Why do Disk Drives matter?

[Norion]

RolStoppable said:

Norion said:

Why would it need to be every former physical purchase? Losing a small amount of physical purchases would be worth it to not have to deal with things like cartridges, get all the people who are indifferent to physical vs digital to only buy the latter and in general have more control over their customers. And I expect that doing this would actually create some new digital game purchases for them since if someone wanted to play a Nintendo game the option of buying a 2nd hand copy for cheaper or borrowing a physical copy from a friend wouldn't be available any more so unless they can borrow someone else's entire console or manage to pirate it they'll need to buy it directly from Nintendo to play it which would help make up for lost physical purchases.

This scenario would suck but like what happened to PC gaming I really think it's only a matter of time till console gaming follows it in this way even if it's quite a few decades away and digital only on console would be much worse compared to on PC so I would prefer to end up being wrong about this.

What I find frustrating about this particular exchange is that it reminds me so much of talking to curl-6. As in, it's a scenario he himself doesn't want to become reality, but the paranoia gets to him so much that he can't see it playing out any other way anymore.

I just don't see how Nintendo would be able to convince its customers that all-digital is good. Nintendo offers more incentives for digital purchases than Sony and Microsoft, but somehow lags behind them tremendously when it comes to the digital share of software purchases. At some point you have to strongly consider that an all-digital future is something that a big enough amount of gamers does not want to support. Buying digital games is easy on Switch, storing them is easy as well, you consistently get more cash back when you buy digital over physical, and yet, the sales data are what they are.

I mean I wouldn't say it's paranoia. It's not like it'd negatively impact me directly I just think it'd be a shame for those who are into buying physical games which is why I'd rather it not happen and I think I have reasonable reasons for expecting it to happen.

They lag behind them yeah but are ahead of where the two of them where at with it a decade or so ago so my main point is it's just a matter of time since I think the amount of gamers that don't wanna support it will dwindle in number to the extent that them protesting the shift won't do anything notable enough for Nintendo to not want to get the benefits of pursuing digital. You just need to compare how much of a digital presence the 3DS had compared to the Switch and imagine how that progress could continue for the Switch 2 or the console after that or even the one after that.

You brought up physical music sales but the key difference is that a tiny handful of companies that would benefit from going digital don't have total power over the entire market for that. It's why I expect things like physical music and film sales for new releases to outlast physical video games since if the big three all remove the option then the market is dead aside from retro games.

That's how I feel things will go but since this is talking about something that if it happens could be several decades away we can just agree to disagree for now unless you have more you wanna add since there is risk of talking in circles if this keeps going for long enough since I think I've already repeated myself a bit.