I've been thinking about this a little since the reveal of the physical price increase for the Switch 2. The implications kind of seems to be that physical games will be a bit more of "luxury" going forward which theoretically fits okay with collectors and less so with parents buying for their kids (though of course neither would be happy about paying more), but it got me thinking what if physical games actually were a bit more premium, because though there have been some cool exceptions in a way the opposite has been happening over time with games being stripped down to an empty box with a cartridge/disc. So far there's no word the Switch 2 will be changing that and if anything the cases have gotten uglier.
Below I have a couple of examples from my own games of physical games that went that little extra mile. None of these are collector's edition, some are day 1 editions some just the regular one, but they all either contain a little something extra or a sleeve or special case of some sort. Even something like Hades which was just a regular case but came with a code for the soundtrack and a character compendium is pretty cool to me and for me personally I'd actually be okay paying a tad more for physical if things like this became the standard, not because I want it for every game, but I'd switch over to pick and choosing the games I really want as physical and get the "less important" ones as digital (which is something I'm already practicing a little but still mostly getting physical). I'd be especially down with this idea if it could help bring back more physical PC games (as unrealisitc as that is).
What are your thoughts on this? Of course the best of both worlds would be to have regular physical editions and this slightly higher "tier" for enthusiasts, but that's probably a bit of a stretch as the reality probably is that physical will be treated more and more as second class. But in theory, if the alternative was for physical games to be premium editions at a slightly higher price (but still much lower than collector's editions) would you be okay with that? Or do you just want your damn cartridges so they can stick around forever?
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