My preference for physical games is mostly for monetary reasons: they're almost always available cheaper than full-price digital games in the UK, you can resell them if you want (which I rarely do, but I'm glad to have the option), and you don't have to spend as much on SD cards as you would if you go all digital (although my 256GB card is almost full anyway...). This has resulted in me having a slight collector's mindset and prioritising physical even in cases where it costs a bit more than digital (e.g. with some indie games) which I didn't use to do, but I don't buy limited releases or collector's editions and I'm happy to buy digital if it's the only option or much cheaper than physical, as long as the file size isn't too crazy.
So if physical games went away I certainly wouldn't be happy about it, but I could just about live with it as long as consoles were equipped with the necessary storage space - PC gaming is almost all digital these days after all, and I'm ok with that. I would be more annoyed if DVD and Bluray stopped being produced for film and TV since the main alternative is streaming, which is suboptimal for the reasons skywake mentioned as well as just because I don't like paying subscriptions for digital media if I can help it. But as others have said, it's only recordable Bluray that's being discontinued currently, it won't affect movie releases.
Thank you Nintendo for giving us Donkey Kong Jr Math on Nintendo Music
I am sure that physical is not going away. Sure, it might be more expensive in the future because of limited releases but still.
The digital only people fail to realize that they support a monopoly on the market. I am talking about the exclusive nature of some platforms. If you own only a PS console, you will get Sony's prices and hope they are in a good mood. They will take off games as they please and you can't say anything about it. If you have the money, you buy another platform but not everyone can do that.
In such a future, I will not regret, getting games for free if you know what I mean
My preference for physical games is mostly for monetary reasons: they're almost always available cheaper than full-price digital games in the UK, .
I always find it weird how much prices vary regionally. In the US, digital games usually start at the same price or lower than physical and if you don't mind waiting a bit, digital sales are usually much better (even for major non-Nintendo games, 60-90% off digital sales are fairly common).
@FishyS It does depend where you buy from - the RRP for physical games is generally the same as the eShop price, but some retailers will usually have them for close to £10 cheaper even at launch. We do get those deep eShop discounts on third-party games as well and physical games don't often get quite as cheap as that, but by the time those sales come along you can usually find pretty decent savings on the physical version too, so to me the resale value and saving on SD card space make up for the difference.
Thank you Nintendo for giving us Donkey Kong Jr Math on Nintendo Music
Most of my Switch games are physical releases except Splatoon 3 which I bought digitally sometime after my brother got his own Switch. Up until then we shared the Switch for that game and I had to use his copy.
As others have said, it looks like the Blu-Ray situation is just recordable Blu-Rays, thankfully. It still baffles me how DVDs of films and shows seem to be more readily available in the UK, cheaper I guess.
Digital is more convenient yes, but it's getting more concerning lately that you don't necessarily own what you purchase digitally. There have been instances of certain games being removed from digital storefronts, sure, but there has also been cases of digital media being removed from people's libraries entirely. There is also DRM for a lot of games and the Switch sometimes requires you to have an internet connection to verify that digital games can be played, which is completely negated by physical games. But, these days it's rarer for games to be complete on disc/cart, although I do find that the track record for Switch games is noticeably better with the updates being much smaller if they are required.
The biggest detractor for physical games in my experience is just the space that they take up and moving them, (especially if you care about keeping the cases). We are definitely getting too use to everything being accessible at the press of a button, (I'm guilty of this as well), but at least for my CDs, Blu Rays and physical games, I own those. If I want to play Mario Kart on the Switch, on a plane I can without issue. If I want to go back and play Shadow Hearts on the PS2 then I can.
The second hand market as well is affected, who's to say that prices will be reduced when the only way that you can play a game is digitally? Planned obsolescence is a thing, disc drives are becoming a thing of the past, heck finding a new smartphone with an auxiliary port is difficult these days.
I hope physical media stays as an alternative, but the way things are going the Switch 2 might be the last console to offer it.
Digital is more convenient yes, but it's getting more concerning lately that you don't necessarily own what you purchase digitally. There have been instances of certain games being removed from digital storefronts, sure, but there has also been cases of digital media being removed from people's libraries entirely. There is also DRM for a lot of games and the Switch sometimes requires you to have an internet connection to verify that digital games can be played, which is completely negated by physical games. .
Physical Switch games are allowed to require DRM too; totally up to the publisher. So if a company wants to be evil, the physical versus digital divide doesn't necessarily make much difference nowadays.
As for removing games from digital storefronts? Seems similar to me to a limited physical print. Fortunately Nintendo still lets you keep and redownload games even if they are removed from storefronts — I haven't checked this year but as of 2024 you could even still redownload your 2006-era Wii digital purchases. You can also still redownload super Mario Bros 35 even though it is worthless without the servers. So far at least for Nintendo, digital is more reliable than physical. So let's hope Nintendo continues to be non evil.
If only you could resell digital games they would be perfect, but sadly that is one major flaw that although easily fixable, none of the game/console makers have any reason to want to fix.
@NeonPizza I have not looked into the reproduction boxes. To be honest once I took the NES game out of the box I never used the box except for display purpose on my shelf. SNES were a bit different with that white cardboard insert that held the cartridge but even then I didn't use the boxes. I had a few of those wire rack NES cartridge holders that my parents got for me one Christmas and I had a plastic tote that all of my SNES cartridges fitted in. I mainly kept the boxes because I loved the artwork on them and as I liked displaying them on my shelves like a video store.
RetiredPush Square Moderator and all around retro gamer.
Wouldn't it be possible in the near future for streaming services to just offer a more expensive plan that offers uncompressed Audio & Picture Quality that matches what you get on disc? It's really the Audio that takes a nose dive, more so than the PQ. I mean, i don't need something like Cobra Kai on Netflix to look any sharper than it already is in 4K. It's good enough.
Last I checked most of these services are serving 15-20Mbps streams for 4K content. A regular BluRay will usually be 30-40Mbps while a UHD BluRay sits at something like 40-80Mbps. They could offer higher quality streaming, but they won't. The trend has been going the other way. These streaming services have been raising the prices, clamping down on account sharing, adding ad-supported models all while they lower the bitrates. It's all about increasing their margins
Of course some of that gap is closed by more efficient codecs. HEVC is about double the efficiency of H264 and AV1 can give files about about 30% smaller than HEVC. So in theory an AV1 stream at 13Mbps could match a 35Mbps BluRay. So you can get BluRay quality out of Netflix in theory.... if your device supports AV1 decode, if they offer that title in 4K and assuming you're paying for 4K Netflix not the significantly lower bitrate HD options
Maybe a tad extreme and not for everyone but I have a server setup and running Plex (if I was to start again I'd probably consider Jellyfin). All of my BluRays are ripped and sitting on that server ready to stream. I've also recently started to go to second hand shops and picking up BluRays for cheap as people are starting to dump their collections. I'm not really fussed about the quality jump going to UHD BluRay, it's much of a muchness, but I can tell you now that raw BluRay rips run rings around the quality of streaming services
But yeah, that's kinda the thing I find amusing. Nobody cares about this. They're more than happy with even HD Netflix which barely pushes 5Mbps. And every year these services get worse in terms of breadth of content, useability and video quality. And they have the nerve to up the price through the roof. But you know, lets complain about video games where the difference between download and disc is basically nothing at all.....
Here's something from why we shouldn't let CEO decide what product we buy. Remember Digital the price never goes down and only goes down because the CEO greed decides so not the consumer buying power.
Digital Distribution Vs Physical Media and True Ownership
Physical games will always have a market in Nintendo that is. Because their Japan consumers want Physical and also not everyone has good internet or can afford ISP prices. People talk about Digital games as that is a good thing but forget your also paying ISP prices so add your NSO single/family and ISP subscription and that is the true prices your paying to have Digital games. Example Family account 40$ and ISP/month 100$ = 140$ that's not cheap even if it's one time eShop subscribtion but if you buy games or have other online Digital gaming paid accounts you can start to see this adds up. I think this is the part anyone advocating having Digital don't tell the rest of others there is a second hidden cost to having Digital games only. This is the honest and open talk people don't want to engage in.
@SwitchForce I mean... ISP is also needed for work and school and everything else. I don't think many people pay more for internet just to occasionally download a digital game — streaming movies or music adds up to much higher bandwidth.
Is it true that Japan prefer physical games? I know Nintendo makes like half of their game profit from physical and half from digital, but I've never seen that broken down by country.
@FishyS You always need ISP even if you don't think you need it. You pay monthly to have home internet what does school and work have to do with home internet you have to pay for those others your tax money pays for it so someone has to pay to use it. It's not free without the internet there be no internet or NSO account. If you don't know or heard why Japan likes Physical then nothing said will do for you.
If you don't know or heard why Japan likes Physical then nothing said will do for you.
I asked because I was wondering if you had facts to point to. I would be interested.
There was a famous Masahiro Sakurai poll a couple years ago and for Japan it was 53%-47% in favor of physical versus digital. So close to 50%. But that was just a poll, I'm curious what the real data shows. A lot of digital sales are never really reported in the way physical are so it is hard to get an accurate picture.
Nintendo doesn't break out digital sales by region so all we know is that currently 51% of their profit world wide is from digital.
Square Enix does sometimes break out by region. In 2023, about 70% of their sales in Japan were digital.
Mat Piscatella, of research company Circana - so very much a reliable source - posted some figures last year:
So, 91% for Microsoft, 78% for Sony and 53% for Nintendo.
As he points out, there are certain caveats. Most notably, publishers are making less copies of physical games than ever, in the knowledge that when they sell out people can still buy it as a digital download.
Again, across the industry as a whole, it's more like 95%. Physical sales are pretty much just for collectors on PC, and were never much of a thing at all on mobile. Consoles are the outlier, and Nintendo even more so among them.
@SwitchForce ISP costs are not a hidden cost of digital gaming. Most people treat their ISP costs as a utility or basic need nowadays and are not signing up for internet access because they want to download the odd game. You could argue that higher ISP costs might be cost of playing online given that you might have to upgrade your internet package to a faster connection, but that has nothing to do with whether games are bought digitally or physical.
It is sad that Switch 2 and possibly its successor will probably be the last video game platforms to support physical gaming out of the box.
PS6 will probably support physical games but only with a disc drive add-on and probably just for PS4 and PS5 games.
Xbox doesn't care about physical at all anymore. If there still is a fifth Xbox, I don't see any way it will support physical games, not even an optional add-on.
You call games that only have part of the game on the card and you have to download the rest a physical game? Either put the full game on the disc, card or whatever you want to call it or make it fully download not this half and half *****. Looks like with Switch 2 I will be going fully digital.
RetiredPush Square Moderator and all around retro gamer.
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Topic: Switch 2, the last bastion of physical game collecting.
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