Physical release!?

[atheistgod1999]

Physical copies would be the way to go, if it weren't for the fact that games nowadays always have patches and shit. What the fuck happened to a game being ready on release!?

FUCK EARLY-ACCESS

[Triple Lei]

You're not going to believe this, but physical games can be updated. I mean, the very *idea*!!!!!!

Of course they can but you missed my point. The point is that by the time that the servers are down and you cannot download any games from the stores you will most likely not be able to update the games either regardless if you've got it physically or digitally.

This is a point I keep bringing up at GameFAQs; glad to see somebody else realized this independently. We're already relying on servers to stay up when we buy our new games, digital or physical. You want to talk doomsday scenarios, you also need to bring up dying lasers, disc rot, and all that other crap. I remember throwing away an entire weekend trying to pry a disc from a YLOD'd PS3.

I think backing up our games will only get easier in the future, with or without the homebrew scene (mostly with).

[Shepardus]

So what is with the kind of obsession some people always have about having a physical copy of every game they buy?

I would imagine that you're not the kind of person that has a retirement account, or more than $1000 in the bank either, right? Everything is fine today, so why wont tomorrow be the same?

If I were worried about bad things happening to me and threatening the games I own, the last place I'd want them to be is stuck on a disc.

What the fuck happened to a game being ready on release!?

Games and the environments they're deployed to got more complicated, as did team dynamics as team sizes increased to meet the increasing production needs. People also figured out that digital distribution could be used to iterate more efficiently and respond to feedback more quickly.

[Illyrian]

So what is with the kind of obsession some people always have about having a physical copy of every game they buy?

I would imagine that you're not the kind of person that has a retirement account, or more than $1000 in the bank either, right? Everything is fine today, so why wont tomorrow be the same?

??? I am saving up a deposit for a house at the moment. I don't know what your point is?
I do not see how physical games and saving money are related.

[ZellSF]

I really dislike the "games are broken at physical release and need updates" narrative. I think I've bought maybe... 1 game where that's true. The rest have had minor fixes at best and are perfectly playable without updates. If that's a consistent problem, maybe stop buying poor quality games?

Physical copies would be the way to go, if it weren't for the fact that games nowadays always have patches and shit. What the fuck happened to a game being ready on release!?

FUCK EARLY-ACCESS

I haven't seen any game get a physical release while still in early-access. They wait until a "finished" version for a physical release.

Hey.

So what is with the kind of obsession some people always have about having a physical copy of every game they buy? Especially when everything is available on the Internet through different means both legal and illegal. I understand collecting old games for the nostalgia and because they might be worth a lot one day but why do people obsess over this with new games?

I mean they print so many copies of new games it isn'the like we are going to run out anytime soonext.

To clarify: I am referring to regular versions of games. I understand collecting collector's editions.

Your main point, that others don't seem to be exactly approaching is that you think new games are printed in so large quantities you can always buy physical later, if you eventually need it. Because there will always be a large supply and in the future they will go down in price.

This might be true for AAA releases. It is not true for many smaller games getting physical releases. I have preordered physical copies of Rez for PS4 and Shovel Knight for Vita. They'll both guaranteed get less than 10000 copies printed. Old games with that low print runs are generally thought to be pretty rare today.

I've also bought quite a few games with limited print runs that have gone up in price significantly since I bought them. Not sure that will happen with Rez or Shovel Knight, but it's a very real possibility.

Plus the wide availability argument makes no sense as an argument for going digital. Wide availability means price competition in retail stores. As a result physical copies of AAA titles are usually cheaper than digital copies, where there is no competition (for consoles, anyway).

[Ed Oscuro]

The issue isn't physical or digital, the issue is DRM (and planned obsolescence).

[ZellSF]

The issue isn't physical or digital, the issue is DRM (and planned obsolescence).

That doesn't seem to be the issue OP was originally raising though. His point seemed to me to be that you could always buy a physical release later (or download a copy) if you needed it and just go digital for the convenience for now.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm making a clearer version of the OP's statement then; I'm not aiming at that post. Many of the immediate responses are stuck in that false dichotomy of "you either have to have physical or HORRIBLE DRM and spiders in the eyes" which means nothing if you only ever will have one system capable of playing the game. Likewise I'm totally fine using emulation, or a digital download, if it means at least as good quality as the original release, and preserves the right to play things later. A physical game you can't use is just a coaster or a dust magnet, really.

[rancor]

??? I am saving up a deposit for a house at the moment.

Why buy a house? Why not just rent forever?

In both instances (renting / digital distribution) you own nothing. When your time is up on both, you are left with nothing.

[Shepardus]

In both instances (renting / digital distribution) you own nothing. When your time is up on both, you are left with nothing.

You don't necessarily own anything other than a license when you buy a physical game either. There are DRM-free digital releases, and there are physical releases with DRM. For instance, Bioshock had an activation limit for retail, disc-based copies, that limited the number of machines you could install it on. They've since removed that DRM, but had they not done so there would be a bunch of discs that would be useless for playing the game.

Physical vs. digital and DRM vs. DRM-free are two different things. As far as I'm concerned the disc is just the medium through which the game is delivered to me, and the game and its associated experiences are what I'm actually buying, so I don't care whether I get a disc with it (in fact I'd rather not get the game through a disc since it's extra clutter and my laptop doesn't even have a CD/DVD drive). If I really wanted a disc I'd just take a DRM-free digital release and burn it to a disc myself.

[Illyrian]

??? I am saving up a deposit for a house at the moment.

Why buy a house? Why not just rent forever?

In both instances (renting / digital distribution) you own nothing. When your time is up on both, you are left with nothing.

You know I have a lot of respect for you for running your own store and I have bought games from you before myself but your point is so ridiculous.

There is a giant difference between spending a lot of money on a house that you can pass on to your family or children and buying video games. Seriously man that is such a false equivalency.

Furthermore you trying to make me out as some moron who does not think about the future is just insulting. You know absolutely nothing about me at all or what I have been through or what I have to deal with now.

This is literally just a thread about buying physical copies of games and you made it personal. How ridiculous.

To the point someone made earlier, lots of modern games if you buy them in a store require registration to a steam account etc so all you have is a box with some art and a game registered to a program with DRM anyway.

Edit: this genuinely was not meant to be a troll thread or anything and anyone turning what should be a civil conversation into a mess is just stupid.

[rancor]

There is a giant difference between spending a lot of money on a house that you can pass on to your family or children and buying video games. Seriously man that is such a false equivalency.

It's really not. I know more than a half-dozen people that have spent house-money on video games. One of them runs this forum. I'm probably almost there, myself. Imagine if we had nothing to show for it but some 0's and 1's up in some corporations cloud.

[Squire Grooktook]

It depends on how serious you are about games and your collection, which is not known in a topic of random conversation. So extrapolating to ones personal lifestyle and future plans based on games is not a good idea.

[Illyrian]

There is a giant difference between spending a lot of money on a house that you can pass on to your family or children and buying video games. Seriously man that is such a false equivalency.

It's really not. I know more than a half-dozen people that have spent house-money on video games. One of them runs this forum. I'm probably almost there, myself. Imagine if we had nothing to show for it but some 0's and 1's up in some corporations cloud.

I don'the even care about the topic at hand at this point. You owe me an apology for acting like an arsehole.

[rancor]

I'm sorry if I insulted you, but I just felt that this was going the same way as the Battle Gregga thread where this has been discussed to death:

they should include a glass for dentures with the premium edition

I figured you were asking the question to throw out some insults to those that still prefer physical copies. Anyhow, it seems you pretty much answered your own question:

I understand collecting old games for the nostalgia and because they might be worth a lot one day but why do people obsess over this with new games?

The answer - because I'd rather my purchases be worth something down the road, rather than absolutely nothing.

[Ed Oscuro]

In both instances (renting / digital distribution) you own nothing. When your time is up on both, you are left with nothing.

What's wrong with GOG?

[rancor]

Nothing I guess, if you can talk someone into buying your old copy of Tyranny Overlord on DVD-R for $79.99.

[drunkninja24]

This is really quite simple

If I dig out my ol' PS4 in, say 30 years and discover either the system itself or the hdd suddenly don't work, I can simply find a used one somewhere which (hopefully) still works and will still play all my disc-based games just fine.

But all those downloaded games I had on my previous system? Likely gone for good.

That's pretty much the reason I'll take physical over digital given the opportunity.

[boagman]

This is really quite simple

If I dig out my ol' PS4 in, say 30 years and discover either the system itself or the hdd suddenly don't work, I can simply find a used one somewhere which (hopefully) still works and will still play all my disc-based games just fine.

But all those downloaded games I had on my previous system? Likely gone for good.

That's pretty much the reason I'll take physical over digital given the opportunity.

Yep. This.

[Ed Oscuro]

Nothing I guess, if you can talk someone into buying your old copy of Tyranny Overlord on DVD-R for $79.99.

You're planning on selling an old physical disc of the game for $79.99? Since you're cherry picking cases, have a look at the value of a Steam key for 2009's Wolfenstein versus the value of the console releases. I can go one better: Why buy any game unless you can time your buys at minimum price and sell them at their peak?

Why even buy a game at all if you can have it for free? This year Ubisoft has monthly free (DRM-locked to their platform, of course) releases of some of their best titles, and GoG sometimes will let you add games to you library for free, too. I'm not sure you could sell a GoG account at the end of the day, but you do get to play a game for free, at which price I absolutely couldn't complain about not being able to extract any more value from the secondhand market.

Then I say DRM is a big issue: There are plenty of "physical" releases which are totally compromised by being shackled to obsolete or underperforming hardware (i.e., the entirety of the current-gen library could be ported over to better hardware, and then there was the threat of killing off second-hand sales entirely) and the built-in DRM of running on a particular platform is not good for future access to today's media productions.

Speculating with games is fine by me, but it's only one motive people will have for buying them - along with wanting to encourage game production, wanting to have that experience, and wanting to have access to a game long-term. If your view of games is that they're more like airport paperbacks than timeless classics worth replaying, then I could see being completely mercenary about them.

But if we're being totally realistic, selling a game on isn't free money at all.

Putting aside principles about DRM, there are times a rational person would prefer a free game to a physical copy:

- When a person decides the hassle of selling a game is more than the value gotten from the sale (plain opportunity cost, speculative risk, the hassle of selling, having to warehouse the game, having to prove your cost basis for tax purposes if you're really trying to maximize your capital gains
- When the physical copy simply is less convenient - I couldn't imagine having to pull out my Quake or Ultimate DOOM CDs every time I want to load up a source port or WAD; and the same is true for any GoG installer which I can just locate in my increasingly well-organized file directory. It's actually more secure for the future than relying on a physical copy you can't backup due to an obscure format or DRM, and certainly less risk to the media integrity than digging through precarious piles of floppy disks.

Like I said, I've been very stingy with my purchases - $20 is about my maximum for even AAA-titles on Steam, and ignoring a few purchases like that, I'm willing to forego multiplayer and wait for $5 or less prices. Physical disc pricing isn't always so convenient. I've got a bunch of tabs open right now trying to find the right price for a few well-recieved but hardly legendary games. Even Dinotopia: The Sunstone Odyssey sells for a few dollars on eBay - a transaction that's probably not worth it for either party. If it was on Steam, it'd probably be in the $0.99 category and modded to hell for laughs.

[Bitter Almonds]

This is really quite simple

If I dig out my ol' PS4 in, say 30 years and discover either the system itself or the hdd suddenly don't work, I can simply find a used one somewhere which (hopefully) still works and will still play all my disc-based games just fine.

But all those downloaded games I had on my previous system? Likely gone for good.

That's pretty much the reason I'll take physical over digital given the opportunity.

Totally agree with this. With that being said, I'll buy a digital release if:

- It's the only way the game is available.
- It's on sale or costs 50% or less than the physical copy.
- Physical space (my place is tiny!).
- The price of the physical copy has been jacked up by scalpers.

I figure I'll worry about the doomsday scenario of servers not working anymore when it happens... I'll probably have to repurchase it digitally, as long as it's cheep.

[Ed Oscuro]

If you separate "digital" from the assumption it has DRM, some of those problems turn out not to be problems. You can back up DRM-free game installers from GoG easily and legally.

On the flip side, if the new platform is incompatible (soft DRM), you can't assume physical discs have you covered (i.e., PS2 "backwards compatibility" on the PS4).

And it also has to be said that given the right price, any company can reissue any old product in a way that depresses prices in the secondhand market. Anybody remember how GameStop handled the late PS1 Capcom rereleases? My local store's old location handled it by taking boxcutter knives to the seals and straight on through the plastic so they could be sold as "used." Aside from that, though, there's plenty of cases where even digital rereleases have depressed the value of some sought-after physical releases. To a large extent the value of old games is due to artificial scarcity.

[charlie chong]

i imagine piracy and cracking will still allow these digital games to be played in the future quite easily .
a lot of people on this forum need to admit to themselves they prefer to collect boxes rather than play teh actual games.

[Bitter Almonds]

I wouldn't buy from gamestop anyway - those awful stickers lead to condition anger.

[nissling]

It depends on how serious you are about games and your collection, which is not known in a topic of random conversation. So extrapolating to ones personal lifestyle and future plans based on games is not a good idea.

Do you mean that someone buying their games on Steam or PSN are "less serious about games" or what? I don't get it.

[Ixmucane2]

That's not an issue at all. Games purchased on Steam, PSN etc. can be downloaded an infinite number of times.

ROTFL

[ZellSF]

i imagine piracy and cracking will still allow these digital games to be played in the future quite easily .
a lot of people on this forum need to admit to themselves they prefer to collect boxes rather than play teh actual games.

Depends very heavily on your definition of both future and easy.

Playing pirated games on just about any CD console seems to involve quite a bit of research (and/or money) to get it working. Just having the disc and inserting it is better.

Emulation is an option, but that's far from perfect on most CD/DVD/Blu-ray consoles. There's no guarantee it will be perfected in your lifetime.

That's assuming you can even find a pirated copy of the game at the time you want it. That's far from guaranteed.

[Shoryukev]

i imagine piracy and cracking will still allow these digital games to be played in the future quite easily .
a lot of people on this forum need to admit to themselves they prefer to collect boxes rather than play teh actual games.

If that's your argument, then why pay for games at all? Arrrr the pirates life for yee matey!

[ZellSF]

i imagine piracy and cracking will still allow these digital games to be played in the future quite easily .
a lot of people on this forum need to admit to themselves they prefer to collect boxes rather than play teh actual games.

If that's your argument, then why pay for games at all? Arrrr the pirates life for yee matey!

You can't pirate all games.

I know you weren't being serious, just saying.

[BryanM]

Emulation is an option, but that's far from perfect on most CD/DVD/Blu-ray consoles. There's no guarantee it will be perfected in your lifetime.

The Saturn has supposedly just finally gotten a decentish emulator where everything isn't garbled shit.

BRE Software was having a firesale on the damn thing during my hollowed youth - $30 for the machine, $10 per game.... and I was a teenager who foolishly and retardedly didn't have a car in that brief window. Missing out on that back while I still cared about the Saturn is still a sore spot.

If the Saturn can be solved, pretty much anything can be. The only major one I have doubts about is the XBox series. That's... a shitheap wrapped in an enigma buried under the sea.

If that's your argument, then why pay for games at all? Arrrr the pirates life for yee matey!

Honestly feels like the future involves mainly $0 games, the competition is just that brutal.

Blizzard got away with charging $60 christfucking dollars for Diablo 3 (DRM'd to the max), Path of Exile retails at $0. The megacorps like Blizzard can charge an arm and leg since they entered the market early, but anyone new has to cut themselves to the bone and rely on donationware to get big.

It's not just the newest releases they're competing against after all - it's every game in history. I'm just getting around to freaking ARC THE LAD this month. It's been out for a month or two already, you know. I'm not even at the point of getting around to see what's so bad about this Beyond the Beyond game everyone's been harping about.

Of all the games the playstation 4 has coming out, the only one I'm interested in is Let It Die. A deathgame labyrinth action roguelikish thing. It will be priced at $0.