The continuing decline in availability of physical media

My main complaint I have with going all digital is some do not last forever, even if you paid for it, the moment the xyz client loses it license to that game it disappears from your library.
One may argue that its Ok since you may not touch that game, but the principle still stands that you paid for it with the assumption it is yours to keep forever.
I am in a very slow transition to try and swap most of my 1080P blu-ray movies for 4K since I have a 4K TV to take advantage of, I will forever will try and purchase physical media if possible.
 
I can’t remember the last time I bought a CD, DVD, game or physical book. I’d rather use the space in my house for something else.

And people forget the downsides of physical media. The main issue for me is that publishers and stores get to decide what’s popular. There was an interview recently with the Baldur’s Gate developers who said that the success of BG3 wouldn’t have been possible back when the majority of consumers relied on physical media. There’s no way that publishers would have backed a game from such an untrendy genre and so not enough discs would have been made and stores wouldn’t have stocked sufficient copies of the game.

The same goes for music, films and books. There’s less of a middleman dictating tastes with digital media.
 
Jack_green said:
I much prefer to have the physical media, I always worry if the company goes bust I will lose what I owen.
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Honestly I don't see how that's any different now. Almost all games have some kind of online DRM to check they are legitimate. If those DRM servers shutdown, you lose access to the game anyway
 
I do have a concern that the games I buy now in years to come will no longer be playable. Whether that be DRM issues or the service provider shutting down.

There is a website somewhere (can't recall the name of it sorry) where it has an ever growing list of films, music and games that simply can no longer be found and they are asking anyone with physical copies to help them preserve them.

I still buy CDs and Vinyl as a choice, some films where I really like the film, but games I have no option but to digitally purchase.

I know we must move forward with technology and a part of that is reducing wasted physical media, but there is something sad about it too.

There is also a quality difference in some of this, such as as bitrate of a film when bought on physical media vs streamed, but I feel that many do not care enough these days...
 
kurosagi01 said:
My main complaint I have with going all digital is some do not last forever, even if you paid for it, the moment the xyz client loses it license to that game it disappears from your library.
One may argue that its Ok since you may not touch that game, but the principle still stands that you paid for it with the assumption it is yours to keep forever.
I am in a very slow transition to try and swap most of my 1080P blu-ray movies for 4K since I have a 4K TV to take advantage of, I will forever will try and purchase physical media if possible.
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IIRC Steam have stated and shown that if you buy a game from there it will remain available even if it's no longer for sale via them.
They also ended up with a bunch of devs porting over game when MS shut down their original gaming service.

But I've not seen any company make the same promise for TV/film/music, and IIRC it has been shown that Apple do/did in fact remove titles people had "bought" when they lost the streaming rights (and when called on it offered a free rental voucher).
 
Can you imagine if every game, piece of music, film and TV series that is available now as well as everything still to come out was released onto physical media? It would be ridiculous.

Fact is, it simply isn't sustainable to put everything on physical media anymore. There is simply too much of everything.

There is an absurd amount of content created regularly now.
 
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Speaking as someone stuck on a 10Mb connection and with no access to fibre I ******* detest the loss of physical media. Streaming TV shows via Amazon and the like is fine, but then there's the size of modern games, no way am I downloading 100GB.
 
I've mentioned i still buy cds but also my sony blu ray player looks so much better than streaming so i still get the odd blu ray ,having said that i dont know what res you guys stream at but guessing my plasma wont go above 1080
 
Werewolf said:
IIRC Steam have stated and shown that if you buy a game from there it will remain available even if it's no longer for sale via them.
They also ended up with a bunch of devs porting over game when MS shut down their original gaming service.

But I've not seen any company make the same promise for TV/film/music, and IIRC it has been shown that Apple do/did in fact remove titles people had "bought" when they lost the streaming rights (and when called on it offered a free rental voucher).
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I remember Mafia 2 disappeared from my steam library, only for it to come back when 2K brought out the Mafia definitive edition collection. That was the one time I felt a bit skeptical with digital media and confused. I'm hoping that doesn't happen again at least.
 
Without physical media you don't own it. It is subject to change and if you gob off on the internet you can easily break terms of service and have you "purchases" removed. I'm actively planning to buy DVD's of classic old movies that are never shown anymore because even when they are available they keep getting censored because they no longer meet the Year Zero demands of "current thing". Same with CD's I'm forever picking up second hand discs of bands I couldn't afford at the time or were before my time. They're cheap and I own it forever. Books are just more tactile and immersive than the reader equivalent, there is no dusty smell no sense of touch no physical connection that takes you back. I just don't fit the everything is a subscription life "own nothing be happy" is just not for me.
 
PlacidCasual said:
Without physical media you don't own it. It is subject to change and if you gob off on the internet you can easily break terms of service and have you "purchases" removed. I'm actively planning to buy DVD's of classic old movies that are never shown anymore because even when they are available they keep getting censored because they no longer meet the Year Zero demands of "current thing". Same with CD's I'm forever picking up second hand discs of bands I couldn't afford at the time or were before my time. They're cheap and I own it forever. Books are just more tactile and immersive than the reader equivalent, there is no dusty smell no sense of touch no physical connection that takes you back. I just don't fit the everything is a subscription life "own nothing be happy" is just not for me.
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pfft, n00b, CDs can decay over centuries.
 
I remember buying Street Fighter Super for the Mega drive in the early 90s. Had to save up my birthday and Christmas money for that, and the six button controller. It was around £70 so that was a lot back then.

Then in the late 90s I remember buying big box games for Amiga then later PC which contained printed manuals, floppy discs, and normal a code book of some kind for the piracy prevention. These were always between £25 and £40.

It's a shame that kids today won't experience the hobby in the same way but the world has moved on, now you can chat online to someone on the other side of the world.

Inevitable changes.

Don't think the ownership issue is significant myself. Media has always been consumable and disposable. There is no real benefit to hoarding a load of old VHS tapes or floppy disc games.
 
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Since getting the PS5 and 1Gbps FTTP I buy the vast majority of my games digitally now. I can download a game in less time than it takes to install off the disc, and it's more convenient when switching between games. I think the last physical PC game I bought was Quantum Break, and that was only because it was cheaper than buying it digitally and it came with a Steam code anyway.

That said, I do buy many more CDs nowadays, plenty of artists and labels still go to the effort of making them (as well as vinyl, cassettes and even MiniDisc sometimes) and it's nice to have a physical representation of those things. Plus with Bandcamp etc you get the FLAC download anyway so effectively it's the best of both worlds.
 
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Caracus2k said:
If you're not buying a standalone product does there need to be something around how long a product should remain somewhat usable especially where its use is entirely reliant on a service provided by the manuufacturer/ publisher etc.
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Valid point. I expect the subscription based model will be the one that wins though going forward though.
 
Malevolence said:
Speaking as someone stuck on a 10Mb connection and with no access to fibre I ******* detest the loss of physical media. Streaming TV shows via Amazon and the like is fine, but then there's the size of modern games, no way am I downloading 100GB.
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Surely you just set it to dl over night and/or when you are at work? Would take a couple of days at most....similar to waiting for it to come through the post :p I live out in the sticks and have a pretty crappy internet speed as well and have dl a couple of games just under 100GB over Xmas.

I remember having to dl a 300mb patch for Thief on a 56k modem before I could play it, that took over 12 hours lol!
 
I don't buy games on physical media these days but I do still buy CD's, Vinyl and Blu-ray as I prefer to actually own my copy of music and film and not being dependant of a provider calling it a day and losing everything or relying on a crappy internet connection to be able to watch/listen to something.

With games there really isn't a choice these days, especially if you game on pc. The biggest downside is that games these days can be truly massive and not everyone has a stupidly fast internet connection. Our's is all over the place and ranges from 22-34mb/s and a 70+Gb game will take several hours to download. There used to be a decent second hand market for physical games but they have killed that off by tying a game to a account so once the one time activation code has been used you can't sell or transfer the game to anyone else.
 
I still buy my favourite movies on 4K disc.
There's a night and day difference to both the visual quality and sound quality (imo). I must have over 1000 CD albums stashed in my garage....im waiting until they come back around into demand so that i can reap the benefits of maybe selling 'original' cd albums haha.
I've always enjoyed owning the physical thing.
 
I prefer physical media and still buy blu-ray and games on disc where possible. Not only from a resell standpoint but also because you know it definitely isn't going to disappear one day due to licensing issues. Music is all digital though of course, the benefits there far outweigh the downsides
 
The other thing that is kinda bizarre now at least in digital game sector, they are now costing as much as standard physical copy. For me the extra freedom of buying physical is the option to sell/trade it in for something else, even if it lost a bit of value. If they implemented something similar for digital then cool but they haven't, the only time I would buy a digital game at full price is if its a game I really wanted from day 1 and i'll primarily play it on PC then I will. But if a physical copy is cheaper than the digital copy, even on a sale then I will be getting the physical copy for whatever console game i'm getting.
 
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