| G2ThaUNiT said: The collapse of physical PC games needs to be studied. PC gaming went from having the best physical copies of games that you could buy, to being completely digital in such a short amount of time. I think Steam and Games for Windows Live were 2 of the biggest reasons for the collapse of physical PC games, but I'll never understand how we went completely from this:
to being basically 100% digital in such a short amount of time. I still have a lot of my PC games from back in the day, but they're purely for collection purposes unless I decide to invest a Windows XP PC eventually lol. |
I suppose that Apart from Steam and so on there were a few other reasons. First, some online games and MMOs were initially on PC, and it was better for such games to be full-digital because they constantly got updates. Then there was a factor of indie games which often are Digital exclusive (I guess indie games started digitally released on both xbox live and PC launchers earlier than on PSN). Then early access type of gaming on PC happened (somewhere in 2009-2011) when first games in early access stage launched. I guess in 2009-2011 many developers looked at the digital success of indie, early access and online games and understood that it would be possible to move all other games full-digital. In 2012-2014 many studios went full-digital on PC, and PC launchers quickly have grown. And finally in 2015 "PC physical editions" of MGS5 didn't include discs (at least in some countries). In the middle of 2010s physical games on PC have gone away.
