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Forums - Gaming Discussion - When you have to "resort" to digital.

LivingMetal said:

This is not a "digital vs. physical media" debate. (Although I can see it evolving into one.)

When there's an option to buy a physical or digital version of a game, my default choice is physical.  But when it comes down to it, I'll buy digital if the physical version of the game is out of print, and the price of the physical version is too high beyond reason.  I would have loved to own a copy of the Gravity Rush Remaster for the PS4.  Original priced at $30, I should have pick it up when I can since it was a very limited run.  It easily runs for almost 3x as much on eBay for the US version.  You can get it on sale on the PSN for $15.  So it was too tempting to pass up given the reality of the physical release on the gray market.  Honestly, I'd buy a near mint copy of the original for $30 over the current digital sale price, but at this point I cannot really complain.  Thankfully, Gravity Rush 2 has yet to succumb to gray market gouging.  I'll be keeping an eye out on this one.

What games would you have preferred to have a physical copy of, but had to resort to buying digital?

It's unfortunate you missed grabbing the Gravity Rush Remaster.  I live in Canada where that was only exclusive to US Amazon too but luckily i had a family member in the US ordered one for me.

The only time i'd buy digital is if its digital only, or if it's a game I was never extremely hyped for but seemed interesting enough and was cheap. (Cause if it dont like it then at least it was cheap and doesn't go into my collection of physical games hehe)

I almost preordered Secret of Mana on PSN but luckily Gamestop/EB Games Canada announced they will have a limited run of physical copies of the game.  If you're into that game as well try and preorder the physical at your local Gamestop asap!



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I mostly buy physical but sometimes in flash sales I resort to digital. Got my brother gran turismo sport without having to go out on Christmas



OdinHades said:
FloatingWaffles said:

I usually prefer physical copies and will usually only get digital if that's the only way to get something, or if a game is much cheaper digitally compared to physical, though i'm not sure how often that happens. 

For example I bought Modern Warfare Remastered on PS4 digitally a while ago and the PSN Store page told me it was only like 40-50GB or something like that then it turned out to be like 77GB or something like that. That really fucked up the rest of my PS4 storage and made me have to delete a lot of other games to make room for it.

That pissed me off, felt like false advertising and I regretted buying it. Even if it's because they had updates and DLC and such, then fuckin update the store page to reflect that new GB size. Just an example of why I would have preferred to get the physical copy instead of going digital if it was gonna be that big, but I normally don't buy big games like that digitally anyway. 

Wouldn't you run into the exact same problem with a physical version of the game? It gets installed completely onto the hard drive anyway and on the back of the cover it says that it needs 50 GB. So I don't really see where the difference between digital and physical is in this scenario.

Yeah I know it would probably be the same, I just mean that if i'm gonna get a game that big i'd rather have it physically since it means less downloading, which in turn means I don't have to wait as long to play it lol. 

Last edited by FloatingWaffles - on 10 January 2018

Xen said:
COKTOE said:

That's pretty much exactly how I feel. Right down to Gravity Rush Remastered. I slept on the physical copy, couldn't get it anymore, and ended up buying it digitally on sale on PSN. Of course, there are digital-only games too. Like the Housemarque games, or EDF 2017 Portable on the Vita. Gonna bust out the CC and see if I can still order Drive Girls and Valkyrei Drive this morning. Drive!

Dear Gravity Rush remastered people, though I feel I already asked you, COKTOE, why no physical copy of the game from Europe? It's cheap over there. I got my copy in the Czech Republic for the equivalent of 10 or 15 euros (about the same in USD), forgot which.

The great thing about the Gravity Rush Remastered is that all content is on the disc and you don't have to worry about DLC from a different region. I guess I'm OCD in the sense that being in North American, I want all my games to be North American region.  The only exception to this was buying the Asia version of Siren and Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires Europe because there are no physical North American copies.



I prefer physical over digital. Most of the time I will buy physical if it's convenient enough for me. I'm rather impulsive, so there are plenty of occasions where it's late at night and I decide I want a game. In those cases, I have no problem going digital. Depending on the game system, file size may also play a factor in my decision.

Going on a bit of a tangent, but one of my PS3s only has 12 GB of space (no joke), and there are some games (even the physical versions which require large installs) that cannot be played on that system at all.

When buying digital, the platform matters as well. Steam isn't going anywhere anytime soon, so I know that the games I purchase will be available for the foreseeable future (but who knows, really). This is where Nintendo consoles are lacking, as game purchases don't seem like they will last forever. When I buy a digital game on the eShop, it doesn't feel as though the game is mine.

Another thing I want to point out is that there are certain games (like Mario & Zelda) that I am more inclined to buy a physical copy for. I like having physical copies of my AAA Nintendo games, while indie games lend themselves well to being digital (price, file size, maybe no physical version even present).



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COKTOE said:
Xen said:

Dear Gravity Rush remastered people, though I feel I already asked you, COKTOE, why no physical copy of the game from Europe? It's cheap over there. I got my copy in the Czech Republic for the equivalent of 10 or 15 euros (about the same in USD), forgot which.

I will do it, ( recently got Vita memory cards from Japan ) but generally don't like to order things tbh. My first choice is the stores close to me. I suppose I'm guilty of not making use of all the options available to me at certain times. It's a mental problem. :) But as far as Gravity Rush RM goes, it was on sale on PSN very soon after it's release, so I just went for it.

Last I checked, you can get Drive Girls for $15 physical.  Good luck.



LivingMetal said:
Xen said:

Dear Gravity Rush remastered people, though I feel I already asked you, COKTOE, why no physical copy of the game from Europe? It's cheap over there. I got my copy in the Czech Republic for the equivalent of 10 or 15 euros (about the same in USD), forgot which.

The great thing about the Gravity Rush Remastered is that all content is on the disc and you don't have to worry about DLC from a different region. I guess I'm OCD in the sense that being in North American, I want all my games to be North American region.  The only exception to this was buying the Asia version of Siren and Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires Europe because there are no physical North American copies.

I lived in PAL regions my whole life, and my collection looks like a complete free-for-all. Unlocking regions everywhere did magic for me. (no need to hack the console to do it now)