Chazore said:
I'm sitting here wondering why no one has asked the elephant in the corner of the room the question that really should be asked:
Why is no one talking about Console Digital store closures?.
See there is definitely a desire to own physical media, but with digital you have pros as well, like saving on physical space, faster access, etc, but ofc both physical and digital have their cons as well.
My main and possibly biggest gripe with digital gaming is when a company's license agreement deal expires, and then we end up seeing a game being completely delisted from all storefronts online. The biggest gripe I have with digital console storefronts is that all of them operate a storefront per system, and over time they end up closing said console storefront systems, denying users the ability to even purchase those digital games down the line.
See on PC that's not really a big issue, because we have:
Steam
EGS
Origin
U(can't)Play
GoG
Battlenet
Itch.io
For PC, one storefront closing down, like say, EGS or U(can't)play wouldn't really do much of a dent, but with a console, once it's digital storefront closes that's it, you're completely denied the ability to buy games for that specific console.
I feel like if consoles truly want to adopt an all digital future, they really need to have a more unified storefront system, complete with the ability to play games from previous generations (without having to buy them again and again). If they can manage that for generations going forward, it would make it less of a hassle and more comforting to know that what you buy is largely going to be there and accessible years later.
The other issue I do see all around in general with the all digital future is that early into this era, we were more or less told over time by some venues that "it would be cheaper to produce games digitally", and that in turn held some promise for "cheaper games", and yet that completely did not happen, not in the AAA/console 1st/3rd party place, where digital prices are just as expensive, if not more than physical on their own storefronts (ho boy am I looking at you Nintendo).
If consoles could get digital CD keys from other sites on the web, then that'd at least cut down on some of the console storefront pricing a bit (like how folks on PC use key sites to bypass prices set on Steam for example). |
I've mentioned this several times over the years, 100% agree. I have also said if we ever go digital I will go PC exclusive as Steam as example isn't tied up to a fixed period in time. I can revisit games I played in the 90s and enjoy them without too much worry.
I've also said if console manufactures want us to go digital they need to give us freedom to backup our data easily (updates, bug fixes, extra purchases etc) and not tie it to the hardware it's on or a digital user ID that does not log in once online services are down.
I can understand locking it to a console to protect sales, but when a generation ends, firmware should be released that allows us full freedom of our data to be used as a retro console on any console an not locked just to yours, i.e. in case your hardware fails and you ned to replace it.
