I could never possibly justify paying full-price for the same game twice, however I would personally be highly motivated to pay a small upcharge to own a game both physically and digitally.
My reasoning is; I like owning games I like. I may want to play it 10+ years down the road, when the digital marketplace may have shutdown. At the same time, in the here and now, digital games are much more convenient, and are probably more lucrative for paid content.
I’m not sure what the most elegant solution would be. Maybe the physical edition could come with “deluxe edition items” or paid DLC expansions in advance, that also grant access to the full digital copy of a game? There’s an obvious risk that someone will just sell the disc or code separately, I suppose.
But for my part, I could totally see paying an extra $10-15 for both versions. I have, on rare occasion, purchased the other version of a game much later on sale, but definitely far less likely.
Publishers may run some amount of risk with a strategy like this, but part of me wonders how sales would factor out in the end? Particularly as part of a Collector’s Edition or something. I would almost wonder if it would be a worthwhile endeavor for publishers to sell physical copies of games ala carte, given a couple of shops do so to produce retro reproductions or even homebrew that plays on official hardware.
In any case, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m finding myself much more inclined to go physical for games that I like, and it seems like there would be some kind of happy medium then would benefit devs and publishers as well.
My reasoning is; I like owning games I like. I may want to play it 10+ years down the road, when the digital marketplace may have shutdown. At the same time, in the here and now, digital games are much more convenient, and are probably more lucrative for paid content.
I’m not sure what the most elegant solution would be. Maybe the physical edition could come with “deluxe edition items” or paid DLC expansions in advance, that also grant access to the full digital copy of a game? There’s an obvious risk that someone will just sell the disc or code separately, I suppose.
But for my part, I could totally see paying an extra $10-15 for both versions. I have, on rare occasion, purchased the other version of a game much later on sale, but definitely far less likely.
Publishers may run some amount of risk with a strategy like this, but part of me wonders how sales would factor out in the end? Particularly as part of a Collector’s Edition or something. I would almost wonder if it would be a worthwhile endeavor for publishers to sell physical copies of games ala carte, given a couple of shops do so to produce retro reproductions or even homebrew that plays on official hardware.
In any case, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m finding myself much more inclined to go physical for games that I like, and it seems like there would be some kind of happy medium then would benefit devs and publishers as well.
