Video games are heading down a path that suggest a time will exist when an All-Digital video game future exists and physical media goes away. Let’s explore …
I love my physical copy's, I know all digital console's are coming, I am not afraid of it either. I will embrace it when it happens, untill then give me my physical copy's.
I do feel like on release days the store could be glitching or crash from so many people trying to download at once all over. Although I do agree digital is great for less waste
It doesn’t bother me, I’d rather go all digital, I’m used to it with apps and roms, no need to worry about losing or damaging carts/CDs, can have all games in one place, can always find pirate copies. Digital is the only way to preserve old games. The only downside is you can’t sell your games. You can get all of those games including Mario 35 online forever with a hacked Switch and NSP files.
What about sales? I get way better deals buying at bestbuy, amazon or target! If you can only purchase at one place they will have a monopoly and will charge whatever they want. I see the cost staying at release retail if all digital. Lastly, if your account is hacked…..there goes your games!
I am actually moving from digital to physical. Finally a portable that can do most of my gaming including past computer gaming. Sure my steam library is full but I am more likely to hit my physical switch library.
As recent as the Wii U days, I was an avid advocate for physical games, but after buying 2 or 3 games for my switch I completely switched (lol) to digital and I honestly do not think I will ever go back to digital. Unless for some sort of collection edition or something.
Honestly bro i wasn't to into digital but bro you opened my eyes to a new possibility. I didn't realize digital copies were that good. I mean i could trade in games i thought were meh for money but i could buy them back later if i liked them enough. Bro nintendo prime thank you for this video.
Thoughts: * Sure, more technically inclined people may save copies of their digital games to their personal machines. But it's not really game preservation if the rest of the world loses access. To make matters worse, re-distributing or selling abandoned games without a license is very problematic legally. Nintendo especially is known for going after attempts to make games available again after they've left the legal markets. * DRM is also becoming more advanced, which is also a concern for game preservation.
* Cloud gaming is also on the horizon, and you can't make dumps of cloud games. Something to think about, at least. This is actually a much bigger threat to game preservation than digital games. * To their credit, GoG has done a great job at game preservation. However, it should be noted that they don't preserve games they can't get permission for, which on the one hand is good because it guarantees they are legal – but on the other hand means there's still a swath of abandoned games you can't get on their site, and previous abandonware sites have kinda fallen by the wayside, I believe quite a few of them shut down under legal pressure. * I do think it's rather unfortunate that some games – even single player games – still require a download and can't be played with no internet access. The fact that some games do this does not negate arguments for physical media, though. It just means that some physical games are really better off being classified as digital games. * I will agree that PC game preservation is in a much better state than console game preservation. Abandoned PC games are easier to find.
Ultimately, I think the gaming community needs to get together with publishers and developers and find better ways to deal with older / abandoned games. We also need to take a good look at how the legal system works with abandonware, as it's not really in a great state.
* I find the "I can't sell games games is an advantage" argument to be – kinda weird and doesn't really make sense to me. Sorry. One of the advantages of physical games does tend to be the resell value, and I don't think that should be underrated. Used games is a *market*, and allows some flexibility that digital games simply don't have. I've always wondered if DRM-like technology could be invented that allows for digital game resale. After all "DR" is "digital rights" – and one of those rights that has long been missing is the ability for developers and publishers to say "hey, allow our users to resell our games." That said, there's been a long standing battle against second-hand sales of games which has been rather unfortunate, and I kinda wish something better could be worked out. * I actually hate Netflix removing things. I've been burned a couple of times by it, not being able to finish a series I'm watching. I no longer have a subscription. I really don't understand the "other people do it, so it's okay" argument, especially for something that's quite frankly abhorred. No – it's not really okay.
All of that said – the market does tend to steer businesses. A lot of people in the '00s thought physical would go away, and it really hasn't 20 years later. It's not a foregone conclusion like some people think it is.
In fact, one interesting observation I've seen in the music industry is that record players have made a comeback. You can now buy vinyls of old – and new – music. My local Walmart's record selection is about the same size as its CD selection now. I never dreamed that would happen.
What that tells me is that the idea that there is some "inevitable future" where the disappearance of things is a foregone conclusion – is not rooted in reality. Reality is, the future is where the marketplace leads it. If there's a lot of nostalgic people, or if a lot of people are collectors, or there's a big push for preservation, more than likely physical sales will continue for the foreseeable future.
I like physical copies but the convenience of having all ur switch games on one system, no need to get up and switch those tiny, easily lost carts is appealing
The one thing that digital needs in order to go mainstream is lower cost for NVME 4.0 SSD's. I prefer what Xbox is doing with their SSD because it's like a memory card and the port is on the exterior. With ps5, the SSD port is interior. Now if the ps5 ends up supporting USB c NVME 4.0 drives, that may solve the problem
There's a convenience with physical being overlooked here, at least with consoles: intuitive instant startup. You pop in a game and turn on the system—or the reverse with play-off-the-disc systems or the Switch as well—and the game starts up right then or, at worst, you click on a clear "play physical game" option. Boom. Yeah, connection glitches can happen—looking at you, NES—but usually, the process is elegant. No fuss with a menu that may not be entirely intuitive or smooth; you just Insert and Start Game™. Pure digital will never fully capture that.
Physical can also have pack-ins beyond just the manual. You should know this as a PC gamer; there were all sorts of creative copy protection methods, some of which were in forms that actually enhanced the game instead of detracted from it such as many of Sierra's adventure games of old. And they weren't limited to PC games, either; StarTropics water note and Metal Gear Solid Meryl frequency, anyone? And a lot of manuals were unique even if they weren't actually used for copy protection, such as the NES cult classic Solstice's vertically oriented manual made to resemble reading an ancient scroll or the PC's Hexen II's Chronicle of Deeds written from the perspective of one of the inhabitants of the world imperiled in that game. And let's not forget the cartridge and disc designs themselves. Of course, that's also a con: you can't really preserve that shit as easily as you can even physical games.
Speaking of which, something else both a pro and a con with physical is the storage formats themselves, at least with regard to playing straight off the storage devices. Older cartridges often had expansion hardware built in that simple ROM dumps do not touch, and thus that hardware must be emulated through the appropriate emulators themselves in order for the naked ROMs to work. But potentially anyone with enough knowledge of what could work with the original hardware could design their own hardware and/or emulation expansion to show what the old systems were REALLY capable of. Optical disc formats have their own hitches that hinder accurate reproduction as well. There's also emulating the base system hardware and the appropriate input and output devices to recreate the proper effects, but you kind of touched on that with how nonstandard architechture hampers preservation and that's not really a physical-versus-digital issue. Still, in case you're interested in the gritty, Near, the mad beast behind the higan emulator, has some brilliant pieces on the subject: https://near.sh/articles
On the flip side, digital's advantages include more flexible and convenient asset extraction and moddability and game crosstalk for special features. Those are MASSIVE for getting the most out of games or even using them to make all-new games. DOOM was VERY welcoming of that; it was EXPLICITLY MADE FOR hacking.
Most of digital's disadvantages in itself as opposed to comparison with physical are, as you alluded, sociopolitical, but it's great to hear that you're onboard the emulation train even though it's still far from perfect as I'd said.
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I love my physical copy's, I know all digital console's are coming, I am not afraid of it either. I will embrace it when it happens, untill then give me my physical copy's.
I do feel like on release days the store could be glitching or crash from so many people trying to download at once all over. Although I do agree digital is great for less waste
It doesn’t bother me, I’d rather go all digital, I’m used to it with apps and roms, no need to worry about losing or damaging carts/CDs, can have all games in one place, can always find pirate copies. Digital is the only way to preserve old games. The only downside is you can’t sell your games. You can get all of those games including Mario 35 online forever with a hacked Switch and NSP files.
No pros in my eyes besides convenience
Pc drones are the worst.
I get digital when I'm lazy. But you can't beat the Walmart 10 bucks off discount. Or just finding a physical at a gameshop for like 15 to 20 off
100k Dislike
What about sales? I get way better deals buying at bestbuy, amazon or target! If you can only purchase at one place they will have a monopoly and will charge whatever they want. I see the cost staying at release retail if all digital. Lastly, if your account is hacked…..there goes your games!
Biggest con is it will be WAY more expensive since there will be no pre owned games
I am actually moving from digital to physical. Finally a portable that can do most of my gaming including past computer gaming. Sure my steam library is full but I am more likely to hit my physical switch library.
As recent as the Wii U days, I was an avid advocate for physical games, but after buying 2 or 3 games for my switch I completely switched (lol) to digital and I honestly do not think I will ever go back to digital. Unless for some sort of collection edition or something.
Honestly bro i wasn't to into digital but bro you opened my eyes to a new possibility. I didn't realize digital copies were that good. I mean i could trade in games i thought were meh for money but i could buy them back later if i liked them enough. Bro nintendo prime thank you for this video.
I only buy Digital when its way cheaper, otherwise, I go for Physical cause its cheaper than digital usually.
Thoughts:
* Sure, more technically inclined people may save copies of their digital games to their personal machines. But it's not really game preservation if the rest of the world loses access. To make matters worse, re-distributing or selling abandoned games without a license is very problematic legally. Nintendo especially is known for going after attempts to make games available again after they've left the legal markets.
* DRM is also becoming more advanced, which is also a concern for game preservation.
* Cloud gaming is also on the horizon, and you can't make dumps of cloud games. Something to think about, at least. This is actually a much bigger threat to game preservation than digital games.
* To their credit, GoG has done a great job at game preservation. However, it should be noted that they don't preserve games they can't get permission for, which on the one hand is good because it guarantees they are legal – but on the other hand means there's still a swath of abandoned games you can't get on their site, and previous abandonware sites have kinda fallen by the wayside, I believe quite a few of them shut down under legal pressure.
* I do think it's rather unfortunate that some games – even single player games – still require a download and can't be played with no internet access. The fact that some games do this does not negate arguments for physical media, though. It just means that some physical games are really better off being classified as digital games.
* I will agree that PC game preservation is in a much better state than console game preservation. Abandoned PC games are easier to find.
Ultimately, I think the gaming community needs to get together with publishers and developers and find better ways to deal with older / abandoned games. We also need to take a good look at how the legal system works with abandonware, as it's not really in a great state.
* I find the "I can't sell games games is an advantage" argument to be – kinda weird and doesn't really make sense to me. Sorry. One of the advantages of physical games does tend to be the resell value, and I don't think that should be underrated. Used games is a *market*, and allows some flexibility that digital games simply don't have. I've always wondered if DRM-like technology could be invented that allows for digital game resale. After all "DR" is "digital rights" – and one of those rights that has long been missing is the ability for developers and publishers to say "hey, allow our users to resell our games." That said, there's been a long standing battle against second-hand sales of games which has been rather unfortunate, and I kinda wish something better could be worked out.
* I actually hate Netflix removing things. I've been burned a couple of times by it, not being able to finish a series I'm watching. I no longer have a subscription. I really don't understand the "other people do it, so it's okay" argument, especially for something that's quite frankly abhorred. No – it's not really okay.
All of that said – the market does tend to steer businesses. A lot of people in the '00s thought physical would go away, and it really hasn't 20 years later. It's not a foregone conclusion like some people think it is.
In fact, one interesting observation I've seen in the music industry is that record players have made a comeback. You can now buy vinyls of old – and new – music. My local Walmart's record selection is about the same size as its CD selection now. I never dreamed that would happen.
What that tells me is that the idea that there is some "inevitable future" where the disappearance of things is a foregone conclusion – is not rooted in reality. Reality is, the future is where the marketplace leads it. If there's a lot of nostalgic people, or if a lot of people are collectors, or there's a big push for preservation, more than likely physical sales will continue for the foreseeable future.
What happens when I can only buy from PlayStation store and they can charge as much as they want
Digital is a terrible way to own games .
I like physical copies but the convenience of having all ur switch games on one system, no need to get up and switch those tiny, easily lost carts is appealing
The one thing that digital needs in order to go mainstream is lower cost for NVME 4.0 SSD's. I prefer what Xbox is doing with their SSD because it's like a memory card and the port is on the exterior. With ps5, the SSD port is interior. Now if the ps5 ends up supporting USB c NVME 4.0 drives, that may solve the problem
Some more pros and cons of physical and digital:
There's a convenience with physical being overlooked here, at least with consoles: intuitive instant startup. You pop in a game and turn on the system—or the reverse with play-off-the-disc systems or the Switch as well—and the game starts up right then or, at worst, you click on a clear "play physical game" option. Boom. Yeah, connection glitches can happen—looking at you, NES—but usually, the process is elegant. No fuss with a menu that may not be entirely intuitive or smooth; you just Insert and Start Game™. Pure digital will never fully capture that.
Physical can also have pack-ins beyond just the manual. You should know this as a PC gamer; there were all sorts of creative copy protection methods, some of which were in forms that actually enhanced the game instead of detracted from it such as many of Sierra's adventure games of old. And they weren't limited to PC games, either; StarTropics water note and Metal Gear Solid Meryl frequency, anyone? And a lot of manuals were unique even if they weren't actually used for copy protection, such as the NES cult classic Solstice's vertically oriented manual made to resemble reading an ancient scroll or the PC's Hexen II's Chronicle of Deeds written from the perspective of one of the inhabitants of the world imperiled in that game. And let's not forget the cartridge and disc designs themselves. Of course, that's also a con: you can't really preserve that shit as easily as you can even physical games.
Speaking of which, something else both a pro and a con with physical is the storage formats themselves, at least with regard to playing straight off the storage devices. Older cartridges often had expansion hardware built in that simple ROM dumps do not touch, and thus that hardware must be emulated through the appropriate emulators themselves in order for the naked ROMs to work. But potentially anyone with enough knowledge of what could work with the original hardware could design their own hardware and/or emulation expansion to show what the old systems were REALLY capable of. Optical disc formats have their own hitches that hinder accurate reproduction as well. There's also emulating the base system hardware and the appropriate input and output devices to recreate the proper effects, but you kind of touched on that with how nonstandard architechture hampers preservation and that's not really a physical-versus-digital issue. Still, in case you're interested in the gritty, Near, the mad beast behind the higan emulator, has some brilliant pieces on the subject:
https://near.sh/articles
On the flip side, digital's advantages include more flexible and convenient asset extraction and moddability and game crosstalk for special features. Those are MASSIVE for getting the most out of games or even using them to make all-new games. DOOM was VERY welcoming of that; it was EXPLICITLY MADE FOR hacking.
Most of digital's disadvantages in itself as opposed to comparison with physical are, as you alluded, sociopolitical, but it's great to hear that you're onboard the emulation train even though it's still far from perfect as I'd said.
Can’t resell digital copies🤷♂️
Nintendo needs to fix not being able to play digital games with out internet. If your internet is down you cant play them period. Smh
It all comes down to one thing. Which can be sold as used for a cheaper price?