| JackHandy said: A physical object will degrade, true. But when it's in my possession, its rate of degradation is up to me, and I take immaculate care of all my stuff. For instance, I have an Atari-2600 and a slew of carts. Some of them are pushing a half-century old. They all work. Flawlessly. My NES carts all work, my Gameboy carts all work, my SNES carts all work, my Genesis carts all work, my PS1, PS2, Gamecube discs all work. The memory cards work, the consoles work. All of it works. Some of that is just a testament to their durability, but a lot of it is due to the fact that they're stored properly and handled with care. In other words, I am in total control over it, and that brings me comfort. I know that when I reach for my Megaman 3 cart and pop it in, it'll just work. And it won't have input lag, it won't have changes to the sprites, or altered music due to licensing issues. It won't look different or play different and be stuck inside of a HDD. It's as it was when released, as it was when I first experienced it. Static, pristine and virgin... for the rest of my life. |
That's something a lot of younger people just don't understand. They grew up in a post iPhone world, where everything is a cheap POS that breaks. They can't comprehend the idea of discs, carts and consoles lasting decades. The library of congress did a study and found that 70% of physical game disks will still be playable after 100 years. Older consoles can break but short of the chips blowing up anything is repairable. And since the chips in older consoles don't create much heat they have a lifespan that makes modern chips look like a mayfly. Seriously, just recap your older consoles, use a good Triad PSU, and adjust the laser after replacing surface mount caps. I can't tell you how many "dead" drives my friend has repaired just by replacing caps, greasing the gears, replacing a gear, replacing a belt, or resetting a pot.
I can't say this enough. All of our older consoles that don't use thermal paste will last decades upon decades longer with proper care. The same goes for our discs and carts. Edit: And as for PS3/360 people are getting crazy. They are throwing smaller nm chips into late-gen consoles, reballing, and adding ridiculous cooling to make these systems last way beyond reasonable life cycles.
OlfinBedwere said:
Ironically, the "when the servers go down" argument applies just as much to Sony and Microsoft as it does Nintendo - a lot of games nowadays rely on day 1 patches, and some games don't even give you anything on the actual disc (including pretty much all Smart Delivery games, which just have the Xbox One versions on the disc and rely on downloading the full game from scratch for Series X users), meaning that when the servers go down you're going to end up with broken and buggy unpatched versions, if even that. |
Doesitplay.org shows that 69% of PS5 games play just fine off a disc, without the need for critical updates.
| curl-6 said: This has actually been a thing on PS/Xbox for quite a while, discs that just contain a download code essentially. |
Doesitplay.org shows that 69% of PS5 games play just fine off a disc, without the need for critical updates.
Kyuu said:
It blew up on Switch 2 because MOST "physical" games don't have the data stored in the cart/disc. This is exacerbated by Nintendo gamers being more physical biased, and Switch 2's storage being too small. Microsoft received notably more criticism than Sony for having more Xbox games not being stored in the disc. And now Nintendo is getting a lot more criticism than either of them for obvious and uncomplicated reasons. |
Doesitplay.org shows that 69% of PS5 games play just fine off a disc, without the need for critical updates.
| PAOerfulone said: The only time I have an issue with it is when there are games that are well under 64GB and they make it a Game Key card anyway. |
Doesitplay.org shows that 69% of PS5 games play just fine off a disc, without the need for critical updates.
Also, the idea that a certain percentage of game sales are digital, therefore physical will die, ignores several key points. First off, many games aren't even offered as physical so the idea that people are freely choosing digital is a lie. Second, microtransactions and DLC are counted towards digital. The sort of bean counters that count physical vs digital don't actually count game sales, but rather revenue. So every Fortnite skin and doo-dad counts as a digital sale when it really shouldn't be. Third, there can easily be a floor effect where a minority of holdouts force a media type to stick around, followed by a resurgence. Just look at vinyl. In fact, that is already happening with a lot of games getting premium and limited physical editions that you need to pre-order.
