Is Physical Soon to be dead?

As stated, the powers that be WANT physical to be dead, however gamers have persistently carried on buying physical, and in the UK/EU at least, there's little reason to buy digital in many cases, so I imagine that will continue to be the case. Perfect example is Horizon Forbidden West, its £50 online, I picked up the PS4 copy with a free upgrade to PS5 for a massively cheaper £22 the other day. I could have got PS5 Physical for £30, but I figured at this point as I have extremely fast internet (1Gbps up/down), I'd just go with the PS4 copy.

Frankly there is room for both, I have Gamepass Ultimate and rather like it, but I do still buy Physical games.
PC is a slightly different market as there are different sources for keys, and even places to download and play games, not just Steam, which ensures competition even in a digital marketplace, the consoles don't have that which is why buying physical is so important, and actually I think Sony pulling Horizon Forbidden West for example off PSN did us a bit of a favour, and them a bit of a mischief, as it reminded people that even 1st party titles are not immune to being pulled, which in the long run was not in thier best interests.

Gamepass has traditionally handled this better and 1st party MS stuff has tended to stay on the service somewhat indefinately, but Sony being Sony decided to remind the consumer base WHY Physical and digital ownership is not always a safe thing.
Some of thier other antics over recent years have also been slightly short sighted in this regards, so in that sense Sony is thier own worst enemy.

The sheer level of backlash over the PS5 Pro also I think highlights they misjudged NOT putting an Optical Drive bundled in with the PS5 Pro TBH. It's an enthusiast machine, but most enthusiasts tend to have at least some physical library, so they've designed an enthusiast machine, but taken away features enthusiasts want. Great.
I hope they actually recognise the backlash, and decide to offer a bundle of the machine with the drive included at a slightly cut price; as frankly the price and cut features here make it distinctly feeling like an incomplete package missing the mark.
 
I want physical to die in terms of an actual usage case. I have no need to physically handle a disc, keep it in good condition, load it into my console/PC/music player and click play, rinse and repeat each time I want to change games/music/film.
So on that basis of course....digital is great. Only collectors would argue otherwise, that want the physical thing or have emotional ties with physical media.

The added complexity is cost to buy, value and ease of selling on. If they just made digital cost the same as physical we would not have half of this mess.

Digital only, will kill second hand game sales, which is what they should want. Then everyone has to pay full price for every game. Profits would soar. CEX would also die which I see as a good thing. ;)

But seriously, they could lower prices across the board and STILL make more profit going to digital only.

Also Christmas/birthdays is going to be fun if they go halfway house.
"Here ya go son, I bought you the latest game you wanted!"
*sees physical media
"But I don't have a disc drive Mum"
"Don't be fussy now son"
 
montymint said:
This is the start of slide into subscription only gaming on consoles I feel.
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I think this is the realistic future. I think it will be massively profitable because whilst people can resist Netflix/Prime etc and just consume media in other ways if the prices get pushed too high, with gaming you have a much more die hard fan base who will simply not take not being able to game lightly. They will moan about it, but ultimately suck it up and feed the habit by bending over and taking it. Expect them to suck people in for the first couple of years, and then boom. Price rises baby.
 
I will quit gaming if that happens, with digital only what is to stop them from dragging out high prices for a game long after its release.

Diablo 4 for example, I was able to buy it for £17 used on xbox, and lets say I lose £5 when I sell it.

Its still £49.99 on Xbox Digital store, so when I finish the game I lose £50 compared to £5.
 
Physical media dropped so quickly for PC because there are so many store fronts you can get the PC games from and new releases can be cheap.

With the console market, you really only have one place digitally. So price's don't drop so quickly, Nintendo is a good example of making a killing off physical media. They know this and won't be drop it anytime soon.

Physical media on the whole isn't going anywhere soon. People are wising up to the high cost of digital downloads and how they can be easily pulled. While physical media is cheaper and can't be taken away. If you don't like the game, you can trade it in. Can't do that with digital downloads.

I have a few Switch games, costing more than I paid for them on release. R-Type Final 2 being one of them. If I sold it, I get my money back and change.
 
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Short answer is YES.

PS6 and Xbox Next (5, XXX or whatever we want to call it) are extremely unlikely to include optical drives. Phil Spencer has talked about the challenges of sourcing drives and how it's getting harder for Microsoft to do so. Sony don't have this problem as they make them but I suspect the cutover to the new generation for Sony and the change in strategy in hardware for Microsoft will bring an end to physical games. Whether Sony will continue to offer an optional add-on for backwards compatibility or PS6 games is harder to predict.

I think it's generally agree Nintendo will hold onto physical longer but there are some interesting rumours about Switch 2's different SKUs and not quite being the same. I suspect this will be clarified soon but that physical remains.
 
For years I’ve waited a few months after release of games and bought physical copies cheaper.

If games are purely digital only and around £70, I just won’t bother anymore.

I already feel like console gaming isn’t what it used to be (except for the Switch). So I’m not that bothered if I just abandon the whole thing altogether, especially with more Sony games coming to PC.
 
No physical media means they can temp buyers in getting the Gold, Deluxe, Ultimate, Super Duper versions rather than the standard disc version. No disc version means they can release a game unfinished and patch the hell out of it 6 months later.
 
Hope that Physical doesn't die out, but can see it happening. Prefer to buy physical if I can, but rarely end up selling games even if I am not likely to play them.
Would help if there was multiple places that you could buy the games from like on PC to at least give it a chance of a bit of competition
 
montymint said:
This is the start of slide into subscription only gaming on consoles I feel.
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Then the death of consoles as we have known them to be since the start, no physical media will damage the console market even Sony admitted this years ago when they took the micky out of Microsoft with their always online DRM for disks, where they showed a Sony person handing a game disk over to another and saying our device allows you to play games right away with no online DRM and you can share or sell them.

Seems they forgot this and trying to just lock you into downloads and downloads you can't resell or give away to anyone else. Physical media needs to stay on consoles and I hated it when it vanished on PC too but downloads were cheaper on PC and many services, not a walled garden like consoles are and they are more expensive almost always on the digital store vs physical media.
 
Armageus said:
But there's literally no reason for digital games to cost more than physical copies.

There's no physical media to duplicate, no box art to design and print. So no physical production costs.
There's no physical distribution costs. There's no need for a distributor and their cut.
There's no end retail outlets wanting their cut.

Even assuming all of those things are tiny percentages in the scheme of things, they're still costs that don't apply to digital and should instantly make digital games cheaper.


Wanting entirely digital distribution is purely about the platform owner's greed - nothing else.
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I remember that was the reason these companies wanted and stated to go digital as it was also green and will be cheaper for the customers, they have proved otherwise on the console market with their walled gardens. PC has benefitted with digital downloads and many stores competing with each other and many always giving full AAA games for free all the time, or threw amazon prime or other services.

Consoles only time I remember anything free from Sony was when they got hacked they gave people free games and online play for a while and during lockdowns again because their service was crashing and overloaded and they gave a few games then and I remember uncharted trilogy was one of them can't remember other, was a nice gesture but again they did it because they were getting hacked or denial of service attacks or just issues with their backend that couldn't manage all the people at home gaming during lockdown.

Also why I dislike digital, you never know when they will pull it from the service and you lose access to what you paid for, many of the digital movie stores have done this and even Sony removed and tried to remove movies people purchased. If you don't own it in a physical format it really is up to them when they take it away from you too, that's why a lot of game disks don't even have the game on just points you to download the game from the digital store, so the physical media is now not even being used to hold the game but the disk is used for proving you own it .. what's the point if again they pull if from the digital store again?

I have lost a lot of movies in digital form and even lost access to programs I purchased on the google store over time as they pretend google will not allow them there unless they update them but really they try sell you the same thing again just with a number 2 on it and minor updates. To me it's theft what they are doing, I paid for that and was working fine on my machine but you revoked the licence and removed it from the store to download .. That's why I will only buy digital now if I don't care to lose it, if I do I'm not paying for it and trying to find a physical version if none then other ways are available too or they just lost a sale out of their greed from me and I remember when digital came out, I was like great some things would be great in digital and not have to store lots of physical software packages everywhere... but I learned the hard way after I started losing my purchased items over time. Never again.
 
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Stalker 2 thread got bumped, so then i went to Steam to see how much it was going for. The top tier version is £95, you get some cool stuff, or at least you would if it was physical, art book and music. I know for certain that the ultimate edition really just is the complete game, the other tiers are half the game, joke really. I would consider the top tier purchase if it was physical, now after seeing "expansions" being listed, i'll just await the reviews to make sure it's not a flop, and that's despite having faith in GSC! It's MS i have no trust in.
 
The notion that digital distribution would result in cheaper games seems largely to be an urban myth; I don't recall any manufacturer, publisher or even industry analyst suggesting that any savings in manufacture and distribution would be passed to consumers. There was understandably a hope that would be the case, but there's very little motivation for them to drop prices when it's clear they can in fact raise them and increase revenue as a result, even if sales figures are reduced.
 
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