I'm just tired of being expected to re-buy the same game multiple times.  After grabbing chrono trigger on the snes then on the wii....  to now being expected to buy it yet again on steam...  no thanks.  Retroarch it is.  

And having a dozen old systems just isn't practical.  Heck I'm not sure a snes would even connect to my current TV.  

I'm glad you agree with me.

There is something  cool about the original experience, I'll give you that.  But retro is pretty damn cool for convenience.

Digital on PC was more about convenience than consoles, when PC had physical media you also had intrusive DRM schemes (They still exist though), but you also had stupid CD Keys that consoles never had.

Then you had CD Keys+Exclusive game clients/launchers from all the different publishers... And needed to patch games individually from the publishers website.

I used to Install StarCraft: Brood Wars every time I upgraded/reformatted/replaced my PC, so I actually learned my CD Key off by heart... And was required for Battle.net play.

Now it's all in once place on Steam and far less hoops to jump through.

Sometimes modders/communities band together and re-host old MMO's in their original inception, obviously that can only work on PC...

Virtual machine is your friend. Perfect backwards compatibility.

Just setup a VM on your desktop, load Windows 98SE (Or whatever OS that is best for that era of games) and bobs your uncle.

Or do what I do... And build an era-correct PC.

Games are also ballooning in size... It makes it hard to fit a game on disc/cart these days when the media itself hasn't actually kept up with increased data sizes.

We need a successor to Blu-Ray.

Component/Composite to HDMI adapters exist, even a scaler would be a good choice.

However older games that used CRT's unique "behaviours" to make effects like translucent water by checkerboarding the sprite and the display naturally blurring the pixels will never look great on a modern display anyway.

If the consoles go digital, I will be gaming on PC exclusively. More freedom.

Digital is the best way to preserve games

The servers going down is a non issue the source code and files still exist. As long the company wants to keep selling them, they will sell them and if the company is over they can make the game available to download for free. And if they still refuse? Don't worry the fans will upload it themselves for free ;)

To preserve physical games it's required tovkeep producing physical copies forever and keep them in stores, this is literally impossible

The concern about not being able to play games on consoles exists because consoles are worst way to preserve games. They are closed platforms which means when they want to shut down stores they will and there is nothing else left for you to do

Do you know what are the only games are lost in my life? They are not digital, they are my PS2 and DS collections because I no longer have the hardware to play them. They are not available. The discs and cards are literally useless. You can argue I can get an overpriced 3DS, but for how long? (Lack of) Avaibality for older consoles is much more common than finding some old game on Steam and seeing them being removed from stores

Because of digital I can listen to albums and watch movies that I otherwise would never be able to listen or watch because they used to sell so little the company never bothered to keep producing them. This is true preservation.




Of course this do not apply to multi-player games, however online multi-player games REQUIRES the server to be kept alive in any case. You can put all the game in a disk like in Splatoon, the day Nintendo decides they no longer want to keep the servers on it's over. But you see? It's no a problem with the storage, it's something intrinsic with the kind of game. However just because something is not infinite doesn't mean it doesn't hold value. Concerts and acts are available in their original states for only as long the performers are active, preservation should not be a concern in this case because the art is supposed to be ephemeral. Don't you like it? Sad for you I guess

I expect physical sales to become fairly niche - always will be a market but won't be enough to sustain Gamestop (dedicated)-type stores.

I'm surprised that so many on this poll are physical-only or mostly physical. Then again, perhaps it's the very nature of the thread. I feel like physical copy enthusiasts are more interested in discussing its unfortunate decline and demise than mostly digital players.
And those who voted for all physical or mostly physical surely play few indies. Independent games tend to get limited physical releases that can get expensive, especially when sold by resellers.

Digital killed the research into HVD :/