Just a thought that came up. Whereas discs may become scratched and cartridges stop functioning within a few decades, digital media can simply be redownloaded if, say, your hard drive or cloud storage gets wiped. And this is regardless of whether you purchased via PC or console, as can be seen with continued support of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo in allowing consumers to redownload previously purchased content, even after support for online service and digital storefronts has ended (so long as it wasn’t a license to a game nor solely included in a subscription service).

What do you think?

The argument that digital media can be re-downloaded only works if the same digital media is carried over between gens, and sadly it almost never is.

For the most part, yes, but with some caveats that probably won't matter in the end for the most part. Current model of the PS5, for example, needs a one-time internet connection to activate the disc drive. Not exactly great when your disc drive one day dies and hoping the servers are running.

Hell, if PlayStation has an outage, no new purchasers will be able to activate the disc drive at that time lol.

I prefer GOG's means of preservation the most. Each game I buy from GOG, I download the game and put them on several different hard drives and my media server, just to be completely certain I'll never lose them. I've even sold them to friends for a few bucks lol. Sure I don't get the resell value and nice collection shelf, but at least I know for certain that I can never lose those games no matter what.

It's better for musea and institutions to handle game preservation. We're not relying on people to preserve movies and tv shows...

For yourself, physical is better as a couple scratched / broken disks are better than losing access to big parts of your digital library. (digital stores disappearing, lost login credentials, hdd failure) Redownloading won't work when games get pulled which is rare but can happen with disputes and licensing issues. (Or you forgot what you had / where you bought it from, my problem lol)

Anyway some games never get a physical release, no choice there.

Yes and no.
You have no legal right to distribute a game via ROMs, nor do you even have the right to burn it for personal use like an audio CD. So provided you are completely following rules and laws, physical games have some benefits for preservation over digital but also drawbacks.
The positives are that is a tangible object for display, collecting, lending, trading, selling, etc. But some drawbacks are the possibility of failure via scratches or damage, losing the item, taking up physical space, etc. A lot of mainstream games have mandatory internet downloads nowadays, so it makes the physical copy more pointless than otherwise. If you were actually allowed to burn the games and preserve them legally, digital distribution is much better than physical copies alone.

I don't understand what you mean here...? So long as you can redownload the game on the original system -- just as so long as you can plug in the cartridge/disc into the original system -- then you still have ownership of your game, regardless of physical or digital. I suppose maybe you could argue that it is more likely physical games are given backwards compatibility than digital, though that wouldn't change the fact that you can still pull out your old system (or a new one if you old one is broke) and play it there.

You see, this is where I get veeeery confused on internet discourse when it comes to game preservation on consoles. Let's suppose PS6 has no SKU with a pre-installed disc drive, and let's suppose to maintain this process of needing WiFi to install disc drives. Then how would the GKCs that Nintendo is pumping out be any different than the physical copies on PS6? Would Sony plan on allowing disc drives continue being installed even once servers shut down? And similarly for Nintendo, would they continue to allow users to redeem GKCs? In the latter instance, precedent tells me that they would be willing to support such a system; in the former instance, however, the waters become murky. (And yet nobody even seems to bat on eye at a Digital Only future for Sony so long as disc drive add-ons are provided.)

I think there is a very simple solution to all of this: If you purchased a game digitally, then digital storefronts *must* provide an alternative means to access software following the closure of their services. (E.g. If Steam were to "go under," then maybe they say "You will no longer have access to your Steam account, but you can access all of your games on [insert rival service] moving forward.") If you purchased a game physically, then the publisher and developer must work together to ensure that once this product is no longer playable, that consumers have access to a digital copy which -- if the digital copy no longer becomes accessible -- should recieve an alternative means to access once the method they provide "goes under."

Basic consumer protection. And that's without the concession of even allowing players to have a copy of the game installed into their computer with freedom to burn onto a disc at any time.

The ideal form of game preservation is digital with no DRM since as long as the files are properly backed up across various drives and whatnot then you'll never lose access whereas a single disc or cartridge can be damaged, lost or degrade over time. Lots of people complain about digital when they should be complaining about DRM instead since that's the real issue.

GOG is the only company that does digital games correctly. You can download the game and use it anywhere without limits. iTunes is the same way for music. So game preservation is best there.

However, this nonsense of only being able to download or play a digital game on hardware that has a 'license' is not my favorite. Nor is it great when the original hardware is gone, and you have to depend on future carrying the digital license, which isn't done often.

So I always buy physical. I can switch between systems as long as I have the games. But it will be harder to switch games around on systems that require online to transfer them.

If more companies followed the GOG model. I would actually have reason to buy digital beyond those crazy sales where the game is 90% off.

Digital without a DRM is the most ideal - doesnt matter if its console or PC.

Never runs out (something physical suffers from)

Doesnt take space (physical)

Dont have to worry about two pieces of physical media (hardware AND catridge/CD/DVD/etc) to be able to run the game



The only thing that needs to happen to make this 100% the perfect ideal is to make worldwide laws that make it where a game cannot be delisted (a lot needs to be done for this to happen) and must become available for the user to be able to access the game at all times even if a store shutters (something like what GOG does).