Shadow1980 said:
"Selection is better." AAA game selection in the same. Low-budget indie, retro, and "arcade" games that cost less than $20 and are usually too impractical and niche to bother with a retail release (though some do get physical releases) don't really count, at least there hasn't been that many small games like those I've shelled out money for. Blaster Master Zero for the Switch was the first digital-only title I actually paid money for since 2010. "It's about the convenience of not having to worry about changing discs." In other words it is about having to avoid the hassle of changing discs. That task is enough of a aggravation to you that you'd rather not have to leave your seat and spend a few seconds on a trivial amount of manual labor. You think that trivial amount of time and effort saved is worth forfeiting ownership of your purchases and therefore all your rights as a consumer. I do not. This "you don't have to change discs" bit is an argument in favor of pure laziness. If a simple 30-second task is too bothersome for someone, then they need to manage their time better. "You also don't have to deal with keeping your library organized and clean." I know. Such a hassle, right? I'm just looking at my rack of discs and thinking about all the painstaking hours I put into keeping it organized. *sigh* Seriously, though, keeping your shit organized is something so basic that it shouldn't even come across as a bother to anyone. Again, you're arguing in favor of laziness. "And if I check the store and see a game I want, bam, I own it. No need to get underwear on and go out." Does anybody not leave their house for anything anymore? Does everyone work out of the home while bare-ass naked and have all their food delivered to them? Is my city the only one that doesn't do this or something? Or are pro-digital evangelists just that lazy that even the most trivial of physical tasks are worth avoiding whenever possible? In all seriousness, I don't mind taking 30 minutes out of my day to go to GameStop or Wal-Mart every now and then. Beats having to wait all day for a download. A simple update to Halo 5 takes six damn hours even with my ostensibly 30 mbps connection. To hell with downloading a whole 50GB game. "Also loads of sales nowadays." I know, like the ones I see all the time for physical copies if you wait a while after launch. Most of the big holiday 2016 releases are already available for $40 or less on Amazon. Most console games don't stay $60 for too long after release. "More and more are agreeing with me :)" Unfortunately. Most of the arguments I see in favor of digital are simply excuses to be as lazy as humanly possible. It also reeks of the idea of a "post-ownership" society where people don't buy goods anymore (except for clothes and consumables like food) but rather invest in pure services, where the average person doesn't own anything but rather effectively rents or leases something owned instead by some company. Personally, I find it odd that so many gamers will gripe about shitty shenanigans pulled by the industry, yet will voluntarily lead the charge in transitioning to a medium that will guarantee that platform holders and big publishers will have complete and total control over everything and therefore would have much less incentive to do better by the gaming public. Digital might have worked on PC because the first-sale doctrine never applied to PC games (and as a result there was never really much of a second-hand market) and because PC is an open platform with multiple competitors. But trying to push all-digital on a closed platform is just asking for trouble. You think the games industry is bad now? You haven't even seen the half of it. Just wait until you're in a situation where the platform holder, be they Sony, MS, or Nintendo, owns your games and controls every aspect of the distribution of every game, period. Remember all that bullshit MS tried to pull with the XBO back in 2013 before they were pressured to reverse course? Imagine that, but worse. Personally, I've benefited more than enough from the first-sale doctrine for 30 years, enough to realize that physical has so much more to offer. I've lent and sold games I didn't want at my own discretion, I've bought used games (many of them out-of-print retro titles), and many of my games were hand-me-downs or trades with friends. None of that would have been possible had everything been digital-only. Hell, I've had digital content mysteriously evaporate into nothingness with no ablity to redownload it. My Halo 2 DLC maps vanished from my system's hard drive for some reason some months after MS stopped supporting the original Xbox, so there wasn't any way to get them back, period. They were gone forever, though fortunately there was and still is a physical alternative, as the DLC maps were released on a disc at the same time the third map pack was released (the final two maps are forever gone, though). It didn't take me long to realize the implications of this, the question "What if that had been an entire library of games and not $20 of DLC?" popping into my head. That one incidence was enough to get me to swear off digital, Perfect Dark Zero and Mega Man 10 (both released shortly before MS ceased supporting the OXbox) being the last digital games I ever spent money on aside from a tiny handful of Virtual Console releases (and now Blaster Master Zero). If console makers ever force the console market to go full-digital, then I'm done with them. I'll be a retro gamer from then on out. |
You can add to that the fact that having your game digitally means you are future proofing your ownership of the rights to that game in perpetuity.
If you travel you also have access to your full library of games no matter where in the world you are.
For people living in big cities, the space to store physical goods is also an important factor. As time goes by, there's no good reason to reserve a ton of space for an ever growing library of games you gather.
Also the fact that physical copies are redundant, the disc is simply a means to deliver the goods (game data) to your machine. If you already have the digital copy in your drive or fast enough internet connection, why would you need other moving parts with limited life?
Cutting the middle man is also another reason. Why should 15/20% of what I pay go to someone whose entire task is transporting and storing a useless piece of plastic for me? Even if prices are the same i much rather support the people who actually created the game with my money than give a cut to an irrelevant middle man.
Convenience... Being able to browse a list of games and jumping between them until you hit the one that speaks to you in the moment.
More environmentally friendly. Less carbon footprint on producing plastics, transportation costs in ships and trucks, etc.
All the issues you currently find with digital can and will be addressed as we transition to a much more digital future. The EU has begun looking into transfer of digital rights. Its a matter of time until popular demand and legislation will regulate more strongly the consumer rights. This takes time, but its going to happen finally.
It's progress... don't be shy, just embrace it :)
