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| anonymunchy said: Considering we still have CDs and even LPs in music after Napster all these years ago, and books/magazines/news papers after ereaders and phones, I doubt physical media for games is going anywhere anytime soon. It'll most likely become a small section of a much wider market. |
Music is completely different though, it doesn't need specific hardware to run. You can buy a CD today and shove it into any knock-off brand CD player and it'll run. You won't be able to just grab a limited edition physical release of the newest Mario Kart, Forza, God of War or Call of Duty in the 2030's and shove it in any old thing. If a manufacturer stops making CD Players, who cares, there's plenty and CD's aren't locked to a manufacturers device, heck you can even just burn your own CD's if you want. It would take a monumentally greater investment, amount of effort and support from publishers to cater to a niche physical games market than a niche physical music market.
Any company can make a CD or Vinyl player that will play all CD's or Vinyl's. Supporting physical games requires specific hardware, active support from the developers and publishers for that specific hardware and regular updates to keep up to date. I don't think the music industry catering to the physical niche is in any way a useful example for gaming due to the hardware requirements for playing a game vs some music.
PC is the most comparable as in that case any company can make a device that will play all PC games. Yet PC is the system where physical is already well and truly dead and has been for many years so...
I don't see a lasting future for physical games once the big players in the industry drop it. If Nintendo/Sony/MS stop supporting physical on their consoles then their is nothing anyone else can do about it beyond creating their own console, and yes PC physical is already non-existant.
