These days I hear more complaining over not owning the game on a Disc. I am curious to know why gamers today still prefer to own the game on disc when it’s physically useless. The consoles of today don’t even read off the discs anymore. The disc is just proof to the company that you have brought the game.
It’s great to own the discs but it’s nothing more than a piece of plastic now. It literally does nothing. Digital is cheaper and it’s a lot simpler to run a library of games without having to insert the discs in the hard drive.
I have an entire collection of games since the late 80s and it’s quite a large collection at that. In many cases I’ve had cartridges stop working due to age and wear and tear, I’ve had Disc games not work due to game servers shut down, I’ve had faulty Disc Drives and badly scratched Discs that no longer work. Now put all that into account that I paid top dollar for them and now some of them aren’t useable anymore (Junk). I jumped on Steam to see how my Steam collection is holding up and all 800+ games are available for download whenever I see fit since 2004. How on Earth could I manage to store another 800+ games in my house? And how many of my games would still work if they were physical copies?
Don’t get me wrong I love having the disc in my hand to show I own it, but does it really matter anymore? Digital might be a permanent purchase but at least it’s always there for you. I have listed the benefits of what I think are great between Digital and Physical below.
Benefits of owning Digital
No Discs
Cheaper Consoles (No disc drives required)
Faster load times
Less house space
Access to entire Library
Cheaper games
Able to download games on any machine (account based)
No Discs/Drive maintenance
Benefits of owning Physical
Install off the disc
Ownership of a game
Resale Value
Now those reasons to own physical aren’t exactly great compared to the reasons to own digital and if you’re someone who loves your games and don’t plan on reselling them, it sort of makes it useless. The fact you need an online account now to use your hardware and half of the game is only accessible online now with paywalls has really made it pointless to own it on disc in my opinion.
If anyone wants to add to my list feel free, I know there’s more with physical but I just can’t think of any.
