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SvennoJ on 06 December 2024
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Jumpin said:

I've been all digital for over a decade now. Although, I still maintain a substantial physical library (in totes). Digital media has numerous benefits over physical media: significantly greater variety of content, no durability concerns, and convenience across games, books, TV, music, and films. While physical collections have nostalgic appeal, digital formats provide superior advantages:

  • Durability and Security: No wear and tear from usage or the environment (dust, moisture), and your collection is safely stored across multiple devices and cloud storage. Lost or stolen accounts can often be recovered, unlike physical media - which is often gone forever; and it's usually not some burglar stealing it so much as friends of your kids - and you might not even notice until you're moving over a year later and realize some of your stuff is missing.
  • Management: Ties into the above, you know where all your stuff is at all times - but not with physical media, especially if you own hundreds or thousands of items. This especially comes in handy if you've moved as much as I have in my life (across continents and oceans in the past, made a small move, just a few kilometres this year, and that was rough enough).
  • Clutter-Free Living: A digital collection requires no storage space, making it perfect for people who move frequently or prefer minimalism. If you want to dedicate rooms to plants, art, or other luxury items - you have way more space to do so.
  • Convenience: Access your entire library on multiple devices like notebooks, phones, and consoles without carrying physical clutter. Moving your collection across platforms is seamless. Particularly on modern platforms. Access to my full library books, TV shows, films, music, and many games in my living room on my new 4K TV, or on my phone, in my pocket. And with the Switch and M1 MacBook Air, all of my Steam and console games from 2017 in a laptop bag.
  • Availability and Speed: Digital platforms make even rare or niche content easily accessible and downloadable, unlike physical items that may require long waits or go out of print. Indie creators have largely abandoned physical media (music, video, and gaming) - in the past, whole countries were excluded from not just indie games, but mainstream gaming companies. 
  • Environmental Benefits: If you're a Greenie, like myself, then this might be a concern to you. All digital contributes less to waste and pollution from manufacturing, shipping, and plastics helps minimize your carbon footprint. I understand many people don't care about the environment, and are actually purposely hostile toward it because of political affiliations - so this one isn't for everyone.

All in all, I don't miss having my data on a whole bunch of different pieces of plastic. I have found going full digital to be a significant improvement. And, in fact, the time I did have physical media is still a massive burden for me, because I still have a lot of that junk.

I disagree with all your points:

Durability and Security: I've lost far more digital games to HDD failures, losing passwords, losing track of where I bought what, than I've lost physical games from wear and tear.

Management: I have no clue where a lot of the digital stuff is I have bought in the past. Some services don't exist anymore, a lot of other games I have bought directly from the publisher but lost / forget where from in HDD failures / old age. My physical collection is all inside my house. Even if I lose track of something (due to my kids misplacing it) it will turn up again.

Clutter-Free Living: I like a clean game library on my console. It takes me much longer to remember where / locate digital titles in the sea of add-ons and PS+ titles on PSN, the ocean of stuff I don't want from Humble bundles, and the mess of bundles on Steam. It's a lot more effort to get manage digital titles compared to physical items. My brain is also wired to remember where I placed what, not to remember what digital item came from where.

Convenience: All my physical games are where I left them, fast easy re-installs. Digital costs a lot more effort to track them down again, and then I have to download them again. Digital games also clutter up my HDD/SSDs and make it harder to find what I want to play after its installed.

Availability and speed: Having bought games from fledgling developers by snail mail, from Australia no less on 3.5" floppy disc. The lack of availability is only because of digital. My internet speed is also still well below install speed from disc. And Nintendo cartridges often don't require installs at all.

Environmental benefits: With the size of games ballooning, it's more environmentally friendly to re-install a game instead of downloading games over and over. The threshold was 120Gb some years ago in a study. Thus depending on the size of the game, it's more environmentally friendly to install mutiple times from disc over re-downloading games.

I hate having my data over a bunch of different digital stores / publishers / services.