Physical Copies Going Away?

[Bojay1997]

Your point being? Unless you've run down to the point of having no more copies around to buy, it can be easily replaced. A digital rental can vanish once the support is gone, a 30 year old cart I can go buy another.

I'd be on board with digital if any of it was allowed to be copied and backed up for later use allowing me to control what I spend my money on. Steam is kind of like that as you can store the downloads but it's stuck with that crap loader, but GoGames.com has individual installers so anything there you can buy and keep to reinstall whether they continue to keep it up there or not (for purchase.) Recently Fallout dropped off there, but if you bought it, it's in your locker or you kept a copy of the installer.

My point was simply that your point about owning a physical disc until the day you die is not the same thing as still owning a functioning copy of the game. All physical media, at least of the consumer variety that most of us own, will eventually decay and become non-functional. You also don't know what the availability of physical copies of older games will be in 30-50 years. It's quite possible with some low print run titles that a physical copy of a game cannot be easily replaced. Indeed, even if the media still works, finding something to play it on could be a challenge. As such, I believe digital media (DRM free being critical as others have pointed out) is the superior means of assuring that those games are still around decades and centuries into the future.

[jonebone]

My point was simply that your point about owning a physical disc until the day you die is not the same thing as still owning a functioning copy of the game. All physical media, at least of the consumer variety that most of us own, will eventually decay and become non-functional. You also don't know what the availability of physical copies of older games will be in 30-50 years. It's quite possible with some low print run titles that a physical copy of a game cannot be easily replaced. Indeed, even if the media still works, finding something to play it on could be a challenge. As such, I believe digital media (DRM free being critical as others have pointed out) is the superior means of assuring that those games are still around decades and centuries into the future.

But a physical non-working game will retain collectible value, while your digital copy may get lost due to a hard drive failure or a discontinuation of a cloud server. You are looking at it from a purely gaming perspective where the average consumer will look at it from a value perspective (gaming value, resale value, functional value, etc.).

PS4 and XB One bought us some time by having physical games, but I think we'll be all digital in 10-15 years.

[Nionel]

And if there is any myth that could somehow be dispelled forever, it's that digital is somehow cheaper than physical for consumers. It's exactly the opposite.

I can help you with that, because a couple of months ago Nintendo stated why they charge the same amount for both digital and physical copies...

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/nin.../1100-6415997/

For anyone unable to open the link, it summary is that Iwata claims that Nintendo has decided that the same price can be charged for both physical and digital media because you are getting the same content, regardless of which version you buy, and that consumers have shown that they are willing to pay the same price for digital media because they feel that it "holds the same value as its physical counterpart".

[Tanooki]

I understand what you're saying, but jonebone there got the total point. A game is a game, I can get it digitally or not, but having the physical copy is value added (game value, resale value, collector value), in other words it's tangible. Sure maybe in another 10 years all those horrid Stadium Events variant carts will go up in smoke and stop working, but it still as a frame, as a label, and as a collectors trophy piece it still would exist. It's not like anyone actually would enjoy playing that hot turd of a game.

[Bojay1997]

But a physical non-working game will retain collectible value, while your digital copy may get lost due to a hard drive failure or a discontinuation of a cloud server. You are looking at it from a purely gaming perspective where the average consumer will look at it from a value perspective (gaming value, resale value, functional value, etc.).

PS4 and XB One bought us some time by having physical games, but I think we'll be all digital in 10-15 years.

Sure the physical case, inserts, manuals, disc/cartridge and other items may maintain some value once the game stops working. Of course, how much value they will have is an open question for the future. There are plenty of very old vinyl records that have next to no value simply because the music is widely available in digital formats and the nostalgia value of the sleeve and disc is not enough to compel people to seek them out. I suspect something similar will happen with games except for those that are truly rare and for which there is no digital substitute available.

[Rickstilwell1]

If all physical games just died, no longer worked etc and it was impossible to find a single working copy then people started selling these broken ones with labels/boxes/manuals in good condition and such for less than $1, I'd dive right in and get them all to look at!

Maybe that's a good idea. Get the ones that I like to play while they still work and get the stuff I couldn't stand when I start seeing dead but complete copies start popping up for super cheap. Wasn't going to enjoy playing them anyway, still can if I want to on a flash cart or emulator. It's just a display piece after all once you have a flash cart.

[Daria]

I've said it before but I'm totally fine with the industry going digital only. I'll have just a finite "end goal" to my collection (homebrew releases not withstanding). Plus, packaging has gotten so homagenized post PS1 era that its really not much fun to track down. In fact for this generation I've already switched to PC gaming, which is almost exclusively digital only. I don't have a compelling need to "collect them all" so I just download what looks like fun.

I'm not okay though with paying full retail price for digital "leases". So I play on steam, because it's fucking cheap. Sure there's DRM but I don't entertain any fantasies of "owning" these games. And for the price of admission it really doesn't bother me that if at the end of the day it's all disposable entertainment.

[Haoie]

They said the same thing about e-books to real books.

[Bojay1997]

They said the same thing about e-books to real books.

Bad example. E-books now account for over 20% of all book sales and that number increases every year. While books will never go away completely, it is quite conceivable that in the next decade e-books will be the vast majority of print sales.

[mercuryshadow09]

Of course there are still books and VHS tapes still in existence but the vehicle in which media is distributed to the masses changes constantly, we just got through with the HD movie war, Blu-Ray won but now more people are flocking to Netflix, brick and mortar movie rental stores have taken a huge hit, expect much the same of Gamestop and physical copies to disappear in the next five years!