Are physical games eventually going to die?

[IcaroRibeiro]

Leynos said:

IcaroRibeiro said:

But for how long? I mean, my PS2 was presenting malfunction after less than 10 years of use. It's clear hardware has expiration date. In 30 years those piece of hardware will be relics and the amount of physical copies will be absolutely useless for most of customers

 We seems to have different definitions of preservation. Preservation for me means making it available to posteriority. Physical games of consoles are just a piece of plastic with no use whatsoever if you can't run the source code. Digital copies are clearly the only feasible way to make games from our generation available for our grandkids 

My local store is still selling Atari 2600 and Bally Astrocade games. I will say it again. Go to one of the million Hard Offs in Japan and aisles and aisles of retro and new games as far as the eye can see. So DS has plenty more time to be sold in stores.

Again, they WILL dissappear eventually unless their original manufacturers start re-releasing them 

Also, how many of those very old consoles are available to mass market? I mean, take a remake of a N64 game Zelda Ocarina of time on 3DS. Sold over 6 million copies. Is there 6 million functional N64 consoles available in second hand market? The answer is obviously not and that's precisely why those remasters sells so well. For many people is not just a matter of purchasing again games they already own and have the means to play, but rather the only way to play them entirely again

Zelda is popular enough to get remake/remasters that justify physical editions every 10 years. Can we say the same of every game NES-SNES available on Switch Online? Hardly. I love Yoshi's Island, but it's a game with no physical release since GBA (which is where I've played the first time by the way). Nintendo is not releasing a physical edition of it anytime soon, so what is left for me is digital. Granted I would very much prefer Nintendo to sell it digitally instead of locking in a subscription plan but alas, it's either this or start hunting for a GBA and a copy of the game