- sell fewer physical copies of media
- make more media digital-only
- surprise, surprise - digital sales rise
- brag about how people clearly prefer digital
https://x.com/charlieINTEL/status/2079561875507826898
Notice that since 2009 the trend of physical media sales. This isn’t a new thing here and was a trend that well before this whole “scandal” of getting rid of physical media from the three console makers.
It was the gamers that moved away from physical media well before the industry made these decisions. It was the gamers that decided convenience is more important than having a physical copy of a game. I honestly view this as the industry simply catching up to the dynamics of the gamer market here and this was something that the gamer market brough largely by themselves. At this point, I think it would be more beneficial to the gamer to focus on making sure we have the same rights over digital goods as we do with physical media, including the ability to sell our keys withing the ecosystem.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still an advocate for having physical media but I’m not going to be some kind of hypocritical outrage machine when I myself have so much more digital games vs physical games and basically treat physical media as a treat just like vinyl.
I like collecting physical media of all kinds (books, games, movies, discs) but its mostly just physical license keys now.
Even 4K blu-rays have internet connection requirements…
DRM-free digital copies that can run on open-source software like proton or an emulator. Multiple copies on different production batches, manufacturers, and types of media at different sites.
Individual disks rot, data rotated across redundant disks will last forever. That’s how you preserve games for the next generation.
Well they do talk about video game spending dropping by a whopping 10% compared to last year and hardware spending by an unfathomable 29% compared to the previous year. That‘s unheard of.
The entire game industry (and probably the entire global economy) is in a deep crisis and corporations are squeezing the last few bucks out of us before things will get very ugly.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are in a depression.
The industry isn’t just “collapsing” through a series of failures. It mostly feels like the industry is choosing to repeatedly shoot itself in the face, while refusing to shut off the IV of “painkiller” made of powdered drywall and snake oil.
Well they do talk about video game spending dropping by a whopping 10% compared to last year and hardware spending by an unfathomable 29% compared to the previous year. That‘s unheard of.
I think its more that attention is being dominated by video apps and other social media.
As an anecdote, I know a pretty nerdy couple that used to play PC games regularly. Now, they mostly just sit down to watch their YouTube feed.
Almost like they keep not making physical games available.
I bought my copy of Fantasy Life from Japan, because they didn’t make an NA Version physical copy.
The Japanese copy isn’t any different in any way. All translations are present on every version. They just didn’t want to sell a case in English.
Exactly. The snack industry sells snacks made almost exclusively from corn, then IGCorn touts how consumers love corn-based snacks.
It’s more like the vast majority of gamers prefer the convenience of downloading over ownership
Huh. The AI slop image shown on the post doesn’t appear at the link. Weird. I wanted to see more detail. From here it looks like a giant Wii that takes Laserdisc. The implication is obvious: games are getting too big for optical discs, so let’s use a bigger disc. Only Laserdiscs didn’t hold more than CDs or DVDs despite being the size of vinyl records.
While LaserDisc carried analogue signals (and held around 60 minutes per side — so, naturally, most which had movies were double-sided), the later LV-ROM data format held 3.28GB, way less than the 4.7GB advertised for DVD, which the Wii took (however, the Wii famously could not play DVD movies due to not including the video codec).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserDisc
Of course, the issue is density, not disc size. CD and DVD are the same size, and hold 700MB and 4.7GB, respectively. Blu-ray is also the same size, and holds 25GB per layer, and holds up to 4 layers (however, only one side of a Blu-ray can be used, while DVDs can be flipped and the other side can be used).
So if you took BD-ROM tech and made it on a bigger disc, you’d naturally have more space. But then you run into another issue. With Blu-ray, you’re jumping between layers, and from the inner ring to the outer ring. This makes data retrieval slow. If you make the disc bigger, you’re doubling to tripling the capacity, but load times would go way, way up, as accessing stuff on the bottom layer on the inner ring would be nearly as fast, but accessing stuff on the farthest outer ring would take much longer.
No one’s really proposing LD-sized Blu-rays for gaming. The image is AI slop. AFAIK there weren’t even any vertically loading LaserDisc players.
…getting on topic, I only buy digital when it’s cheap. Usually you can get the physical game for much less secondhand.
Huh. The AI slop image shown on the post doesn’t appear at the link. Weird. I wanted to see more detail. From here it looks like a giant Wii that takes Laserdisc.
I’m not sure why you jumped to this, but its a stock image from 2024, from GettyImages:
https://www.themirror.com/tech/gaming/sony-sparks-global-outrage-surprise-1101406
A PlayStation employee demonstrates how to put a disk into the PlayStation 5, at the Sony headquarters building in central Tokyo on November 27, 2024. December 3, 2024 will mark the 30th anniversary of the first release of Japan’s Sony PlayStation, transforming the world of video games. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP) (Photo by RICHARD A. BROOKS/AFP via Getty Images)
Huh. Well, at less than one-inch squared, I was pretty sure that’s what I was seeing. I didn’t think to reverse image search it. I just figured they were being silly.
I’m leaving it. It’s good info.
Are you an AI!? Any human can see the size of that disc and from your link the size of a laserdisc like wtf
Edit: hang on can you post a screenshot, maybe it is serving different images
It only showed a thumbnail of that image. I saw what the other person linked — I wasn’t ignoring them, I just wasn’t on 11 hours ago when they posted it.
Games are too big to fit onto discs. You buy a physical game and still need to download 80% of the game…
And buying things digitally is just more convenient. You don’t need to leave the house, wait for delivery… digital games don’t scratch, get lost etc.
They get you by giving you an option that is just better 🤷♂️
Problem is you don’t own the digital games. Literally the only problem.
Pretty massive downside.
But also, your first two sentences are a huge exaggeration. The vast majority of ps5 physical games ship entirely on disk. You can buy them, insert them into an offline ps5, install, and play. No downloads, no internet required.
The only problem? What about being able to resell, loan out or borrow games? What about having more than one place where you can buy them?
Those things are part of owning
literally the only problem
hides all the benefits of ‘one thing’
But it’s not a downside of being digital. It’s a downside of greedy corporations that are using a product that is superior to increase their control over consumers.
If a format is “superior”, but is made “inferior”, is it truly “superior” to begin with?
We can daydream about ways to resell, keep, and lend our digital goods. But I’m more judging in the current day.
So don’t be cattle and give up ownership for convenience? Greedy corporations listen to one thing.
Physical is simply where more ownership tends to exist.
And if it doesn’t? Fuck your closed off platform, if I’m forced into digital, I can get it on PC with mods, version states, often better performance, and possibly even some levels of ownership if DRM free versions exist for purchase.
Make informed decisions. This is also why we’re loosing our freedoms to fascism around the world as we choose convenience over our freedoms and rights.
Right… the lack of making informed consumer decisions is the cause of the rise of fascism. Got it.
And I mean physical games will just stop being made, so good luck keeping ownership of those.
I think the solution is to pirate, and start stockpiling memory.
Right… the lack of making informed consumer decisions is the cause of the rise of fascism. Got it.
Are you saying that single issue voters are well informed? Lol. It’s the same mentality. If people informed themselves a little more they’d realize immigrants, trans folk, etc aren’t the problem. But it’s convenient to be told what to think by others.
And I mean physical games will just stop being made, so good luck keeping ownership of those.
Exactly what SKG and many others are/should be doing is pushing legislators for ownership and consumer rights.
I think the solution is to pirate, and start stockpiling memory.
Stockpile physical media too and ensure it’s preserved. And pivot your purchases to open hardware platforms (like PC) and platforms that better respect ownership (like GoG) to support them. Contribute to emulation and the cracking of games for preservation. It’s a yes, and situation.
Well yeah, it’s “only one thing” if you bundle several other things in with that “one thing” in your bad faith argument.
You can lend out digital games on switch.
Yeah it’s a moronic turn of the industry that you can’t actually play the game off the disc and have to manually manage your console’s storage. I have hardly bought any game the last two generations because of it. I’m not going to uninstall a good game for any piece of crap game.
Yeah I get why people want physical games, but it just has too many downsides for me.
Getting downvoted for saying I don’t prefer physical games. Classic.
Please list those pros and cons of digital and physical. I’d like to see the methodology here.
Well first of all I mostly game on steam, pc and steamdeck. And I don’t even know how that would work with discs.
But I do have a switch 2. Switched over from the switch 1, where I could just move my library over.
Anyway, the pros of digital? Convenience, pure convenience. I can go to the nintendo shop and see what there is and buy / play it instantly. I don’t have to go to a store or order online and wait for it to arrive at some point.
Then all the games I bought are in a list where I can switch between them instantly. I don’t play in handheld so I don’t have get up and find the game in the pile of games that I need shelf space for. And I don’t need to fiddle with the switch that’s hidden behind my tv to switch out the games.
I don’t sell or lend out games. And honestly if I finish a game I rarely play it again, and if I want to I don’t remember not being able to play a game anymore cause of digital shenanigans. Besides not having the console any more. I even gave away my wiiu to my nephew with mostly digital games and he could just play them.
So FOR ME PERSONALLY, I just don’t want physical. Like I said “I understand why people would prefer physical”. I am just lazy.
Well first of all I mostly game on steam, pc and steamdeck. And I don’t even know how that would work with discs.
Disc drives. Usb or otherwise. If you’ve ever activated a game on steam using a keycode, steam supported activating cd keys as well. There would be a CD keycode provided along with the disc. This is similar to BluRay movies that would come with both a disc and a digital download available.
If we’re talking about cartridges, there’s also some projects working on this which could easily be added to future handheld pc releases.
And SSD for larger desktops in theory.
As for the rest, I don’t think you answered my question. I asked for pros and cons and I only see pros with a “I understand the cons” at the end without listing them.
But I do have a switch 2. Switched over from the switch 1, where I could just move my library over.
This one is heavily dependent on the corporation. Because switch 1 and 2 are essentially the same architecture, it’s similar to using your PS5 library on the PS5 Pro. There is no guarantee you will be able to do so in the next generation given digital keys. You actually allude to it yourself.
I even gave away my wiiu to my nephew with mostly digital games and he could just play them.
The Wii online game stores no longer exist similar to the DS game stores. Titles without physical releases simply no longer exist in most of these cases. And for your nephew to play these titles he has to use your hardware with your account. A digital only future with DRM protection would remove access in several ways, via an IP address change prompting a login, license changes or store server closures that would remove DRM auth keys when a title is launched, etc.
But yes, overall, you are correct, the rest of the reasons you list are isolation (not wanting to go to a store or discuss with others what games exist, instead using a storefront algorithm) or are out of laziness/impatience (waiting for a delivery, getting up off the couch, pressing a button.)
I doubt I would be able to convince you, so I will not try, but thank you for explaining. It helps the rest of us to understand the opinions of those who seek convenience over rights and freedom. You understood that you would be downvoted and that is because to us, your apathy and laziness is the same reason we also have a resurgence of fascism.
It’s a lack of empathy and selfishness focused purely on dopamine activation. We see someone empty of life and fulfilment as you’re not enjoying, reflecting, or introspecting on life or the gaming medium, you’re purely focused on self pleasure. That’s what we see and it’s both pity we feel and frustration as these actions and mentalities directly harm the rest of us, be it artists whose works are lost or individuals directly who lose access to art they purchased.
I’m reminded of a quote from Benjamin Franklin.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Liberty would be yours and my rights to ownership, the freedom to experience the medium and share it with others. And temporary safety is convenience.
What a pretentious nonsense. Give my answer and still get downvoted and compared to fascism. Fucking hell. Insufferable place.
It is a visceral reaction from people who feel like your choices have actively harmed their gaming experience.
Really the gaming industry has been shit as a whole since Xbox tried to pull this crap in 2013. They just kicked the can down the road a decade and we are now feeling it
Kind of ironic how people here love steam but hate digital gaming. I just like the convenience of having my games in 1 spot.
I would consider Steam a special case compared to Sony or Microsoft trying to discontinue the production of physical games.
For one, the PC physical market was a mess of DRM solutions. Ones that either required middleware to be running on your PC like SecuROM or Denuvo, only allowed a limited number of installations before voiding the CD key, or required the disc inserted at all times, or a combination of all 3.
So Steam was a welcome disruption, it also didn’t outright replace big box software as a means of distributing PC games, it just phased out naturally. And there is nothing preventing a company from releasing a physical big box edition of any of their games on PC.
But with Sony ending production of discs, even people who want to release their games on disc, won’t be able to in the future
Not at all ironic considering Steam is competitive, offers great sales and allows code to be purchased elsewhere and redeemed on their service.
I play most things from a physical copy but I get them from GameFly. I probably only buy one or two games a year but I borrow like two dozen.
