Shadow1980 said:
Your results may vary depending on where you live, but, in the U.S. at least, digital is a raw deal, especially when it comes to console games. I've written at length about this on many occasions here and elsewhere. Here's my main bullet points:
- Under current U.S. law, physical copies are treated as the purchaser's property. They are sold, not licensed. I own those disks & cartridges on my shelves. But you cannot own digital copies. They are treated as "licensed, not sold."
- As they are treated as the purchaser's property, physical copies are subject to the the First-sale Doctrine. The owner of the copy can sell, lend, trade, or gift their copy at their own discretion without the permission of the copyright holder. Digital, however, is not subject to the first-sale rule. Your ability to sell, lend, trade, or gift digital copies is dependent on the sole discretion of the copyright holder, because it is their property to dispose of, not yours.
- The first-sale rule creates a second-hand market. Even out-of-print titles can be found second-hand. While prices for used games can vary depending on age and supply, most notable games are still available for purchase long after they've stopped being available through official channels. Meanwhile, digital titles than have been delisted are completely unavailable for purchase, as no second-hand copies readily exist (you may be able to find someone willing to part with an entire system or hard drive, but that's rare, expensive, and impractical). There are many digital-only games that have been delisted, and if you didn't get it while the getting was good, you ain't getting it. The effective nonexistence of second-hand market for digital copies is especially troublesome if you somehow lose a digital copy and the storefront that it was sold from no longer exists or the title is otherwise unable to be re-downloaded (I ran into this issue myself, and it contributed to my swearing off of paying for digital copies).
- Physical is generally cheaper. If you're willing to wait a few months, most notable games (except first-party Nintendo games) can generally be found for $45 or less (and that continues to go down over time), while they tend to remain at $60 on digital storefronts for a considerably longer time aside from the occasional sale. Because they are closed platforms, digital storefronts on consoles have no competition and therefore no incentive to reduce prices.
There's a reason why I have hardly spent a dime on digital downloads in the past decade. Aside from a handful of Virtual Console releases on Wii U or 3DS, the only thing I bought digitally after 2010 was Blaster Master Zero on the Switch, and every other digital copy I have I got for free as part of some promotion. If I'm going to spend money on games, I want to have something I can hold in my hand and say "this is mine." To me, the claimed benefits of digital on consoles do not even come close to matching the benefits of physical, much less outweighing them.
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