Why do Disk Drives matter?

[RolStoppable]

Chrkeller said:

RolStoppable said:

Fact is that physical music sales in the USA are increasing again after they hit rock bottom, so in other words, the current trend is contradicting the conclusion of an eventual all-digital future. Taylor Swift was brought up to disprove your point about the supposed natural cycle where young people who are allegedly all-digital will replace preceding generations.

You are betting against Taylor Swift. You are brave.

For starters you are assuming only young people listen to Swift.  And yeah, she has a lot of young fans, but dude old people listen to Swift as well.  My wife is a huge fan. 

And according to YouTube they have over 2,000,000,000 people a month who consume music via digital.  Lol.  

And yep, I can easily see an all digital future.  Have you seen the Li-Fi research?  In theory 220,000 mbps...   want to talk about lossless media via digital, there you go.  

Edit

And has Nintendo released a Zelda physical collection (Zelda, Zelda II, LttP, Ocarina and Majora) on the Switch?  Or is it digital only behind a paywall?  Hmm, digital only behind a paywall.  One step away from streaming.  

According to Nintendo Life, Switch digital sales grew 21% and is currently 46%.  Sounds like digital will be the majority of sales sooner than later.  

2022 data has ps5 at 80% digital. 

Steam and Epic are 100% digital and have over 200,000,000 active users.  

In the UK 89% of all game sales were digital.  

Conclusion -> physical is the future!!!  LMFAO.

No, I am not assuming that only young people listen to Swift. I provided evidence that young people buy physical music whereas you have yet to provide a single piece of evidence to support your original point. Here are your original points:

Chrkeller said:

There is zero doubt in my mind that Nintendo eventually drops physical, everyone will. It might be a few decades away, but it will happen. The natural consumer life cycle is younger people replace older people. Younger people have little experience, knowledge or love for physical. Today's kids live in a purely digital world and will not be physical collectors the older generation is. This is just reality. Markets change as generational focus shifts.  Easy example, at least in the US, good luck buying a car that has a CD player.  

The way you are handling arguments is reminiscent of Soundwave. You make points that are easily refuted by evidence, then you change your argument, pretend that you are arguing against the counterpoints you are confronted with and top it off by ridiculing the other guy. But all you accomplish is making yourself look like a fool who is unable to handle a proper discussion.

Norion said:

I don't think Nintendo getting rid of a physical option would cause anywhere near as big of a backlash as pursuing microtransactions. Backlash to that move would already be way smaller than it would be if done a decade ago so it's just about doing it when the backlash would be small enough to not really matter. You're right that Nintendo is relatively unique but at the end of the day they're a company so will chase after money and like the things you listed pursuing digital will make them more money.

It's positive for the consumer but for the console manufacturers digital is better so unfortunately I think it's only a matter of time till the negative impact to customer satisfaction will become low enough for Nintendo to remove the option. They can still make money from things like toys and selling special editions of their games that come with a code so I'm not saying they'll abandon selling physical items entirely. For the negative coverage part Nintendo is no stranger to doing things that piss off their fans and attract negative PR so as long as the benefit of the move outweighs that which I think it will later on they'll do it.

And I'm extrapolating based on both of those things. I think it'll make sense business wise for Nintendo to go in that direction within the next few decades and Xbox and Sony being closer to it with them having a higher digital presence is good evidence that Nintendo is only behind them in regards to it since I don't see a reason for them to not do the same unless the overall trend stops or reverses.

I'll make this really simple now. A profit-oriented business - which Nintendo absolutely is - is looking at these two options for the future:

1. Sell all their games digital-only and make a lot of money.
2. Sell their games in both physical and digital formats to make even more money.

The only way option 2 could make less sense is if there's a 100% guarantee that every former physical purchase will be forced into a digital purchase.