@WaveBoy
I skipped the limited run physical games too if the price was too expensive.
I picked the games in physical with fair prices so I could picked more games to play.
@WaveBoy
Ya, that's definitely a downside to digital. Though I think the higher markup for many physical titles likely balances things out overall. After accounting for the physical tax you'll likely end up spending more, unless you have a fairly high percentage of games you regret buying after the fact.
Many past LRG titles are sold on BestBuy as you mentioned. Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 2 is still sold for $30 there, as well as Ritual of the Night. The first CotM isn't though. Still, you can get quite a few that way. And just go digital for the rest. Or, continue buying digital and just do a little more research to increase your confidence you'll enjoy a game- you'll never be 100% confident but if you can get to 95% confidence, that's only 1 in 20 games you lose money on. Physical tax on those 20 games would be far greater than that single lost purchase.
But physical is something best done from the start of the gen, imo. If you're nearly 6 years into the gen as digital, may as well finish it up and make the switch next gen. I am still buying both digital and physical, double dipping because I love the convenience of digital but don't want to stop collecting physical mid-generation after so much investment. Next gen I'm all digital.
FYI, I like to check in with LRG once per week just to see if there's any new Switch games open for preorder. Right now it's Tetris Effect Connected, with Doom Eternal around the corner.
Psalms 22:16 (1,000 yrs before Christ)
They pierced My hands and feet
Isaiah 53:5 (700 yrs before Christ)
He was pierced for our transgressions
Zachariah 12:10 (500 yrs before Christ)
They will look on Me whom they pierced
@JaxonH Agreed on the timeframe for collecting. I have 110+ physical Switch games and if I started now? Probably forget it. There are tons of collctor's editions, region specific limited releases on like Play-Asia and LRG that you can't get any more or have to pay stupid prices for. For example: Shikhondo: Soul Eater only had 3,000 copies made. It was an Asian territory exclusive release and now it's $150 on eBay. I got it for $30 on Play-Asia when it was released. World of Goo Steelbook Edition only had 2,000 copies made and was exclusive to Europe. I paid $45 for it and now it's $100+ on eBay. The Switch is going to HUGE for collectors in 10-15 years in the future. So many physical indie games on this system. It's an awesome system to collect for it you got in early.
@Kermit1
Oh, about Earthlock.
The game used to be have physical release on PS4 & XBOX ONE (Wii U only got digital version) but that was the early version which the characters have almost no proper body gestures to express their feeling.
Snow Castle as the developer of Earthlock rereleased the game on PS4, Switch and XBOX ONE but only Switch version got physical release. The fixed version have proper body gestures from each characters and the game was running on smooth 60 fps on Switch.
I have a heirarchy of whether I should buy games digital or physical. Basically:
if it's an RPG it's a physical buy. They always hold their value (at the very least!) and I'm going to play through it once & only once anyway.
I apply a similar rule to discrete games with a clear beginning/middle/end - so adventure games or metroidvanias I'd prefer to buy physical if I can.
if it's a game with extensive online play I'd prefer to buy it digital since the physical copy holds little long term value and I want the convenience of having it always on my Switch.
if it's particularly cheap digital then I'll go for it digital.
if it's first party I'll buy physical because there's unlikely to be a good digital deal coming any time soon.
But I bend and sway either way - particularly if a game is very cheap digital and much more expensive physical (or hard to buy).
I do think that, to echo @BinaryMessiah, the Switch will end up being a very popular system to collect for long term. It's maybe going to be one of the last systems you'll be able to realistically go back to 50 years from now and plug the carts in to have a complete "original" experience. There are also so many landmark games available physically for Switch that might never get another physical re-release.
Of course the flip side to that is that what's often appealed to collectors historically is the idea of getting a "full library". Switch occupies the same sort of space as the PSX and the DS in that the vast number of games released (and the low quality of so much of the library) makes a full collection almost impossible. So I don't think we'll ever see ridiculous prices on Switch games like we do for the odd NES, Virtual Boy, N64 or Wii U game that's rare and blocking a lot of people from having the full set (because so few collectors will ever attempt a full Switch library).
As an aside - I think that (even if Nintendo launches a backwards compatible Switch in the next 12 months) the Switch OLED might become near impossible to buy for a couple of months after BoTW 2 launches. It's the definitive way to play Switch games and a lot of people will decide to upgrade for BoTW 2 but they'll leave it too late.
@StuTwo A complete library before the system is officially discontinued is hard to do anyways. We don't know how many games will be out, but there are SO many obscure indie games that are being released. There's a chance some might not consider these "official" because of that. A complete library might consist of only "mainstream" publishers that you can get at a regular store. This has never been done before with all these physical indie games. Some might not include Limited Run Games or any of those publishers, some might do segmented complete libraries. Limited Run Games has a trading card for every game they publish. So is the library not complete without all of those trading cards? Only time will tell. Then there are all of these collector's editions and cover variants. This alone could make a complete library impossible. Even the PS4/Xbox One might be impossible to complete due to these reasons as well.
I personally don't do complete collections. I think it's rather silly and a huge waste of money. Maybe if a specific console means so much to you, but these days complete collections are pretty much impossible to do with the prices of games right now. I only buy games I want to play or have some sort of meaning to me. That includes awful games. I own some pretty bad games and paid a fairly high price for some, but they meant something to me or I just thought it was an interesting game to break up my collection.
On top of that I think handheld consoles in general will always hold a high value. The Steam Deck for example will be worth a lot for collector's because of how open the hardware and software is. Even if Steam dies 20 years from now the Deck will be a huge value for people despite never being able to accept a physical game. People will preserve every Steam game ever released and it will be a pirate's dream handheld. These are interesting things to think about going forward as digital systems become the norm. Look at the Xbox 360 and PS3. Even the 3DS. Collector's are scrambling to preserve the digital games and it's the first time this has happened and will continue to happen. Buy the games you want now, back up the storage devices somewhere and hope it never fails. It's causing hackers to work harder and faster at these consoles to preserve the digital content so people can use custom firmware and continue to play these games long after the services shut down.
As for the Switch OLED and BotW2 causing it sell out I beg to differ. I think the Lite and the regular system will sell out first and then the OLEDs will get bought up by desperate late adopters. The jury is out that most casual Switch owners don't see the appeal of spending $50 for essentially handheld-only upgrades or anyone looking to just buy a cheap Switch to play BotW2. I think the systems as a whole will sell out fast, but the OLED might be the last ones to go.
@BinaryMessiah Oh I'm aware that you can't realistically take a complete collection whilst the console is "live" but once it stops being "live" there will certainly be some people who want a full collection. That's always been the case (and it's usually extremely expensive due to a handful of rare games that become bottlenecks for collectors).
Realistically though basically no-one will manage this for Switch for the reasons we've both listed - Switch collectors long term are going to have to be more picky.
Personally I only buy games that I want to play - I'm not a collector (although I am guilty of being a hoarder).
In retrospect, watching Nintendo drop support for digital purchases on their older hardware, I probably would have gone physical on Switch. Especially with how much certain games have gone up in value over time.
Actually, I would have done it like I did with my PS4, where, aside from one regrettable impulse buy at launch (I'll never get over the fact that I paid $60 for a digital copy of Bloodborne), I only buy games digitally if they're indies or go low in sales, and stick to physical for full retail purchases.
Depending on how viable physical media still is for Nintendo's next gen hardware, I might just do that.
@Ralizah Microsoft seemed like the only one of the 3 that could be trusted with digital purchases so I stuck with physical for non-Xbox (of course Steam is the most trustworthy but I don't do PC gaming at all, Steam Deck may change that though). Nintendo had that situation with older hardware where games were tied to the system rather than account so if your console died you lost everything. Sony had that odd glitch awhile back regarding losing access to purchased games that became PS+ if you let your subscription lapse (that's also the reason I'm never subscribing to Game Pass).
The big Xbox outage when Fortnite came to xCloud did destroy trust in Xbox digital games but the outage also affected physical games so you don't gain anything by buying physical on Xbox so I'll continue digital for Xbox.
@Ralizah
Keep in mind "dropping support" thus far has only entailed stopping selling games long after the generation ends. To this day you can still redownload purchased games, which seems to be what most people are actually concerned about.
Until they stop letting you redownload purchased games, I don't see what the concern is. That day will come eventually- it's inevitable. But if it's 20 years after the fact, it hardly seems a problem, at least to me. And you can back up your microSD on PC, an SSD, HDD or another microSD.
The only actual risk comes from if your entire system gets borked, and it happens after they stop allowing games to be redownloaded (which so far we haven't seen that day come). But even then, that isn't a problem if you have a second Switch. Because then if one system gets borked, you just use the other, or transfer it off the other to a new system. The odds both systems get borked, and only after they stop allowing redownloads, is insignificant enough I'd categorize it as negligible risk.
A rough probability estimate would be that 5% of systems get borked completely. Fair? It's probably more like 1-2% so I think that's fair. And if you have a spare Switch, both would have to get borked. That's .05 x .05. And if they allow redownloads for 20 yrs, and you live another 60 (being generous), that's .67 chance it happens after the cutoff.
.05 x .05 x. 67 = 0.17% prpbability you bork both systems and can't redownload. Even with 1 system it's a 3.3% chance. Whether that constitutes too much risk comes down to the individual. For me it's not. For others, it might be. But I think ppl should at least assess the risk based on probability estimates from a Bayesian approach.
Humans are really bad at estimating probability. For example, you take a Covid-19 test that's 90% accurate and it reads positive. Assume 10% of your town has Covid. What's the probability you actually have Covid? Here's a hint- it's not 90%. Its actually 50%. People have a tendency to grossly miscalculate risk. And I think that applies to digital games, as emotion and fear can sometimes override logic.
Psalms 22:16 (1,000 yrs before Christ)
They pierced My hands and feet
Isaiah 53:5 (700 yrs before Christ)
He was pierced for our transgressions
Zachariah 12:10 (500 yrs before Christ)
They will look on Me whom they pierced
@JaxonH Issues regarding access to software licenses on actively supported platforms don't bode well for what will happen with abandoned platforms. Actually, we've already gotten a taste of that with the PS Vita, where problems seem to keep cropping up for people who bought their games digitally due to a lack of attention of any sort from Sony's engineers.
Abandonment from the platform holder is more of an immediate and real threat to the longevity of these digital software investments than them officially discontinuing support.
And, you know, in some ecosystems, it doesn't make that much of a difference. When a game requires significant updates, patches, and whatnot to run properly, or to run at all, the only major benefit to "physical" ownership is that you're able to sell the disc/cartridge and recoup some of the money you spent when you bought it. But Switch is still in a place where many of its physical games work well offline and out-of-the-box. They're a better investment from any perspective other than that of immediate convenience, barring individual circumstances (if you live in a 'bad' neighborhood, investing heavily in physical media that can be lifted from your home might not make a lot of sense, for example).
My decision will, again, heavily depend on individual factors related to how the next console turns out. If Nintendo sees fit to have the successor operate as an extension of the Switch, including full access to the same software licenses, and especially if physical media on it loses the 'plug and play' appeal that so many Switch games currently have, going physical with all the big games doesn't necessarily make as much sense as it might otherwise. Especially since I 'share' digital purchases with my nephew. He can borrow cartridges, of course, but it's a much simpler thing for him to simply have access to my library at all times on his own console.
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