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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Which side are you on: Digital or Physical?

 

Physical or Digital?

Digital Display (Ready For The World) 66 22.22%
 
Let's Get Physical (Olivia Newton-John) 204 68.69%
 
All I Really Want Is To B... 27 9.09%
 
Total:297

PC - Digital
Console - Physical.
I like being able to sell my old console and games. Heck I've made lots of money selling the physical copies of hard to find games. PC I am digital because Steam and Origin and the fact that no matter what, I will always be able to play those games in the future if I so choose.



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Conina said:
d21lewis said:
I used to have to go to the mall, take my wife shopping, ditch her for a second and run to Gamestop, and buy a game. Then, I had to sneak the game to the car, and then sneak it into the house without her noticing.

So much trouble?

You could just have ordered the retail games at Amazon just as fast as buying digital games. Add something for your wife to the order... or just send the games to a friend who "lends" you the games if you need the outsmart kick.

I don't know why but Amazon sucks lately. They'll send me something, say it's almost here, then suddenly change the "expected date". Or, like they did with my Pro (which I conveniently had shipped to my sister's home) deliver it at the very end of the day right when I was leaving for work!

 

Nothing can go wrong when I buy digital. It's foolproof.



Where am I?



I will almost always prefer physical.

Games: I might get a digital version of a game occasionally if it is dirt cheap (like $3 or less).  Otherwise, the only time I'd buy digital is if the game didn't have a physical version, and even that is something that I do sparingly.  Of course there have been a few games that I simply couldn't pass up, like Mega Man 9 & 10.  It still kind of bothers me that I don't have a physical copy though.  The convenience aspect of digital is practically worthless to me.  When I'm playing games, I don't change games every 3 minutes.  I'll get up to stretch my legs from time to time anyway, so I see nothing wrong with getting up to change a disc or cartridge.  I don't care about playing new releases the minute they are first released.  I have such a ridiculous backlog that I don't get worked up about release dates anyway.  I usually just wait a year or more to get a cheaper price since the game would just collect dust anyway if I bought it at launch.  I like to have complete ownership and control over things that I've bought and digital just doesn't do it for me.  It annoys me when games don't get a physical version.  The publisher can take them down at any time which means that anyone that hasn't already bought the game is out of luck.  If there were a physical version, secondhand copies can almost always be found even if they end up being rather expensive.

 Music: I almost always prefer physical.  My format of choice is DVD-Audio, which unfortunately hasn't been utilitzed very much.  If there isn't a DVD-Audio version, I will almost always go for the CD version.  The only reason I would normally consider digital over physical is if the digital version were of higher quality.  It is rare, but does happen occasionally.  DVD-Audio eliminates that scenario, but of course DVD-Audio is hardly used.  I have no desire to spend money on mp3 or AAC encoded music files.  So for me, if I'm buying music, it's lossless or nothing.  The convenience of buying digital music,  as with digital games, is almost worthless to me.  The only thing it saves me is the time it takes to rip my physical media (I rarely listen from the physical media directly).  It wouldn't even necessarily eliminate the need to convert formats.  Considering that digital music is usually lossy, there is no reason to go digital in most cases.  I can make my own rips and encode with a codec and bitrate appropriate for the use case.  Sometimes I want lossless, sometimes lossy.  I don't want to limit every situation to having lossy quality when it isn't necessary.

Movies: I don't normally buy movies for myself.  If I were to buy a movie, I would certainly go physical.  Streaming works fine as a substitute for rentals, although I can't help but wonder if the digital stream is more compressed than the original media.  I can use my parents' Netflix account for free, but I don't know if I'd actually pay for a subscription of my own.  There is a Family Video less than a mile from my house with dirt cheap blu-ray rentals.  Currently, I mostly buy movies for gifts.  You can't wrap a digital movie for someone.



d21lewis said:
Conina said:

So much trouble?

You could just have ordered the retail games at Amazon just as fast as buying digital games. Add something for your wife to the order... or just send the games to a friend who "lends" you the games if you need the outsmart kick.

I don't know why but Amazon sucks lately. They'll send me something, say it's almost here, then suddenly change the "expected date". Or, like they did with my Pro (which I conveniently had shipped to my sister's home) deliver it at the very end of the day right when I was leaving for work!

 

Nothing can go wrong when I buy digital. It's foolproof.

Foolproof you say?
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=222891&page=-1#1



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SvennoJ said:
d21lewis said:

I don't know why but Amazon sucks lately. They'll send me something, say it's almost here, then suddenly change the "expected date". Or, like they did with my Pro (which I conveniently had shipped to my sister's home) deliver it at the very end of the day right when I was leaving for work!

 

Nothing can go wrong when I buy digital. It's foolproof.

Foolproof you say?
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=222891&page=-1#1

Um.. uh, I can explain!



The one that's cheaper. I will go physical if it's a game I know I'll like though, besides you can sell it if it's shit



Physical. Bye.



Bet with Teeqoz for 2 weeks of avatar and sig control that Super Mario Odyssey would ship more than 7m on its first 2 months. The game shipped 9.07m, so I won

Conina said:
Cloudman said:
On the side of physical, always. It's much more enjoyable being able to feel the game in your hands. Back when games came with manuals, that was even better.

It's even more enjoyable holding a controller or mouse in your hand while playing a game instead of a cheap plastic case or a few sheets of paper.

I don't really get it... o_O



 

              

Dance my pretties!

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I'm fine with digital but the current system's in place are basically awful ripoffs and so it's not worth it. They are too expensive, games you find in stores can be £20 while XBL or PSN will have them for £55, they were never £55 in the high street shops as they compete with each other, it was £40. No way to 'exchange' your purchase. You're stuck with it, even if you don't like it.



Hmm, pie.