thanks for the asinine LMGTFY link. I AM talking about the subject at hand. How on earth is pointing out that games publishers have been doing this exact thing for years and was never met with any resistance have nothing to with the subject at hand? Is the thread supposed to be filled with everyone acting like they're now not going to buy this game over Activision's decision when they have almost definitely bought games in the past that did the exact same thing? Why is it such a problem to point how how willy it is that people are just complaining about this established, common industry practice now?

And that's a false analogy. Essentially what I'm arguing is that there are dozens and dozen of people that have been stabbed to death over the years and no one gave two shits save for a handful of people, but in the last couple months, two more people got stabbed to death the exact same way, are acting like no one has been stabbed before in the history of mankind. Activision has every right to be confused why suddenly, after all of these years of the game industry doing this and not even getting so much as a whimper out of the consumer base that suddenly now everyone is acting like Activision ran over their dog.

Sure the practice is bad, but that ship has lonnnnnnng sailed. If this was something the games community was going to take a stand on, they picked a completely and utterly random time to do it. To be perfectly clear - I don't think it's great or even fine that publishers do this. I never have. But after years of seeing it, and seeing millions of people buy games that feature it, I no longer think this is worthy of any bit of outrage. The mountain has been eroded into a molehill by mass consumer acceptance.

None of those games use discs which are cheaper for data storage than cartridges and would cost less to put them all on one disc as opposed to using higher-storage carts, which would cost more, so you're just comparing apples and oranges. There's NO excuse for pulling this shit for disc-based games. There WAS backlash over the MMXL and RER Collections doing this shit BTW as Ganon pointed out. 

Activi$ion can go eat a fat one. They've pulled by far the most anti-consumer shit of any publisher this year. 

In other posts I listed other examples where discs were/should have been used, such as the Metal Gear Solid Legacy collection for PS3, God of War Saga for PS3, Tomb Raider collection for X306, and Sonic Mania for PS4/X1. I'm not comparing Apples and Oranges.  This shit has been pulled on disc-based games plenty of times over the years.

As for backlash on those other games, again, why now? Whether people started getting upset at this July, or April doesn't make much a difference if they weren't getting upset about it in 2008. My point was people are only getting upset over this shit now when publishers have been doing it for a decade, and that's seems a bit silly. It would be like getting upset at Nintendo next year for selling the N64 Classic without a means to power them included in the box.

Jim Sterling hit the nail on the head:

Once the servers go down, two-thirds of the game are gone forever because, you know, you don't actually own the things you buy digitally. And what if you don't have internet and buy physically? You basically paid $40 for one (20-year-old) game. And if you have shit internet for whatever reason? God help you with those insanely-long download times.

Fuck Activi$ion. Like I said, they're not the first ones to be taken to task for doing this, but even if they were, so what? 1)Other company's scummy business practices doesn't excuse Activi$ions, and 2)they're in NO position to pull shit like this after the BO4 BO pass and BO3 Back-in-Black DLC bullshit and the Destiny 2 debacle.

I'm fully digital but I wonder what Activision will give as their reason.

Edit

From their statement it seems that Spyro 2 and 3 will be on the disc but will require a day 1 patch of some kind. In that case it would have been better to delay the game and finish it. That has me worried that the games won't be finished at release and will maybe never get finished or at least for a while. Good thing I don't preorder.

Good thing I'm fine with digital downloads and that I'll be grabbing it on PC sometime in the future.

That being said, whatever Activision pulls out of their backsides will likely be bullpucky.

Yeah, until the servers go down, then you're stuck with the first game. And if you have shit internet for whatever reason? God help you through those insanely-long dowload times. 

Seriously, fuck Activi$ion. 

I'd say 50% of ps4 players will buy digital anyway. Not a big deal for us. I'm getting digital anyway. 2tb had on my pro. Lots of space.

Well that's why I buy my games from Steam, which has a plan for the day the digital apocalypse happens.

That and I always have my games backed up that I care about on a spare external passport drive. 

Fuck Activision, but I'm never ever joining that little rag tag "fuck digital!" group. 

Get ready for this to happen more and more. Sony reported that full game sales were at 43% digital in Q1 2018. Not long before we hit 50, then 60, and 70, and so on. Physical games are going to be a very rare and niche thing in the time PS5 is wnding down, and PS6 is ramping up. Casual consumers care more about value and ease of use than physical.