Digital only really got popular on consoles towards the end of last gen and that doesn't compare to how big it is now, so it's never really been much of a factor.
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It's becoming clear that in the Xbox ecosystem that physical discs is increasingly becoming an inconvenience.
- Thread starter 12Danny123
- Start date
Does your vita still download and play all of those digital PSP games you own?
And if you ever want to replay KH3? Now you have to hunt it down like a caveman while at the most I just download it if its not already on my hard drive. You can also let your friends "borrow" your digital games. Just sign into their system and download the game and unlike "physical games" the people you let borrow it cant forget to give it back or steal it. The only advantage of physical games is being able to return a game you beat but I never really did that after the beginning of last gen. Your house is probably cluttered with game cases
True, but increased energy usage versus plastic trash filling rivers and oceans seems lesser evil to me. Solar and fission energy will solve increased energy usage problems in the future. But all unnecessary plastic usage needs to seriously go away for good.
How about giving up on plastic shit? Yeah, environmental stuff is important for some us. I'm voting on all digital future as hard as I can. Music and movies are already there, it's just a matter of time for games.
Pretty sure it does.
For me it's that I don't want a house filled with plastic junk. We keep a very minimal style.
I switched to all digital this generation and will never regret. I don't have physical space anymore for discs and like the convenience of direct access to everything. Also Xbox makes my games easily accessible anywhere if I carry my HDD with me or not.
Coming from steam digital on Xbox was a no brainer for me I like to do jack ass things like buy a 8 tb drive just to see how many games I can fit on there so far I got 278 digital games downloaded including the 1tb Xbox one x drive I got damn near all of Gamepass and most of EA Access and still got 4.7 TB's left
If I ever want to replay it at a later time I can go online to any etailer and just buy it at a massively discounted price with next day free shipping. But I generally tend to keep the games I think I'll replay more often. There's still a cost saving as physical copies are usually a fair amount cheaper than digital copies in the first place (on average £35-£40 vs £50-£55).
And I don't know what sort of friends or family you have, but I've never had any game stolen from any of them, and unlike with downloads which take several hours to download on my connection, with disc versions I'm usually ready to play in a matter of minutes (though Xbox One installs take ages), hence sometimes I'll delete games from my HDD to make space, mostly because I have the disc version and know the install won't be as long as the download if or when I need to re-install in future.
I also don't look at my video game and Blu Ray shelf as clutter, rather an awesome looking tidy collection of actual tactile products.
There is a bit of culture too, I feel like americans have more of "collectors culture". Maybe it has something to do with housing...
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Nope, I use mostly Spotify and purchased Digital, but I get through orders of magnitude more music than I do video games (thousands of songs a year vs only 10-20 or so games a year), and the file sizes are orders of magnitude different too, which affects both storage and download time.
I am 100% physical for the resales. I've saved a TON of money over the years by selling or trading my old games.
Digital doesn't even have a price advantage. In fact, in many cases, digital has a price disadvantage as retailers offer pre-order discounts here that are pretty aggressive.
Digital doesn't even have a price advantage. In fact, in many cases, digital has a price disadvantage as retailers offer pre-order discounts here that are pretty aggressive.
Kind of is an inconvenience. It's kind of a leap that gaming needs to take in the same way most computer did. I haven't been physical for PC gaming in over 10 years. They're not going to completely do away with physical because a lot of emerging markets don't have the infrastructure or costs to go fully digital but it would be a great option to not have it for users who do have better infrastructure. Physical games are about as expensive as digital where I live, there's very little resell value due to location and most of all my PS4 drive is acting up constantly ejecting the disk so the 2-3 games I bought in a bundle at launch which were physical don't work properly. Meanwhile my digital games have absolutely no issues so it's not like physical is without downsides. My internet isn't that great. It takes around 12 hrs to download a 50GB game but with pre-loading options, standby downloads,it helps alleviate the problem of waiting. Most games are becoming service/online/F2P games (literally the largest games on any platform) and digital purchases have accelerated tremendously this generation on consoles so it's not a minority as people might think even on consoles.
the internet infrastructure isn't there yet to go all-digital for a lot of people so an all-digital future isn't that close (though not as far away as the all-streaming future)
Until I can rent physical non-streaming games, or until I can sell them back when I'm done with them, I'm going to stick with mostly physical.
The problem I have with a digital-only console is that you take a one-time discount to forgo many discounts over the long term. It simply does not seem logical to save $50-100 now to permanently lock myself out of the option for physical media, twice as much since you give up movies as well.
I could only see this being a viable option (at least as long as physical media is still popular), is to first offer a much larger hard drive, and maybe even some sort of store discount to owners of that console.
I could only see this being a viable option (at least as long as physical media is still popular), is to first offer a much larger hard drive, and maybe even some sort of store discount to owners of that console.
I don't know why people don't factor the variable pricing of digital store currency cards. I recently bought a ton of Xbox store credit for 20% off. That has allowed for some great deals when combined with sales.
It is quite possible to save with digital games, once you know how to do it.
Spot on. This is probably the main reason why I won't go digital. I'd also be nervous of your old libraries becoming unavailable in the future. I can still play retro games on my retro consoles today because they are physical and I control them fully. But if I go digital only today, will Sony still allow me access to my PS4 library when they are up to PS8 or PS9?
Halo 3 was the first time it had issues, but Halo 4 was the one that I couldn't play because of consistent problems. Optical drives should be for 4K Blu-ray and nothing else imo, too many moving parts.
Disc rot will most likely prevent you from playing your PS4 discs in the 25 - 30 years your are positing in this example.
I finally transitioned to fully digital on the Xbox side of the house. It just felt ultimately... weird... to keep buying something that was essentially in Install-Disc in 2019. Getting ready to move to all Digital on PS4 as well.
In the end, the one that's still a hold out is the Switch due to those carts actually running the game, not just installing them. That and the cases are aesthetically pleasing as hell.
In the end, the one that's still a hold out is the Switch due to those carts actually running the game, not just installing them. That and the cases are aesthetically pleasing as hell.
Almost 100% physical here, I only buy digital if there is a significant sale (50% upwards) or its a digital release only.
I like to keep the flexibility of selling the game whenever I want to.
And in most cases, I am actually paying lesser for a physical disc compared to a digital version, usually its <$5-10 cheaper for day 1 releases if I preorder early. Its not a big amount but it adds up especially if you buy tons of games.
If digital games were cheaper than physical, say maybe 20-30%, maybe I'll bite. But until then, no thanks.
I like to keep the flexibility of selling the game whenever I want to.
And in most cases, I am actually paying lesser for a physical disc compared to a digital version, usually its <$5-10 cheaper for day 1 releases if I preorder early. Its not a big amount but it adds up especially if you buy tons of games.
If digital games were cheaper than physical, say maybe 20-30%, maybe I'll bite. But until then, no thanks.
I can get $5 to $10 off a $60 purchase almost anytime, without preordering by buying currency cards on sale.
copied from my twitter,
Watching the NFL superbowl game 2020, Halftime commerical comes up, its Halo Inifite, shows awesome level. commercial says, with Xcloud, play that level right now, just hit 'A', *only on Xcloud compatible devices* I can play that level instantly. thats next gen, thats high-tech.
thats where we are headed, its going to be great..
Watching the NFL superbowl game 2020, Halftime commerical comes up, its Halo Inifite, shows awesome level. commercial says, with Xcloud, play that level right now, just hit 'A', *only on Xcloud compatible devices* I can play that level instantly. thats next gen, thats high-tech.
thats where we are headed, its going to be great..
Nothing wrong with this, as long as they continue to have hardware that allows physical copies to be an option until we've reached the point where they are no longer viable.
To add to that, I think streaming will bring back demos in the fashion as devs can just have you try one of the better set pieces in their game. To take it further what if the service holders just made a collection of the best levels of all their games and you only played those as a single "experience"... #welcometothefuture
I hoarded all my discs for OG Xbox and was handsomely rewarded a decade later.
Yet I still think discs are dinosaurs. I have a bunch of old physical media for PC. Can't use any of it. Not without more work than the games are worth anyway. I don't even own a physical drive if I could.
We never touch the vast majority of the stuff we hang onto, be it games or books or clothes or whatever. And I'm far more likely to replay an old game when it pops up in a humble bundle or a Game pass and I needn't bother locating things. Plus it's a waste of physical resources in production, packaging, shipping, etc. for no point.
Yet I still think discs are dinosaurs. I have a bunch of old physical media for PC. Can't use any of it. Not without more work than the games are worth anyway. I don't even own a physical drive if I could.
We never touch the vast majority of the stuff we hang onto, be it games or books or clothes or whatever. And I'm far more likely to replay an old game when it pops up in a humble bundle or a Game pass and I needn't bother locating things. Plus it's a waste of physical resources in production, packaging, shipping, etc. for no point.
Digital only hurts the bottom half of the gaming ecosystem especially if steam like sales aren't a thing on consoles. Digital only is expensive. Like I personally don't care but back in the day physical allowed for resale or buying used which saved me money. Kids and teens can't afford $60 games all the time.
Maybe regional differences. I stay in Singapore, for us staying in South East Asia, physical prices are almost always cheaper compared to digital version.
When you factor in production, boxing, shipment, retail, recycling if possible, plastic pollution otherwise, the carbon footprint of physical gaming goes way beyond that of digital gaming.
