Is it finally time to let go of physical games?

jshackles said:
Technically true, but DRM-free games give you most of the same benefits of physical games, short of (legally) selling them. For example, you could copy GOG offline installers to an SD card to make your own physical copy of a game. You can insert that card into any Windows PC (sometimes even as far back as XP), install the game from the card, and play the game.

I'd be FAR more likely to purchase digital games on consoles if I had the freedom to back them up to my own physical medium to ensure I could play them in the future.
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Yeah, i do that myself with GOG, but when Steam and GFWL started dominating in the late 2000's and early 2010's GOG wasn't very big and only had old games back then, so the big AAA games weren't on Disc or GOG, so we didn't have a choice which is why i stated it, i'm glad more games are going on GOG now, but not many brand new ones are.
 
I've got 752 Steam games. According to Co-Pilot I could stack game cases 37 feet high with that. Honestly if they were physical, I probably would have sold or traded most of them after a run through. So much of my gaming time now is replaying old stuff I'm glad I never had that option. I figure if the Steam/Sony/Nintendo servers ever go down we're probably in some kind of crazy collapse and gaming is probably not going to be top of mind. Plus hey, if your favorite gaming platform does screw you over and it's not the apocalypse; you're free. Go outside, learn archery, go to the gym, try out downhill mountain biking. They're probably doing us a favor.
 
Never give up, never give in!

I'll support physical games whenever I see a good one pop up. That said, sadly I see it becoming a novelty. None of the consoles truly support it anymore. It's at the point that it seems like PC is actually the MORE consumer friendly alternative as you have more options to avoid DRM.
 
when certain sites went down it only solidified my want to actually have and own my things. i will forever hold that power as long as i can.

switch 2 i'm even more on board for physicals. nintendo games hold value and not being able to resell $100 games ain't it.
 
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No and yes. There should always be a way to own games without DRM. It's only a matter of time until that isn't a thing. I've been digital only for a decade now so I can live with it but its sad still.
 
PS being competitive with Steam means every PS game needs to be permanently 'owned' by users at the PSN level.
As great as Steam is, PlayStation can be even better by merging Steam's system of 100% digital ownership with physical discs as optional collectible game data repositories.
Steam's games require updates and having "solid-state" games on disc that never require updates provides a powerful advantage to PS as a console.
Physical games definitively peaked with the PS2 - standard PS2 games exist at a quality level above PS3/4/5 special bonus edition boxed games.
Moving forward, physical games could return to the PS2 standard (high quality manual, map, extras) and serve as repos for digital games owned via PSN.
Future PS consoles could easily return to the PS2's user flow* as an optional alternative to the PS home screen.

*CD/DVD/BD user flow. The ability to boot directly into the game on disc, which in this case would be pre-installed on the system.
 
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Since I learned to wait to buy games it became real easy to let go of physical and also enjoy the discounts. ... maybe if I lived in the US were trade-ins are a thing and you have lots of physical stores to buy games I would still be in this boat...

But adding were I live + the confort of just downloading my games it became a no brainer.. I also dont see the point in collecting physical discs.. all in all I really am ok with my digital only life.
 
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Let us have options. Some of you may like the "convenience", and vest enormous amounts of trust in publishers/platform holders not screwing you over digitally, some of us don't.
 
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The only physical games I buy nowadays are imports for games that are only released in Asia. Actually, I'm probably going to stop doing that if they're going to be subjected to tariffs.
 
Nope.

Removing physical games reduces the lifespan of a console from indefinite to around 15 years.

I would rather own a physical copy than get a digital copy. We are talking about £80 games here, not pirated MP3 player files
 
Pretty much. Unless it's an old game on disc ike Star Ocean, what's the point anymore.

And the odd Nintendo game.

Also wish people like Capcom would do proper physical version upgrades instead of new cover + "but download the update". It's shit.
 
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All due respect the younger generations ain't buying houses. They are stuck renting, Having to pack up a whole collection of games just to move rented accommodation seems insane if you ask me.
 
OP ask the question as if there's a choice.

Pretty curious and interested to see how will the physical people will cope with the death of physical format.
 
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I collect only retro games physically, I see zero value in modern physical editions.

Old games are 100% what you get on the disk and they will never change, so I like that. The whole console library is available physically and collectable.
 
If modern gaming becomes digital-only, and if new physical versions of games continue to be slapped onto the market as badly as seems to be the trend right now, I'll go full retro. I'm having a blast with games from the past, and there are more games out there than I could ever possibly play.

There will also always be smaller companies that deliver physical games. Maybe it will become more niche, but that's okay with me. I'm not going to go down the full-price digital license bullshit road.


 
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I'm in the process of switching to digital after being a big physical collector. But it's going to be on PC because it doesn't make any sense doing it on consoles with their walled garden. Steam and GoG are so much more consumer friendly, fully forward compatibel and has good refund policys. I'm still gonna collect physical Switch 1 & 2 games where the game is fully on cart but I'm done with Playstation. Honestly, the only thing that makes sense collecting physical today is movies and books.
 
CuteFaceJay said:
All due respect the younger generations ain't buying houses. They are stuck renting, Having to pack up a whole collection of games just to move rented accommodation seems insane if you ask me.
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Great point when i moved i gave away my entire CD collection 2000+ because it takes up so much space.
Before that i ripped all my CD's and stored them on multiple hard drives, i still have them today, 22 years later.
 
Mr Hyde said:
Honestly, the only thing that makes sense collecting physical today is movies and books.
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Agreed with everything. This will be different for everyone, but for me personally books are the only medium i'm (almost) 100% digital for more then 10 years or so. I had a huge personal library that became overwhelming to keep and had to gradually sell all of these books. Oc i'll always keep some classics i can't live without (Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Kant, Hegel...) but for most new books i'm reading (mostly popular science or political stuff) i'd rather have them on my kindle than laying around somewhere. The only thing that bugs me is the whole notes system, i still prefer a pen to mark important sentences and so on.

Regarding film, the production of physical media seems to be dying here, too. Despite that i recently bought a proper standalone UHD player by Panasonic, i love it. Owning my films feels much better than streaming them in an inferior quality.
 
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Face it though.. discs are going away. Doesn't matter what you want there are too many whiners out there.

Whiners:
- ewaste
- plastics
- tariffs
- air pollution

Pros:
- resell-able
- manchild trophy
 
For consoles I've mostly shifted to digital asides from Nintendo, but I can see the shifting winds over there with the whole Switch 2 game key card thing. All the arguments on both side of the fence are perfectly legit and we've heard them all.

I do feel like, while there is a legit concern with digital libraries and how far into the future they'll carry, it's incumbent on the companies to do their utmost to make consumers feel comfortable leasing digital content. The industry risks crashing in on itself if we get to a point where people lose their content because servers are turned off and re-download options are removed. They've boxed themselves into having to support these libraries into (within reason) perpetuity or face major backlash.

On a personal level, I don't think I've spent over $25 on any digital title. At that price I tend to treat it as one-off money sinks, in the same vein as paying that amount on a movie ticket and popcorn. We've all spent more money on entertainment with no expectation that money is coming back to you in some form. The vast majority of my PS4 PSN libraray was bought under $10. Ditto for Steam, $10-15 is 'eh fuck it' money. I'm not worrying about resale when I barely paid anything to begin with. Now, a $60-70 game? That's the level of money where the tangible benefits of physical ownership( like resale) come into play. I would never, ever, pay anywhere near that for a single digital game.

Ultimately, as long as the internet is around I feel like most of this stuff will always find a way to exist and some device(s) in the future capable of playing them.
 
ShadyAcshuns said:
I've been a collector of physical games for generations, amassing hundreds of them. Always appreciating the feeling of ownership and having that tangible presence of seeing my physical games on the shelves. I loved reading those manuals while sift through prints that usually included hints and colorful displays of the controls.

Sadly, those days are gone forever and we will not be getting them back. The once-convenient features of having physical media are diminishing faster than the blink of an eye. With Nintendo allowing owners to share digital games now, all we have left now over digital is reselling of physical copies. Physical advocates used to champion the fact that those without internet had a way to get games, but now virtually everybody can download games online, and even out in the wild we can use our smartphones to tether with wifi networks to authenticate digital gaming. Physical proponents also used to point to physical games getting massive sales, but that rarely is the case these days, especially with fewer places to actually buy physical games.

With key card cartridges, Blu ray games that require large downloads, what are we doing by holding on to the past when those conveniences have been kicked to the curb? So I ask my fellow physical gamers: is it time to move on, or is there still hope for clutching that plastic copy firmly in our hands until death do us part?
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It was time once ps3/Xbox allowed physical discs to be copied and played off the HDD anyway. There are no more physical games. All you're doing now is either going to the store for said game, or wait for Amazon, then have a piece of clutter that you have to get up every single time to stitch "discs", which is essentially physical DRM with more aggravation.
 
Everytime I go to Best Buy the game section shrinks. It's clearly a decision being made for us.

But, not entirely. Physical media is still a thing with music and movies. People are still releasing and playing tapes and CDs, let alone vinyl which resisted all efforts to kill it in the 1990s. People sitll buy Blu-Ray players. So if you don't want to let go of physical games, don't. If those other media are any guide then the companies will make an effort to accomodate you because you are a person with money who wants to spend it on their product. Companies might make it inconvenient as Sony did with the PS5 Slim or MS did with the Series S but they will do it.
 
diffusionx said:
Everytime I go to Best Buy the game section shrinks. It's clearly a decision being made for us.
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In a sense, they provided the option and the customer over time bit in higher and higher percentages( their end-game, no doubt). If the vast majority still bought physical, those shelves would be running over with physical releases. We ( collectively) told the publishers this is what we wanted but we are definitely, and not so gently, being nudged into accepting digital.

I think where the 'choice is being made for us' comes in the form of no further advancements in physical storage medium. There's no physical mediums I'm aware of( at least one commercially viable for publishers) that will contain all these 120-150gb games coming out. Case in point, the recent Indiana Jones PS5 release requires a download to play in spite of the disc capacity possible on PS5. I was going to purchase a physical copy ( already played it via Gamepass a few months back), but now I've just decided eh, when I decide to buy it will be digital. The whole purpose of me wanting it on PS5 was because I thought they would put the game fully on-disc.

And you see what is happening on the Nintendo side, capping the storage cards at 64gb which doesn't hold most current AAA games, leading to the game key card thing, which will lead alot of people to say 'well at that point, I may as well get it digitally.' And when the market reacts like that in large enough numbers? The key card thing will go away eventually. The publishers are all too happy, practically frothing at the mouth, for when they no longer have to worry about physical distribution. They've probably got a box of tissues and a bottle of lotion on hand already for that day.
 
diffusionx said:
Everytime I go to Best Buy the game section shrinks. It's clearly a decision being made for us.

But, not entirely. Physical media is still a thing with music and movies. People are still releasing and playing tapes and CDs, let alone vinyl which resisted all efforts to kill it in the 1990s. People sitll buy Blu-Ray players. So if you don't want to let go of physical games, don't. If those other media are any guide then the companies will make an effort to accomodate you because you are a person with money who wants to spend it on their product. Companies might make it inconvenient as Sony did with the PS5 Slim or MS did with the Series S but they will do it.
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Totally plan on buying full carts for Switch 2, but those key cards? Nah, might as well go digital. Games like Radou Remastered, I'll just get the Switch version and upgrade digitally as opposed to the key card cartridge they have for Switch 2.

So... kind of a 50/50 situation for me, like a slow transition or something like that.
 
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I always assumed I'd stay physical til I die, but I'm 56 with a collection that goes back to 1991, and I haven't sold/traded anything since probably 1993. I had to move three years ago, for the first time in over 25 years, and cured me of my need for physical real fucking quick. What a god forsaken pain in the ass to lug around a bunch of ancient games I haven't played in decades with zero chance I will ever play them again... unless they're digital re-releases. I've accepted that we live in an online digital world now, whether we like it or not. Go ahead and keep buying physical, you still don't "own" your games. You own a plastic key to access a digital game, and it will be just as useless as a digital license after the publisher kills their server.
 
I was digital only for over a decade with some rare purchases being physical, say the launch of the Switch and imports from Asia. Sold on the convenience and lies about access to our "purchases" over generations helped get people to adopt that lifestyle, but unlike PC consoles absolutely suck ass when it comes to digital pricing. Plus all the years of corpo greed trying to nickel and dime the consumer into oblivion started to turn me off of digital. I don't think hoarding is healthy, but having a selection or even large collection of titles that mean something to you is totally fine.

The current industry is in shambles which means I've only bought a handful of titles recently, all physical save for one. If the next-gen is even worse for physical on PS and Switch 2 continues to disappoint me then I'll just not buy anything and stick with what I've got. My backlog is gargantuan with so many titles I've accumulated over the years, especially digitally that I never touched. I was a good little recurrent spender consumer.

Mr Hyde said:
Honestly, the only thing that makes sense collecting physical today is movies and books.
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I would for the most part agree but add music for those interested or into it. Books are purely physical for me since constant glowing screens mess with my eyes and I don't want the strain. Films are, despite the majority of people being purely streaming or digital purchases, in a great spot boutique-wise. I love the collector's editions, limited set chunky boxes with custom goodies and such like cards, notes and full color books full of information on the film(s) in question. Plus the quality one has over a film physically instead of streaming where the quality fluctuates. People like to say in the future such and such lag, latency and speed+access will be a thing of the past, but I've been hearing that for two decades now. I've spent so much since the autumn of '23 with even more on the way and our collection has exploded into something that friends and family have started waking up to. The amount of great stuff we've missed or never new existed has been such a welcome surprise that films have surpassed most gaming to me. When we want gaming now we usually play something oldschool for the straight to the point action or co-op, or tabletop games.

Its such a bummer what gaming has become man, what a greedy letdown. People might as well go digital and wait for some sale years later. Sorry to be a negative Nancy. Those movies though man, seeing the incredible restoration work done on old film has been a game changer. There've been quite a few that my girl and I could've swore were filmed recently save for the fashion, music and actual quality dialogue and acting.
 
I enjoy having a digital library. I was entirely digital on Wii U. Once my Wii U dies which apparently is any moment, down the drain.

At least most of my older games on Xbox and PS tend to carry over.

They faster we get to all digital the more pressure these companies will face to change how "ownership" works. I hope.
 
I believe if there was some sort of consumer rights law about ownership of digital content, this whole fully going digital would be more readily embraced.

And yes, that needs to be passed via whatever national government of the country you are living in. Let's say you buy a digital product, there should be a mandated national law that the company you bought it from always have to give you access to that digital content for download unless the company goes out of business, provided you can still access your account.

You have companies like Nintendo that shut down their 3ds and WiiU servers that rubs a lot of people the wrong way. And mark my words somewhere down the line they'll probably get rid of their Switch servers too, it might be years from now, but what we know about Nintendo's history, they will shut it down once the Switch isn't a viable product for them to make money anymore.

There needs to be a national law on this.
 
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My last physical game ever was Black ops 2 for PC, but that's only because I forgot to check the box to get the code emailed instead.

If you want to collect physical games, amiboo & funko pops, knock yourself out. I'm not judging.
... That's a lie, I'm totally judging you.
 
For me, physical games have very little utility any longer. I don't share or borrow games. If the servers die and I can't play the game, I guess I'll do something else. I prefer the convenience of buying it digitally. I know the bargain when I buy digitally. I'm cool with it.
 
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