“It would be great if people had to buy more of the thing,” says guy who makes money selling the thing.
I mean, maybe disk drives are outdated, but being unable to buy used games or give your old game to a friend is garbage (but great for profits of the console manufacturers and game studios). Not to mention that as long as it’s a digital download, you don’t own the game - you lease it at a flat rate.
Limiting the options and ownership rights of the consumer for profit is bad.
With how games work these days, having just the disk is pretty much useless if the publisher decides to delist or discontinue the game from platform, because:
- patches and updates don’t come with disk form anymore.
- many games that requires online authentication to play won’t be available to keep playing if their account service is down.
- games go on sale with steady rate most of the time(except nintendo), for bargain bin deals you would probably find the game on humble bundle or gog.
- you often have the good games that release “better” remake version over and over anyway. Note, I know people sometimes prefer the original version, but not everyone is on the same page and it hugely depending on the dev/publisher for the newer version.
Now let’s describe the cons:
- in many countries, breaking DRM is illegal. So even if all you want to do archive, you can’t make a decrypted copy. That’s why homebrew etc provides the key/dumper for you to do such at your own risk. IMO, it’s safer(INAL) to download pirated iso/rom compare to doing your own dump. And, archiver actually tried to keep a post patch version before store is closed down(see wiiu store close example), the disk version is not a viable option anymore for archiver.
- storage up keep, physical things require storage space. I still have like 3 large shipping box for my older gen(ps3/GC/Wii/X360 games) I will probably donate them to library or something and keep the only ones I wanted to keep.
- console part cost, the BD drives are often first point of failure, then HDMI connectors. Cause well, moving parts are easier to break and harder to QA. PS5’s 2 versions gives a good example how the disk affects the look, weight, etc. Not to mention, they are a lot slower then SSD and you are required to install all that anyway.
- developer/publisher/platform see nothing for used game sales. It sounds like huge shill talk but let’s be honest, they want to make a living, if you are not supporting your favorite developer they will have to offset the cost by doing shit you all won’t like. ie, mtx, subscription service, selling analytic data, selling the studio to shit publisher that push worth practice, platform raise price to meet target projection. Buy/sell used game only helps that service owner(gamestop/ebgame/bestbuy, not the community.)
- did I mention switching disc just to play game is a PITA, and if your case is the modern garbage version, remember those plastic break down more easily and you would have to buy new case to hold your disc.
- environment waste for all the manufacturing, packaging and shipping. It’s honestly not worth that in modern era if you give a fuck about how future generation will live.
This sounds like a console user problem. PCs haven’t had disc drives for years and the games are far cheaper. Yes, there’s no second-hand market, but with steam sales, humble bundles, and all the freebies I post in !freegames@feddit.uk it’s not really become the corpo hellscape we feared.
Also technically you don’t own games on disc either, it’s just much harder for the publisher to come round your house and snap your copy!
That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. They want to sell you digital version specifically because you can’t resell them. It could easily be solved by creating a digital marketplace, and even turn a profit for the publishers by taking a cut of resales.
He is obviously biased by his business interests, but frankly he is ultimately correct. Once consoles are digital only, console players will lose the last form of control they have over anything they own.
You don’t need CDs for that, and CDs don’t prevent that.
As the other user pointed out, most CDs don’t even have a playable form of the game on them anymore. You usually need additional updates to actually play the game (or in the case of those steam installs, the CD doesn’t even have a bare minimum on it)
Technically you can own a game as a digital install too, just they won’t deliver it that way.
Most? That’s definitely not right. Every single game I bought up to the PS4 could be played without any downloads.
I think they mean most recent or most new games, the PS4 came out nearly a decade ago.
Every single game I bought up to the PS4 could be played without any downloads.
But they still couldn’t be played directly from the disk, which is part of the point of the comment you replied to. Every single game I have for PS3 requires it to be installed onto the console in order to play it.
This is why I edited my last comment to say explicitly “played without any download” rather than “run from the disk”, the comment I replied to was missing my point. I couldn’t care less if the disk goes spinny or not, this is not about storage technology, it’s about control over the games you buy. The point is owning games without being bound to online services, which a disk that can be installed directly does perfectly fine.
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I watched a YouTube video where the guy played Cyberpunk on a PS4 from disc with no patches installed. It was as bad as you think.
Cyberpunk on PS4 was an unparalleled shitshow
Not if modern proof of ownership technologies are implemented, such as NFT smart contracts.
Nah, dumping your own copy, or at least DRM-free digital, is a much more reliable way to maintain your ownership than any blockchain-based system.
I mean… he has a vested interest. But he’s right we need media that isn’t dependent on official servers
If only that was what he was saying. He doesn’t care whether they’re dependent on servers. The vast majority of physical games sold today are already nothing more than an entitlement and some of the game files, with the rest being downloaded after you insert the disc. He’s only concerned with Gamestop getting their cut, both in new game sales and especially in their bread-and-butter trade-in market.
Of course making money is his motive, but that does that matter?
Digital distribution only means you can’t give (or sell) your games to someone else. So with digital only the copyright holders of the video games make more money. Once it’s all digital only, next step is to require a connection to a server for them to work, so then they can shut it down to force you to buy a new console and re-buy all the old games you want to play again. What are you going to do if the decide to go that way? It’s either stop playing video games altogether, or go along with whatever scheme they feel like coming up with when they enshittify themselves like every other company inevitably does.
A physical copy means more options for the consumer, why should we care how much of the pie this corporation or that corporation makes off of it? In fact corporations in general make even more money from non-transferable digital distribution.
I’m not sure why you’re trying to convince me of the merits of physical media? I did not, and do not, disagree. It’s a more flexible option, and more options is always better for the consumer. But the reality is that physical media, in its current iteration, doesn’t offer all that much protection. The only universal benefit of physical media is the ability to regift or resell. It’s a great benefit, but it hardly liberates consumers from dependence on servers.
As for my original point, it simply read to me as if this person was giving the GameStop exec credit for something he did not say. I wanted to make sure his comments were seen in an accurate light.
So we should reject an ally that has a shared goal simply because their motives aren’t pure enough?
It’s the old Stephen Fry quote “it’s more important to be effective than it is to be right.” We shouldn’t care so much about whether or not someone has the right reason for trying to affect a positive result. Gamestop’s motives are irrelevant, the effect of their actions are what matters.
I never accused him of altruism of any kind, if the games came from his servers specifically… he’d be tuning a different sing
In the days of zero days patches and DRM requiring a check to the servers, a disc doesn’t guarantee that at all.
If anything, disc just became dongles to prove ownership and download the full game.
You all hate discs until you have a library that you can rent games for free close to you. Or you want to sell a game you already played to buy something else. I don’t care of what some boss from GameStop says because at the end of the day, they run a business out of it, but complaining about physical media is something I don’t understand someone would do as a consumer. Did we really learn nothing from companies simply shutting down online stores when they want?
You all hate discs until you have a library that you can rent games for free close to you.
It’s actually illegal where I live to rent out games. Thanks, Nintendo! (/^^)/⌒●~*
This is funny because the games we rented were all from Switch, lol. Where you are from? I’m currently in Canada.
Japan. Nintendo got it passed into law years ago that game’s can’t be rented, because of supposed piracy concerns. But you can go to any video rental place and borrow all the music CDs you could want, because we all know how much more difficult it is to make mp3s from a CD than copy a game.
Yeah, I heard that many things in Japan are extremely protective for companies. Apparently modding is also illegal, right? I was talking with my spouse about console modding and we discovered that
until you have a library that you can rent games for free close to you.
It’s called a torrenting client
It is nice to be able to give a game to someone else when you’re done playing it.
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Damn, lot of hate for physical media in this thread.
Xbox One announcement (E3 2013): "YOU CAN TAKE MY DISKS FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!
Current Year (2023): “Disks are outdated and dead, who needs em anyway?”
Y’all forget way too easily and they are starting to prey upon it.
The problem is it’s kind of murky now since most discs don’t even contain the game anymore. So yeah you can lend/sell them but you’re still dependent on a digital store. It’s just a license for a digital game in physical form. I say this as a physical media proponent.
I am not pro-digital only but if the discs don’t have the game I’m less inclined to pay extra for what is likely to be the first part of my console to fail.
To be fair, most people are thinking of the reasons of ownership, whereas xbox one was about availability.
Yes it is weird. I get people preferring digital copies but I dont get having hostility toward physical media.
Because there’s a lot of misinformation in this thread.
All media is physical media. All data is stored on a medium. Data is real and physical. Some data is stored on paper in ink writing, some data is stored as ones and zeroes on a disc drive, but the type of disc drive may vary. Hard drives, USB thumbsticks, SSDs, and so on, are all physical media.
If I destroy a BluRay, or destroy a hard drive, or burn a piece of paper, does the data still physically exist? No. In all cases, destroying the medium in which the data exists destroys the data. Whether it is paper, a disc you put in a drive, or a hard drive.
When something is stored “in the cloud” it’s still on a hard drive somewhere, just not on your hard drive somewhere. You have essentially chosen to store your property on someone else’s private property. Much like a physical storage unit. If the storage unit burns down, everything in it will cease to exist. If the data center where your cloud data is stored burns down without any backups, same issue, the data ceases to exist.
People in this thread specifically only dislike one type of physical media, and it’s a type that has one of the shorter shelf-lifes for long-term data storage.
Also, with hard drives, its often trivial to recover deleted data, which is why companies that deal with secure data often completely shred old hard drives to prevent data being exfiltrated from them after wiping.
This is needlessly pedantic. When people say “physical copy” they are talking about a physical, individual storage medium with a game on it that you can trade/sell/lend/etc. and give full transfer of the license contained on it. My hard drive is useless to you if all my games are bought via the Microsoft store and you can’t access my account. My halo 3 disc will work on any Xbox 360/Xbone/XSX for anyone every day. Is the distinction clear now?
I prefer having a physical game collection, but with the way physical games are handled now, with more than half the game needing to be downloaded to the console to cut costs or because they didn’t finish the game before release, it doesn’t solve the preservation or ownership problems anymore.
That’s where piracy comes in, even if it does tend to have negative effects on smaller devs. So long as there is no server or internet connection required to play, piracy will rain supreme in preservation.
Ownership, on the other hand, is a lot trickier. I personally say just having, for PC games, the game download .exe (or equivalent file) is enough to be considered owning it, but that doesn’t mean much.
The way I see it, piracy is fine, but only once the format is dead. I recently hacked both my 3DS and Vita to access the whole libraries since those formats are dead with ones digital store switched off and the other half dead and barely functioning.
But yeah, pay for new releases.
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Discs don’t have the capacity to store modern games anyways. I mean, how many disc would it take to store Starfield? Its’s not going to work.
Nobody cares what Gamestop boss says, lol.
“i LiKe ThE sToCk”
Why discs instead of cartridges, which are currently the superior physical option? I personally try to buy physical whenever possible, because I don’t trust companies to not ban my account and flush hundreds of dollars of games down the toilet, and it generally feels better to have just that little extra bit more ownership over my own property.
Because cartridges cost more to produce and are limited in storage. Switch carts cap out at 64gb, Blu Rays are up to 100gb at this point and it’s much cheaper to chuck a few of them in a box if the game goes over that. Hence all the switch games with massive downloads required on top of the cart.
That’s basically what the Switch uses. Though they’re more like a memory card, but they kinda look like little tiny cartridges.
I wonder why they would want that
Buggywhip salesman demands accomodation from the horseless carriage industry.
Yes, I’m upset at the licenseification of the gaming industry as much as the next guy but that died long before physical media did. As long as a game can die without its first-party servers, games are leased and not owned.
In the current climate where it takes 30 patches and a year for a new release to become playable, discs are not very useful…
??
Of course they are. Because - you can buy the fucking things second hand or lend them to people!
Sure, but it’s really weird that we are relying and want to rely on disks to be the license basically, because the data storage part is quite useless, at least when your connection is faster than your blue-ray drive. (plus you can directly download the patched game)
Disc drive consoles are great for people who go months with terrible or no internet. People in the military, or just about anyone who goes out to sea can get a disc mailed to them. It is nice to have physical media to play the games off of.
