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G2ThaUNiT on 19 September 2023
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rapsuperstar31 said:
the-pi-guy said:

On the digital bit

People have different preferences and different lines in the sand for what they're okay. And that's to be expected.

I'm personally not a fan of subscription services, I've actually gone back to buying blu-ray discs for movies. (And I rip all my movies onto my computer and stream them elsewhere; so I kind of get the best of both worlds. I own all of my movies and tv shows; and they're still available everywhere I would watch Netflix.) It's not a perfect solution, there's still lots that is exclusively streaming. But I still own a lot of my media. 

I think the digital stuff is a bit concerning long term. If Netflix were to go out in 20 years, there would be a lot of great shows that would probably be lost. 

But I personally feel relatively secure with current Xbox, Valve and PlayStation. You can still download games from the Xbox era and you can still download PS1 classics from the PS3 era (even though Sony's PS3 support is lacking). Things could absolutely change, but I think the past few years things have largely trended towards getting better. Microsoft has good support for decades of PC software. Valve has built up a ton of good will over decades. Sony has a lot of competition and a lot of vocal fans to keep pushing them to do better.

But I sympathize with people that are concerned. The industry is changing much more rapidly than it probably ever has; there are some aspects about it that I'm concerned about right now. But if nothing else, I'm pretty confident in MS, Sony and Nintendo still doing most of the same things 10 years from now as they are doing right now. 20 years from now, I'm a lot less confident.  But that's another story.

As long as there is enough demand out there for physical games, there will be options to buy them.  Games like Mario Kart have sold 5.5 million physical games in Japan alone.

If that were the case, then 2 major AAA releases this year alone wouldn't be digital-only. All 3 major console platform holders have revealed that more than half of all game purchases on their platforms have been digital. The more that number goes up, the less physical releases there will be.