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Forums - Gaming - Support Physical Games

Tagged games:

 

Do you still support physical media?

Always 38 42.70%
 
Mostly 20 22.47%
 
Sometimes 12 13.48%
 
Rarely 9 10.11%
 
Never 5 5.62%
 
Don't care 3 3.37%
 
Don't have the space 2 2.25%
 
Total:89
VAMatt 6 hours ago

I buy physical games on PlayStation and switch/witch 2, because I have only one of each of those systems. But on Xbox, I have systems in multiple rooms. So I buy digital for convenience.

With that said, the reality is that the vast majority of my gaming these days is digital. Probably 90% of my gaming takes place on Xbox, and 75% of that is via game pass.



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Conina 4 hours ago
SanAndreasX said:
ConsoleWarVet said:

If physical media disappears, there’s nothing stopping publishers from leasing the license to play a game. Imagine spending $80 dollars a year to keep a game in your library.

It won’t start that bad. At first, the option to lease a game will seem like a good deal. $10-$20 for a new game? Doesn’t seem so bad. You can still choose to buy the full game, after all. But several years later, terms of service changes. Prices go up. Permanent ownership is replaced with a longer lease. Prices go up. The length of the longer lease shortens.

And an AI uses all the metadata that was gathered about purchases and time spent playing to optimize pricing for maximum profit. It will seem normal by this point. Like macrrotransactions (not a typo) and roadmaps.

I see how things are, I know how things were. A disc-free console is just like horse armor DLC, testing the waters to see how much people will tolerate. It won’t stop there. It will just be the beginning.

And that argument was brought up 20 years ago.

It fell on stone-deaf ears, as did the early warnings about what Steam would do to physical media. 

And over 20 years later

  • you don't have to spend a monthly/yearly fee to keep Steam games playable in your library
  • you don't have to spend a monthly/yearly fee to play Steam games online
  • no Steam game licenses were deleted from your account
  • multiplatform games on Steam are cheaper than the console versions in most cases
  • they offer consumer-friendly "bundle completion" prices (if you already have some games of the bundle, the bundle price goes down)
  • you don't have to pay $10 - $20 to unlock "next gen features" (higher resolution / better textures...) if you want to play your old games on newer hardware
  • some upgraded versions are added for free in your Steam library, if you have the old version in your library (f.e. Bioshock 1 + 2 Remastered, Final Fantasy VII, Yakuza Kiwami 1 + 2, Serious Sam 1 + 2, Conan Exiles, Divinity: Original Sins, Little Nightmares, The Sinking City, the Metro games, Skyrim, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games, Doom 1 + 2, Quake 1 + 2, Portal, Half-Life 2, The Witcher 3, Mafia 2 + 3, GTA V, Borderlands...)
  • the digital versions have better compatibility to newer operation systems than the physical versions
  • you can play tens of thousand Steam games on PC handhelds (and laptops without disc drive) due to their digital nature... disc checks of physical games would be problematic on those devices
  • you can play almost any single player game in Steam's offline mode
  • you have a consumer-friendly return policy (physical games normally can't be returned, if they are opened)

Last edited by Conina - 4 hours ago

xl-klaudkil 2 hours ago
Conina said:
SanAndreasX said:

And that argument was brought up 20 years ago.

It fell on stone-deaf ears, as did the early warnings about what Steam would do to physical media. 

And over 20 years later

  • you don't have to spend a monthly/yearly fee to keep Steam games playable in your library
  • you don't have to spend a monthly/yearly fee to play Steam games online
  • no Steam game licenses were deleted from your account
  • multiplatform games on Steam are cheaper than the console versions in most cases
  • they offer consumer-friendly "bundle completion" prices (if you already have some games of the bundle, the bundle price goes down)
  • you don't have to pay $10 - $20 to unlock "next gen features" (higher resolution / better textures...) if you want to play your old games on newer hardware
  • some upgraded versions are added for free in your Steam library, if you have the old version in your library (f.e. Bioshock 1 + 2 Remastered, Final Fantasy VII, Yakuza Kiwami 1 + 2, Serious Sam 1 + 2, Conan Exiles, Divinity: Original Sins, Little Nightmares, The Sinking City, the Metro games, Skyrim, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games, Doom 1 + 2, Quake 1 + 2, Portal, Half-Life 2, The Witcher 3, Mafia 2 + 3, GTA V, Borderlands...)
  • the digital versions have better compatibility to newer operation systems than the physical versions
  • you can play tens of thousand Steam games on PC handhelds (and laptops without disc drive) due to their digital nature... disc checks of physical games would be problematic on those devices
  • you can play almost any single player game in Steam's offline mode
  • you have a consumer-friendly return policy (physical games normally can't be returned, if they are opened)

Thats because pc is not a closed ecosystem, if valve/steam would do the same shit sony been doing and will do people would just massivly pirate their games...



 

My youtube gaming page.

http://www.youtube.com/user/klaudkil

sc94597 1 hour ago

I will say that if somebody has a Fiber Optic internet connection and a Wifi-7 router, game-streaming feels very much like console gaming. I've been using Geforce Now on my Ayn Thor, and it doesn't feel very different from playing games on my Switch 2 or Steam Deck in terms of latency, and the graphics quality is a lot better than on those devices. Even on 5G internet, you can have a decent 1080p experience.

For casual players or cinematic games that aren't as latency dependent, I think it definitely could satisfy many people's needs in countries with decent internet. 

That's probably going to be a bigger threat to actual game ownership than digital ever was. 

(Screenshots taken from my Ayn Thor max settings with path tracing, 1440p DLSS Quality No Frame Gen. I get a solid 60fps no drops on a farm near the PA-WV border using Comcast 2Gbps fiber-optic that my partner was able to get a few weeks ago. Even on his, now, backup T-Mobile Home 5G it isn't too bad. Drops are relatively rare.) 



KLXVER 1 hour ago
xl-klaudkil said:
Conina said:

And over 20 years later

  • you don't have to spend a monthly/yearly fee to keep Steam games playable in your library
  • you don't have to spend a monthly/yearly fee to play Steam games online
  • no Steam game licenses were deleted from your account
  • multiplatform games on Steam are cheaper than the console versions in most cases
  • they offer consumer-friendly "bundle completion" prices (if you already have some games of the bundle, the bundle price goes down)
  • you don't have to pay $10 - $20 to unlock "next gen features" (higher resolution / better textures...) if you want to play your old games on newer hardware
  • some upgraded versions are added for free in your Steam library, if you have the old version in your library (f.e. Bioshock 1 + 2 Remastered, Final Fantasy VII, Yakuza Kiwami 1 + 2, Serious Sam 1 + 2, Conan Exiles, Divinity: Original Sins, Little Nightmares, The Sinking City, the Metro games, Skyrim, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games, Doom 1 + 2, Quake 1 + 2, Portal, Half-Life 2, The Witcher 3, Mafia 2 + 3, GTA V, Borderlands...)
  • the digital versions have better compatibility to newer operation systems than the physical versions
  • you can play tens of thousand Steam games on PC handhelds (and laptops without disc drive) due to their digital nature... disc checks of physical games would be problematic on those devices
  • you can play almost any single player game in Steam's offline mode
  • you have a consumer-friendly return policy (physical games normally can't be returned, if they are opened)

Thats because pc is not a closed ecosystem, if valve/steam would do the same shit sony been doing and will do people would just massivly pirate their games...

Nah stuff like consumer rights doesnt matter. Thats just a teeny tiny part of gamers who like that shit. Steam would be fine just like the PS6 will be...