You can easily pull off the disc without tanking your Internet, that's a plus. I'm missing half my carts for switch, that's con. I have only a few ps5 discs that I got super good deals on, that's a plus. Disc makes since for really big files like FF7 Rebirth, plus. You have to swap out discs, con. It still takes hours to pull a game off of a disc, 2 hours in Rebirth case, one hour for ragnorok, downloading is just as fast, equel in this regard. Discs and carts take up physical space and you need to keep them stored well in a room that is lived in, you can,'t store discs in a room that's getting no love or the attic, I tried and they ended up stained and covered in weird shit with the boxes closed. I lost my entire ps3, wii and PS3 collection during a move a decade ago, big con on that one. I know my copy of Xenoblade chronicals X on cart will show up at some point but it could be years from now after a spring clean or reorganisation, that fact that I can't pkay it now because I put it down somewhere while not thinking is such a massive con, I remember where I put it (on the mantle piece) but it's not there two years later. 

Regardless of choice you still have to have storage on your system,  you most likely will have to expand the SSD if you want to hold games on ps5 without the long installs. You don't own either, but with physical you can disconnect the internet and play at least the 1.0 version of the game even if it may be broken. 

I'm very mixed on this issue, I bought a PS5 with a disc drive cause I knew I'd come across deals and I did, plus I don't want to install 200gb games in the future through my Internet and get throttled so 4k TV goes out the window but to go one way or the other I can't decide, recently I lost access to a game I bought on ps4, civ 6 and it has but the digital fear in me that perhaps I should deal with the cons of physical media while I still can and return from the digital age. 

I suppose I find digital better buy I have growing concerns I hope to see not come to fruition.

Streaming is a long way off for the masses, a long ass way. Perhaps >5% of people could do streaming now that's relatively okay but I suppose at some point that's the way games will be consumed. God I hope it isn't anytime soon. 

What are your pros and cons for physical VS digital? Are you all in one way or the other?

Disc and Cards are better.

My internet sill isn't reliably faster than disc installs.

It's always easier to (temporarily) delete a disc install than a digital one. First of all, I won't 'forget' I have the game since it's on the shelf, not mixed in with hundreds of PS+ games in a sluggish digital library. And I'm always sure I can install it again in a reasonable amount of time.

If a game isn't a keeper, I'll get some money back from it on trade in, a discount on the next game.

My local shop has tons of deals on 2nd hand games and it's simply more fun to browse through physical games than a digital storefront. (That's polluted with add-ons, coin packs, DLC, etc)

Physical store doesn't continuously try to upsell me to PS+ Extra / Premium.



But digital has it's bonuses. I got to play the HZD remaster Frozen shores DLC PS4 Pro enhanced for just $10, thanks to the ps4 version being a PS+ freebie once. I have the physical version of ps4 HZD, but those don't give you the upgrade option.

The best games I have a digital and physical version of like GT7. No wear on the disc, safe in its steelbook for future use or display :)

Discs are great when they actually have the software. Cough...cough, Indiana Jones box is a digital code.

Hmm, will the PS5 version next year have a disc? Otherwise I might just skip this.

Sure I buy VR games digitally since the audience is too small to stock shops with physical boxes. Yet there's no excuse for selling empty boxes! AAA games without discs, skip.

Probably. PS6 will very likely be full digital too. 

Yes, because (at least in my case), there's a lot more to games than just playing the game. Same with movies and everything else that's gone virtual. There was something intangibly fulfilling about the entire process of finding, buying, opening, smelling, holding and collecting media that is lost now, and I'm none too happy about it.

Physical is obviously better, because you usually own the games. Exceptions apply to publisher shenanigans where the full games aren't on the storage medium.

Sadly gone are the days of Laserdisc collector's editions. I still have a film cell from the Sorcerer's apprentice framed on the wall from the Fantasia Laserdisc special edition.



Sadly half my Laserdisc collection was damaged in a flood, nor do they make new players anymore. (Mine broke a decade ago). But the rest is still there to browse through, enjoy and then put on the blu-ray remaster.

I also have 5 different versions of Princess Mononoke next to the whole Ghibli collection. About 1,000 blu-rays collected over the years, after collecting about the same amount in DVDs.

My 4K blue-ray adoption is very slow though. Dunno if there is any correlation, but since the move to digital it feels like movies have declined in quality a lot. So many crappy CGI movies and life action remakes. Give me animatronics, puppeteers, scale models, stop motion, real stunt work instead of fake CGI. (Even though it might look somewhat realistic, the physics involved certainly are not believable)

I think I need to watch Box Trolls again, one of the last great (actual) stop motion movies. (Lego movie was disappointing, all CGI)

Maybe it's because I grew up with 35mm cinemas, film grain hiding the 'shortcuts' and giving the illusion of more detail. Yet these sterile modern movies just look busy for no reason.


And yes, buying a game, holding it, reading the manual! while installing or waiting for it to boot up, checking out the extras >>> digital pre-download.

Plus the act of changing discs also makes me more decisive of what to play and keep playing. While with Netflix I seem to spend more time browsing than actually watching...