Are physical games eventually going to die?

[Chrkeller]

SvennoJ 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 

Do you have kids? Kids are interested in the tactile experience. My kids loved playing with all the old consoles, their interest in old games started based on the hardware. I want to play with that controller daddy (gamecube) so I hooked the gamecube back up and they enjoyed the games on it. Then they got into ps2 and the funky looking Intellivision. The voice module was a big hit. I wish I still had a Vectrex, that's a true magical marvel, hopefully it will be remade at some point (that is if the hardware schematics have been preserved) but you can still find them if looking hard enough.

Old digital games in a menu on my PC, zero interest. So I'm sorry to pop your balloon of presenting your grand kids with a vast digital library, that's not how kids get excited about things. Mine were all over our 90's Gameboys we still had lying around. Couple fresh batteries, and off they went playing Mario games on the gameboy. Tons of fun. Zero interest in playing them in the virtual console.

We grow up tasting everything first, mouth is your primary tool, then hands, brain comes last. Digital is great for nostalgia, irrelevant for growing up. VR has a much better chance to appeal to kids (it does) but the Wii motes were the biggest success for when they were toddlers, as well as eye toy / kinect, DDR dance mats, light guns, Move sharpshooter. Just copying digital games is not preservation, it's merely feeding your nostalgia. It's only part of the experience.

My kids are the complete opposite.  The idea of physical media and wired controllers are a huge turn off.  They love digital.  They are twins and 12 years old.  Both have beaten the likes of horizon, tears, hogwarts, breath and many others.  The one is playing tales arise as we speak.