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Topic: Digital vs physical

Posts 81 to 100 of 140

Octane

@Hikingguy What game was it? I'm not too familiar with Switch games, because I only own two physical games as of now (Odyssey and Splatoon). But I know that on PS4 you have to option to choose between ''download now'' and ''download later''. I always pick the latter, because I don't really want to sit there waiting for a patch to download.

@Yosheel Well... maybe...! If you're talking about Japanese games. Anyway, point is, I don't notice a whole lot of differences when it comes to bugs and glitches in unpatched games now versus 30 years ago. But then again, I don't buy broken Ubisoft games

I usually wait for a review, and if they're beyond broken it's a hard pass from me.

Octane

Octane

@Therad If you buy a new one your discs are still playable. You could even replace the disc drive. It's stuff you can fix yourself. You can't set up the Wii Shop servers yourself and buy new digital games.

Octane

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@Octane, @Zuljaras asked me that exact question and it forced me to think about my situation. I think I figured out what might have been my problem. Because I had owned BotW on the Wii U, and in anticipation to obtaining BotW for the Switch, I had bought and downloaded the DLC a few days before. As I was leaving, I totally forgot that I had downloaded the DLC days before. So here is what happened, when I went to leave, I took the Switch out of the dock, inserted the game and was prompted to download the update. I did not have much time to analyze my problem as I was heading out the door. So I just left my Switch behind and was bummed about the whole situation.
I just tried the game cart in another Switch that never play BotW and did not have any DLC and sure enough I was allowed to play without the update.

Moral of the story, do not download DLC before obtaining a game and leave without updating.

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Therad

Octane wrote:

@Therad If you buy a new one your discs are still playable. You could even replace the disc drive. It's stuff you can fix yourself. You can't set up the Wii Shop servers yourself and buy new digital games.

Actually, I looked into exchanging the disc drive. You can't exchange it yourself, they had some part of their anti piracy tech in the disc drive. You can't pick an off the shelf drive.

But I am a filthy pirate, so I fixed the problem and made sure my collection become digital. Less hassle and more convenient.

Therad

SKTTR

@Buizel I only pick the one or two games I wanna play when I'm going outside. Maybe 4 to 10 games depending on the vacation. The rest stays in my collection safe at home to be played when I want to.

It's obvious that if you have hundreds of games you may pick only the 10 most played with you and leave the rest home.
Now try to find your way through 100 games in the Switch menu, when you need only those ten specific ones. I know it can be updated (folders etc.) and Nintendo should have already done it ages ago, but even if you have 100 games on your Switch you could live with only playing 10 when being off for a few weeks, right?
The convenience of digital is just a dream bubble: I played digital-only for two generations before it popped with the demise of the Wii Shop Channel and I'm glad for it.

On the Switch especially it's easy to go back to physical-only because it has no fragile disc drive and a sturdy cartridge slot instead. On top of that there are so many great games on retail that the digital market can wait.

Edited on by SKTTR

Switch fc: 6705-1518-0990

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@Octane Yes case solved, but I wish Nintendo would have at least let me play the game despite having the DLC. It would have been nice if they would have just prompted me that the DLC was unavailable until I downloaded the update instead of locked me out of the game entirely.

I agree with much of what you say, but if updates were available in the early days for consoles I am sure things would be closer to what we have today and not what we all wish it would have been. In the ideal world, we would get games like the vast majority of games released in the 80's and 90's and early 2000's. Fully working from beginning to end, with games that really only needed the odd bug fix here and there, mostly QOL enhancements. (I am sure if I looked hard enough there was a game here and there that was broken, but the vast majority of games released in that time frame were a complete experience.)
But if updating was available, who knows how games would have released. Companies would have realized, just like today, they can release games early with the intent to patch them later. But things happen, companies go out of business, once games are out the door, nothing is guaranteed.

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NEStalgia

@Hikingguy The real problem is companies stopped thinking of games as a "product" years ago, and coupled that with the mentality of "do the most work with the least staff", so they have these tightly managed timelines where they want the game out by x date, but won't have time to spend on it until y date, so they ship, then finish work after shipping, to meet marketing demand. In their business oriented minds it works out because they maximized sales during the target market window, but still provided the product they were intending to at a deferred date (borrow consumers money and time to complete the product later.) If they were told they were not allowed to fix any bugs after launch, you bet they'd launch polished products. That would be bad, too, because sometimes junk slips out and needs to be fixed, but at least then they'd try.

For now games are simply delivered as a "service"....they aren't products anymore, at least outside NIntendo.

NEStalgia

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@NEStalgia That is a good way of looking at it.
There was definitely a shift in mentality of the gaming industry during the mid to late 2000's.
I am not anti-business, companies make a lot of good things. But when people in charge are more concerned with profits and less concerned with the quality of the product, things change. They might make more money, but there is always a give and take. And most of the time, it is the consumer who gives more of their money and features are taken away. Competition is good. And good competition is better. Customers always need to demand better, not accept less.

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Buizel

SKTTR wrote:

@Buizel I only pick the one or two games I wanna play when I'm going outside. Maybe 4 to 10 games depending on the vacation. The rest stays in my collection safe at home to be played when I want to.

It's obvious that if you have hundreds of games you may pick only the 10 most played with you and leave the rest home.
Now try to find your way through 100 games in the Switch menu, when you need only those ten specific ones. I know it can be updated (folders etc.) and Nintendo should have already done it ages ago, but even if you have 100 games on your Switch you could live with only playing 10 when being off for a few weeks, right?
The convenience of digital is just a dream bubble: I played digital-only for two generations before it popped with the demise of the Wii Shop Channel and I'm glad for it.

On the Switch especially it's easy to go back to physical-only because it has no fragile disc drive and a sturdy cartridge slot instead. On top of that there are so many great games on retail that the digital market can wait.

But then you still have the (admitedly slight) inconvenience of choosing / swapping your games at home. And if you, say, only play 10 games but go digital...those same 10 games should be easy to find as the Switch menu shows your most recently played (although I do agree the Switch could do with some additional software sorting options).

The only instance in which I can see digital being less convenient than physical is if your library is too big for your storage, and you have to be selective about what you download. In such a case there could be hours between you wanting to play a game and actually playing it.

All-in-all, it ultimately depends how much the convenience of digital counteracts the positives of physical, and which you value most. Personally, I highly value the convenience, portability, and the lack of physical space requirement that digital offers me.

Edited on by Buizel

At least 2'8".

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@Buizel I historically have always been physical. For the most part if I have the option I will buy physical if there is a reasonable option to buy it. For instance, I will not pay absurd prices for something I can download for much less. But then again, I will not buy a digital game that I can obtain for much less physically. I mean for example there are still some digital Wii U games going for full retail price or I can pick up a used or maybe even new copy for less than half.
I absolutely see the convenience of digital. Having all my games at the touch of my finger, would have been a dream never thought possible to my younger brain for consoles. And even some smaller indie type games would not have been possible without a digital option because the barrier of entry was set so high in the past. So there are good reasons to justify the existence of digital for the consumer. For companies, it is much more profit for much less distribution cost. Also, they can keep eShop type games in front of customers "eyes" much longer than historical games on shelves. Today, games seems to be "newer" longer. When I was young, after a few months, the game was old and off the shelves and it was basically forgotten. But I guess it might be just as easy to get lost in the eShop if you are a small game lost in the shuffle without big press.
But as much as I appreciate the convenience of digital, having all my games tied to my console (or account) is not very appealing either. I guess if I only had one console and never wanted to lend, borrow, give, sell, or in anyway exchange my games, then I guess all is good. I mean what I gain in convenience I lose in freedom. I am not talking about the freedom of taking my games anywhere such as walking around town, but the freedom to do as I wish with my property.
Where I see digital (especially on Nintendo consoles) as having a big disadvantage, is if someone owns more than one Switch console, having games locked to only one console would mean I would need to buy the same game multiple times. Maybe this will be addressed with the family account. But I hesitate to get too excited. Each game I buy digitally gains value to my "account" but outside of that environment, I am limited what I can do with it.
I have friends who are into the latest and greatest and they have a tendency to sometimes give me their games from their old consoles, I always appreciate that they did not buy them digitally.

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skywake

@SKTTR
I have been primarily a portable gamer since I was a kid. Every portable console I had upto the 3DS I'd usually just have the cartridge that was in the console when I took it somewhere. Occasionally I'd carry a pouch or case with maybe 5-6 games in it. The 3DS was the first portable console I had which allowed game downloads.

In my 3DS XL case? Yes, it carries 8 cartridges plus one in the cartridge slot. But additionally I had about 15-20 downloaded games plus a whole collection of VC titles. Again, I brought most of my games as cartridges because of the reasons people are mentioning in this thread. But you can't tell me that having that many games on hand was LESS convenient.

Some playlists: Top All Time Songs, Top Last Year
"Don't stir the pot" is a nice way of saying "they're too dumb to reason with"

Trajan

@Hikingguy No, I remember games being talked about a lot longer back then than now. Now-a-days a game is forgotten 2 weeks after it comes out.

Sakurai: Which is why I think we should forget about console wars and focus on what’s really important: enjoying the games themselves.

"If we did this (mobile games), Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo." - Iwata

NEStalgia

@Hikingguy "Where I see digital (especially on Nintendo consoles) as having a big disadvantage, is if someone owns more than one Switch console, having games locked to only one console would mean I would need to buy the same game multiple times. Maybe this will be addressed with the family account. But I hesitate to get too excited. Each game I buy digitally gains value to my "account" but outside of that environment, I am limited what I can do with it."

That is the thing more than anything else that drives fingernails down a chalkboard for me. I'm said person with 2 Switches. I want to use it like I used my 2 3DS's....a "main game" loaded physically in system 1, on permanent standby, and whatever game I've moved on from in 3DS to to poke at it intermittently. That worked with 3DS and on-cart saves. On Switch, my physical games can move from system to system but saves can't go with them so I have to start from scratch, and my digital games can't travel at all because it's not my "primary" system. So I have to pick which machine I buy for (or even start a cart on.) It's infuriating when on my X1 and PS4 I can log into either of the machines in the house and play the same game with the same save, and even play on 2 simultaneously, co-op with one purchased copy.

Cloud saves had better let me move the cart between Switches with my save...that's the whole point. And I'd really really like to be able to play digital games on either machine. There's no reason Switch shouldn't do what every other platform (X1, PS4, PC, mobile, PS3, X360) all do.

NEStalgia

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@Trajan Maybe it depended on the game. But my memory remembers that once a game was off the store shelves, people moved on to the next game.
That may have changed slightly after the used game market hit is stride. But I mean in early in 1988 I could have easily picked up Ice Hockey for the NES, but by 1989 most everyone I knew had moved on to Blades of Steel. If I would have got a NES for Christmas in 1990, there is no way that Ice Hockey would still be at the retail stores.
Maybe unless the game was a mega hit, it still might be there, but typically once a game ran its course, it was never seen on the shelves again.
But 2 years from now if someone buys a Switch they will still be able to download 1 2 Switch or Super Bomberman R like they were released yesterday, (and most likely for full price too).
I mean Dark Souls is getting a re-release and everyone is super excited. I never remember seeing the NES version of Contra being re-mastered or re-released after the next generation of consoles hit the market.
Times have changed. I mean I can buy VVVVVV today on the Switch just as easy as MK8D, Go Vacation, or Octopath Traveler.
I remember trying to get my hands on Panzer Dragoon about a year or so after Panzer Dragoon II was released and it was a huge pain. And at the time, I was never able to get a copy of Clockwork Knights. Despite both games being on store shelves not too long beforehand.

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NEStalgia

@Hikingguy " I never remember seeing the NES version of Contra being re-mastered or re-released after the next generation of consoles hit the market."

Super Mario All Stars was kind of the Mario version of the Master Chief Collection I guess. I think a big part of it was games were still new so there wasn't a big back catalog to pull from and most SNES owners still had an NES hooked up. More importantly I doubt NES games ported to the SNES very well at all....half the development was quirky workarounds for the idiosyncrasies of the hardware.

@Trajan We were younger and time moved slower.

NEStalgia

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@NEStalgia I remember at one point the PS3 could have like 5 users share access to games. Then they dropped it to 2. I guess that is better than nothing. But yeah, Somehow people should be able to easily share digital games within a family. Otherwise physical is the way too go. But if I can share my digital games with local family members, then suddenly digital has another advantage. Things such as game saves, game purchases, accounts, DLC all being locked to a device is a big disadvantage in my book.
For example, even if a person had the physical copy of Zelda and they shared it between local family members, each console would have to buy the DLC individually to take advantage of all the content. I mean if somehow the DLC was tied to the game and not the account, it would be one and done. Because once you are done with the game and sell or give the physical copy away, the DLC is useless. But I might have to give the DLC aspect a little more thought before I commit to how I feel on that.
But I find that I make digital vs physical buying decisions on a game by game basis. If I want to feel like I really own the game, I buy it physically. But if I think it might be a throw away game, I might just get it digitally. And if I end up really, really liking it, I'll look into picking up a copy at some point in the future.

Co-op with one purchase would be great. Not even physical can do that!! That would add value to any digital purchase.

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@NEStalgia Yeah, people always bring that one game up. One out of hundreds and hundreds of games. When I post things like that I should just mention that one game so I do not have to hear it LOL
I guess it was Nintendo's first really big foray into realizing that people will buy Mario over and over and over. Times have changed for sure. But you get my point. I mean I can download (I will pick some random older game) Saturday Morning RPG, just as easy as (pick a modern game released recently) Sonic Mania Plus.
Before it had to be hanging on a store shelf. Today, I can still buy a game long removed from store shelves. I mean I can still download PS3 games if I want. But those are becoming less and less available at the store.

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