Pemalite said:
Soundwave said:
Yes, physical is on it's last legs I think that's fairly obvious. For the "I won't buy a console if it's not physical" then that probably means PS6 and XBox and Steam are all out and Switch 2 is going be a barely physical platform. The 3rd party games will be overwhelmingly Game Key Cards and the Nintendo published cartridge games you will it looks like be paying a $10 premium for (so hurray for $70+ games in that case).
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I have already resided over the fact the Xbox Series X will likely be my last Xbox, which is a shame considering I own every Xbox console/variant.
The physical shelf that holds Xbox games here has dwindled down to nothing. (Poor console sales likely has a role to play in that as well.)
I am 5 years into the console Lifecycle and I own about 40 Xbox Series Games... Verses around 150~ on Xbox One at around the same time.
Playstation 5 is also reducing, but to a much lesser degree, they haven't gone all-in on stuff like Gamepass, helped by decent hardware sales to make the physical market more viable.
See how the cards fall next generation but if there is no Physical, then there is no purchase, it's as simple as that, don't care what brand it is.
If I have to go digital, I'm sticking to PC.
Soundwave said:
Game sales being good doesn't really change the dynamic that publishers need the best margins on their games today more than ever with game development costs being sky high. Losing $5-$10 margin on a copy of a game (probably more than that on Switch 2 since the cartridge while not super expensive is probably still another $7-$10 cost on its own) to have a retail version makes less and less sense when digital is becoming the standard anyway.
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Game development costs being high is a choice on the developers... The developers who chase those high budgets, chase high production values... And in turn constantly break sales records.
ITS A CHOICE.
Many developers have much smaller budgets and do just fine. See: Larian with Baldurs Gate 3.
Live within your means.
We need to stop using the silly excuse of "high development costs". - They literally choose to have those budgets.
Soundwave said:
That's the other problem too is physical games even when they have some/all data on a disc or cartridge present a problem in that modern games are designed to be played off much faster mass storage. The PS5 internal storage is way faster than a Blu-Ray disc drive can be, so basically you're not really playing many games off the disc themselves, it's off the HDD making the disc just a glorified key card in a way. For Switch 2, getting faster cartridges to make the UFS 3.1 internal storage so you don't have a weird disparity where cartridge games take way longer to load (lol) also likely makes the cartridge itself more expensive. So that's a problem and it looks like Nintendo isn't willing to eat the cost of that per game. It's being passed on to the consumer as their physical games now have a $10 premium it looks like over digital.
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Internal storage has always been faster than optical. Always.
Original Xbox? HDD > DVD.
Playstation 3? HDD > Blu-Ray.
Xbox 360? HDD > DVD.
Playstation 4? HDD > Blu-Ray.
Xbox One? HDD > Blu-Ray.
Playstation 5? SSD > Blu-Ray.
Xbox Series X? SSD > Blu-Ray.
Wii? EMMC SSD > Wii Optical Disk.
WiiU? EMMC SSD > WiiU Optical Disk.
I am not asking developers to stream data from optical, I am okay with installs.
But I want the entire game on disk/cart, playable on launch day without any downloads.
I am also okay with higher physical prices if I get to stay physical. - Except what usually happens is the digital price is the SAME as the physical, which means the digital copy is a worse deal for the consumer.
Cobretti2 said:
The issue with digital is no one knows what happens to your digital games once the services shut down.
If game companies effectively let you do whatever you want with your digital data after the generation ends, then I think more people would take up digital gaming. Why can't I simply copy my data to a USB drive and then drag it across easily to a new/second hand console 20-30 years from now if my console dies and I buy a replacement from say ebay/amazon/marketplace? At the end of the generation of a console, they should release firmware that turns off all the DRM nonsense and let us use them like retro console however we wish.Â
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Actually we do know what happens.
Access to your games is still allowed, provided it's off-line only content.
While the content servers are still online, you can redownload your digital copies even once the store-front has closed. I.E. I can still redownload Xbox 360 and Wii, WiiU, DS and 3DS games just fine.
But once those servers go offline you will NOT be able to redownload that software.
Secondly... Because the Authentication servers are offline, you cannot transfer your digital library and account to another console if your console fails, unlike physical which is disconnected from that.
The advantage of PC is that it's so easy to "crack" your legitimate copies it's an irrelevant issue.
Soundwave said:
It's not really though, there's no scenario in which having some split of physical games is some how more profitable. Gamers are simply going to be forced to buy games digitally or get out of the industry, and Sony/MS/Nintendo all know the crowd of people that talk about quitting gaming entirely if they don't get physical games is a tiny actual audience. People adjusted to digital only for movies and their music, it's inevitable that gaming will go the same way.
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Abandoning Physical means you lose customers as there are customers like myself who are Physical only, ergo, less revenue and profits.
Clearly with the Switch offering Physical AND digital is the optimal path forwards to accrue volume sales in hardware AND software.
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Baldur's Gate 3 has an estimated budget of $100 million dollars (on the low end of estimates), lol. If that's what passes as "smaller budget" these days well that just says it all. A mid to high budget game used to cost like $4-5 mill to like $15 mill on the top end. Zelda: Ocarina of Time cost $12 million back in 1998, even with inflation that's only $21.5 million today, GoldenEye 007, which was a huge blockbuster hit and GOTY winner, was made on a $2 million budget (lmao). GTA3 on the PS2 had a 5 million dollar budget, GTA6 has a 2 billion (with a b) dollar budget, lol.
The gap between SSD and disc read speed is 1000x+ now (5500MB/sec vs 50MB/sec) though, in the past the gap was at least respectable to the point where it made some sense to run a game off a disc ... the disc drive today is basically useless, it's just there to essentially dump the game onto the SSD and given how game development is today it almost certainly won't have the "complete game" on the disc either because future firmware updates have to be downloaded from the internet. So even the idea of "well I have the full game on the disc so I can surely just load it up in 15 years if I want" ... like I wouldn't count on that all. The publisher can lock you out if you don't have the latest firmware. Disc formats are basically useless for running games and this will get even worse on the PS6/Next Box which will probably have an even faster SSD, but alas PS6/Next Box most likely won't even bother with the disc drive at all.
Some group of people will stop gaming if they can't get physical games, I just don't think there's much evidence that's it's a huge part of the gaming demographic. People will move to digital only, they have done it with movies and music, even if you offer people physical movies and music, the overwhelming majority don't want physical media, particularly the younger kids of today aren't going to care and hardware manufacturers will be happy cutting out the retailer and keeping that cut for themselves.
Just for the record I don't mind physical media, I like it, but I don't have a huge hang up over it. Physical Switch games and physical disc games aren't nearly as endearing as NES or SNES or Genesis or even Game Boy cartridges like back in the day, these little tiny postage stamp sized games with basically no art but the logo of the game on them doesn't really do much for me though. I'm more sad honestly that GameStop and places like that are likely to go out of business. Say what you want about those places, but they still employ a lot of people who need those jobs to put food on their table. But it is what it is at this point.
Last edited by Soundwave - on 12 May 2025
