Future of Physical Media in consoles - end of disks?

[Conina]

DPsx7 said:

Conina said:

I bought my first digital games in 2006 (a few PC games on Steam + Telltale Store, PS3 games on PSN and Xbox 360 games on XBL marketplace)... they all still work. The 360 games even run on my Xbox One X, most of them enhanced. So I can't complain.

Usually only multiplayer online modes gets shut down... both for the retail and digital versions at the same time.

I see plenty of people using this logic. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it can't. We've lost a handful of titles over the years due to expired licenses. Luckily I don't think anything I bought is gone yet. If your account is compromised or your drive fails, that will suck. There isn't a lot of precedent on what may happen to digital games in the future. Can they host them forever? Will they allow offline play or users to share files if a server goes away? I figure why chance it, buy the disc and have no worries.

And our physical games / movies can be damaged or get unusable by fire, water, heat, cold, pressure, laser rot, scratches, rusted contacts, empty batteries (can't hold savegames anymore), old copy protections like Securom, Tagès, StarForce... Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it can't. 

Last edited by Conina - on 20 October 2020