What's The Appeal Of Owning Physical Copies Of Games In 2020?

[Kaydigi]

As long as you have the physical copy, you have access to the game. If the developer or publisher decides to pull the digital distribution, if you don't have it downloaded and never deleted, you're assed out. For the one and done people this may not be an issue, but for people who revisit games, that's a sticking point.

Yeah I went back bought most of the Xbox 360 backward compatible games. Most of them beside call of duty’s were $4.

 

[Khalil's_Black_Excellence]

As long as you have the physical copy, you have access to the game. If the developer or publisher decides to pull the digital distribution, if you don't have it downloaded and never deleted, you're assed out. For the one and done people this may not be an issue, but for people who revisit games, that's a sticking point.

I know this is often said and seems like a perfectly logical fear, but in history, how often has this actually happened? Especially for bigger titles?

 

[Diondon]

Digital is so sexy

 

[GreenGrass]

the only appeal is to reduce storage space. some of these games are pretty big. good thing you can add an extra SSD to the PS5.

 

[kdslittlebro]

Nothing to do with my .02, but if your console is connected to the internet, you don’t own a physical copy of the game any more than you do a digital copy. Technically you own the same license to play the game as you do digitally.

The odds might as well be nil of it biting you in the ass, but the day could come where you put the disc in to install, and that shyt says na as long as it’s not a server based game you’d be good just never connecting it online tho

I’m probably about 99% digital but I still got the PE for flexibility, and more for 4k blu ray

 

[Kwéyòl]

Sony’s return policy is trash so yeah that one

 

[DaSk8D00D]

It’s really only worthwhile on switch where the games hold their resale value MUCH more for much longer while actually saving storage space on the console


You can even get digital downloads/codes on sale almost as easy as physical copies so that gap is getting smaller and smaller as well


Plus if your disk drive is messed up, you still ain’t playing/installing shyt no matter how many copies of the game you own

 

[Legal]

the only appeal is to reduce storage space. some of these games are pretty big. good thing you can add an extra SSD to the PS5.

The disc is basically just a security key. It still installs the game on the hard drive.

The upside is that outliers aside, typically the disc installs the base game, and whatever the latest patch is downloads. For people with data caps (more people than you would think, sadly), that can be a big deal sometimes.

However, having the digital version of a highly anticipated game on deck for the second it unlocks is great. That's basically the new version of hitting up a shop for midnight releases.

 

[CarltonJunior]

I dealt with some of my old XBLA arcade games and steam games being removed from my last gen library and I think that may become a problem in the far future especially since a lot of these digitally downloaded titles have DRM.

I think having a physical collection may be the move later down the road

 

[Don'tCallMeLuckyB]

Lol funny story, I accidentally pressed the eject button on the Xbox one and a game disc came out and shook me I was like where the fukk this game came from?

i haven’t bought a physical in damn near 5 + years.

 

[Sankofa Alwayz]

I like collecting the discs and cases sometimes.

This. Nowadays tho, I mostly only do it for games that are events onto themselves upon release like Skyrim, GTA V, Mass Effect 3, and RDR2 were....That’s why I preordered a physical copy of Cyberpunk. I wish I done that for Ghost of Tsushima too, I purchased it from the PS Store. I would’ve gotten the physical version of GoT instead had I known how GOAT-tier it would be

 

[TripleAgent]

Selling or trading

 

[Zebruh]

Physical to me is nearly pointless since the games download to the hard-drives anyway. The only difference is instead of a digital license being tied to your console/account, the physical disc acts as a license. Been primarily digital on Xbox 360/1, Playstation 3/4 and Nintendo Switch and haven't had any issues with games disappearing or not being able to access games.

I know this is often said and seems like a perfectly logical fear, but in history, how often has this actually happened? Especially for bigger titles?

I'm unaware of any major titles that have done it.

the only appeal is to reduce storage space. some of these games are pretty big. good thing you can add an extra SSD to the PS5.

The first thing you do when you pop a disc in is install the game to the hard-drive. Physical discs don't reduce storage space at all.

 

[GreenGrass]

The disc is basically just a security key. It still installs the game on the hard drive.

The upside is that outliers aside, typically the disc installs the base game, and whatever the latest patch is downloads. For people with data caps (more people than you would think, sadly), that can be a big deal sometimes.

However, having the digital version of a highly anticipated game on deck for the second it unlocks is great. That's basically the new version of hitting up a shop for midnight releases.

Oh well. I guess I will be going digital on my standard ps5.

 

[Ezekiel 25:17]

You can trade them in. I have like 14 physical games, I can easily get $100 for all of em. That right there is a new game. And if you want to trade games with one of yo guys you can do that. Used to trade games in high school

I don't like all that digital shyt, what happens if the developer locks you out the game? Or your account gets hacked?