Are physical games eventually going to die?

[IcaroRibeiro]

Digital is the best way to preserve games

The servers going down is a non issue the source code and files still exist. As long the company wants to keep selling them, they will sell them and if the company is over they can make the game available to download for free. And if they still refuse? Don't worry the fans will upload it themselves for free ;)

To preserve physical games it's required tovkeep producing physical copies forever and keep them in stores, this is literally impossible

The concern about not being able to play games on consoles exists because consoles are worst way to preserve games. They are closed platforms which means when they want to shut down stores they will and there is nothing else left for you to do

Do you know what are the only games are lost in my life? They are not digital, they are my PS2 and DS collections because I no longer have the hardware to play them. They are not available. The discs and cards are literally useless. You can argue I can get an overpriced 3DS, but for how long? (Lack of) Avaibality for older consoles is much more common than finding some old game on Steam and seeing them being removed from stores

Because of digital I can listen to albums and watch movies that I otherwise would never be able to listen or watch because they used to sell so little the company never bothered to keep producing them. This is true preservation.




Of course this do not apply to multi-player games, however online multi-player games REQUIRES the server to be kept alive in any case. You can put all the game in a disk like in Splatoon, the day Nintendo decides they no longer want to keep the servers on it's over. But you see? It's no a problem with the storage, it's something intrinsic with the kind of game. However just because something is not infinite doesn't mean it doesn't hold value. Concerts and acts are available in their original states for only as long the performers are active, preservation should not be a concern in this case because the art is supposed to be ephemeral. Don't you like it? Sad for you I guess