Stadia officially shutting down January 18th, 2023

[Shadow1980]

hinch said:

Shadow1980 said:

This is precisely why I will never spend a single dime on streaming game services, and why if the industry ever abandons physical media then I'm done supporting it.

Digital is the way things are going for consoles, sadly. I can see the gen after next, that manufacturers next completely remove physical media from their consoles. And I wouldn't be too surprised if Nintendo followed suit shortly after. And there's no need to be so dramatic to quit gaming should things go digital. PC's and Steam have been thriving for years without physical media.. if you like to game, and don't want to be ripped off you can't go wrong by using Steam :PP

In any case cloud gaming was always iffy for me. If its not the input lag its the terrible image quality compared to playing on a local machine. When I play on game on one, it always looks and feels like I'm playing a stream instead of a game lol. Really off-putting tbh.

I prefer physical because I actually like to own my media. I never owned an mp3 player, never had an account for iTunes, Spotify, etc., and never bought a digital copy of a movie. I still buy CDs (too many to count), Blu-rays (nearly 100 movies so far), print books (mostly manga), and so far I own 60 different games on physical between the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X, and Switch, to say nothing of the dozens I have on older systems. I did download a few Virtual Console & WiiWare games on the Wii & Wii U, and I did download Blaster Master Zero on the Switch to have something to play at launch besides BotW, but aside from that every digital game I've downloaded I got for free as part of some promotion. I do have Game Pass, but I treat that as a "try before you buy" sort of thing. If I like the game, I buy it physically if that's an option.

If the option to buy physical is taken away from me, then I'm done supporting the video games industry. I'll have several decades worth of games at my disposal to last me the rest of my life. I'm not sinking hundreds of dollars into something I don't even own.