Physical vs Digital

setanjan123

setanjan123

In the zone
With the recent trend of console games starting to drop off physical releases altogether(Alan Wake 2 and now apparently Yakuza Gaiden) there has been a lot of discourse online and lot of outcry with some extremists even attacking people who choose to buy digital. Its absolutely stupid. But coming back to the fact, physical games on PC died off a decade or more ago. I don't think people cared that much back then. Why do you think console gamers are the ones making so much noise? Why has the decline of physical take so long on consoles? Do you personally prefer digital or physical? I feel like a lot of people attacking digital are people who literally have no idea that there are other countries where physical copies are limited and not everybody has shitty internet. Discuss.
 
quicky008

quicky008

Technomancer
Always preferred physical. Like having an actual copy of a game rather than a couple of GBs of downloaded data that's difficult to retain in storage permanently.
 
omega44-xt

omega44-xt

Gear up ...
In consoles, you can resell the disk. 2nd hand market for disks is huge, esp in developed countries. So game costs come down for physical disk owners.

This was never present in PC, buy digital or physical, industry moved towards providing you a key which gets linked to your account. So reselling didn't take off during transition to digital.

I never owned a console, so not sure how reselling disk works, but it does work.
 
OP
setanjan123

setanjan123

In the zone
omega44-xt said:
In consoles, you can resell the disk. 2nd hand market for disks is huge, esp in developed countries. So game costs come down for physical disk owners.

This was never present in PC, buy digital or physical, industry moved towards providing you a key which gets linked to your account. So reselling didn't take off during transition to digital.

I never owned a console, so not sure how reselling disk works, but it does work.
Click to expand...
The old PC games didn't have any DRM. You could easily resell them. But they were also very easy to pirate. Had no copy protection. I own a PS4. Reselling disks works as you think it does. But tbh in the long run you can't beat Steam prices, atleast here where we have regional pricing. But I feel like the crux of the problem is digital on console is much more restrictive compared to digital on PC.
 
omega44-xt

omega44-xt

Gear up ...
setanjan123 said:
The old PC games didn't have any DRM. You could easily resell them. But they were also very easy to pirate. Had no copy protection. I own a PS4. Reselling disks works as you think it does. But tbh in the long run you can't beat Steam prices, atleast here where we have regional pricing. But I feel like the crux of the problem is digital on console is much more restrictive compared to digital on PC.
Click to expand...
On consoles you need to pay additional fees to play a game you bought online (PS+ or xbox gold). Hence the reason why gaming on PC is cheaper on the long run, regional pricing surely helps us.

I assume, in consoles you need the disk inserted to play that game & it uses the disk to authenticate the copy every time you run it. The game doesn't get linked to an account, but if you have the disk, you can even play a game like CoD online with your account.

Consoles are sold at a loss hardware wise & they make up money using 30% cut from game sales & 100% from online access. You can't have multiple storefronts there like in PC (steam, EGS, GOG, etc). Hence consoles are restrictive. If MS made Xbox run even a Win 11 in S mode, that will still be a huge step forward in terms of unrestricting it but then prices will increase or MS will take losses.
 
Nerevarine

Nerevarine

Incarnate
setanjan123 said:
Just go on Twitter and you'll find them lol. I saw a guy just going around replying "F**** You" to anybody who wrote they preferred digital.
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Bro you are taking too much offense from some online trolls. There is a whole world of gamers out there, that is completely digital. STEAM!
 
gameranand

gameranand

Living to Play
Digital just works for me. When I'm on move I can download a indie offline game and play it at my leisure. I don't have to carry anything extra for that.

Also I don't have to store the disks safely so that I can play that game later. I prefer to just login and download the game. Mobile data and internet prices have came down as well to help that.
 
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