanwhile, the HD movies I purchased on iTunes got automatically upgraded to 4K, with no aditional cost. And I can bet my ass that when 8K streaming becomes a thing, they will be upgraded to that too.

I know it technically doesn't have the same quality as a 4K disc, but it gets really, really close, and it's only getting better:

Click to expand...

This is somewhat good advice. Unless you're a horror movie fan. Most horror movies never made it to dvd let alone 4k. So physical is worth it for horror movies.
 
other than gifts I've been 100% digital since start of Xbox One generation, but I don't know if I'd ever go through the hassle/cost of turning my 360/PS3 physical games into digital outside of remasters/remakes
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Disc rot already affects your physical game collection
2 3
107
6K
ArtHands replied
How big is your current gen physical collection?
2
95
1K
AutomaticPrince replied
  • Poll
Some Nintendo Switch 2 Physical and Digital Games Will be Priced at $80, what's your opinion?
Community  4 5 6 7 8
393
15K
Project EVE replied
[Gematsu] Switch 2 game preorders in Japan reveal that all physical 3rd party games are Digital Game Keys (Except Cyberpunk 2077)
News  2 3
149
501
Beechos replied
  • Poll
Do you consider your games (digital and physical) and hardware (consoles, peripherals) an investment?
Poll 
46
2K
WoJ replied
Top Bottom