| 100 percent digital. I love having all those games to choose from on my ps4 dash. Plus any game i ever brought is downloadable again. Switching discs is a pain. |
Digital console market nearing 50% - where do you stand? • Page 4
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wobbly_Bob 5,162 posts
Seen 7 months ago
Registered 15 years ago -
Cappy 14,393 posts
Seen 2 hours ago
Registered 16 years agoKids could never understand the torturous hardships we went through.
I still reflexively wince at the painful memories of the Christmas of 97 I had a brand new N64 and two games. Mario 64 and Golden Eye. Little did I realise that I was being drawn into a web of sadistic cruelty, somewhere Miyamoto and Yamauchi were wanking themselves silly at the thought of the horrific trial I would endure.
Two games but just one cartridge slot, I had to change them! Change them with my own hands, could any human being endure such harsh physical labour?
It just got worse and worse, the possible choices increased to four when I got Pilot Wings and Blast Corps a couple of months later. I would stock up on supplies then make for base camp to prepare for my long journey to the other side of the room to swap games media, sheer barbarism, it's a miracle I survived. -
Gibroon 2,658 posts
Seen 2 hours ago
Registered 17 years agoGetting more and more digital. Obviously PC is 100% digital. Still buy the odd physical copy for PS4 but that is less and less. I can understand the worry for everything being digital, the main issue is broadband speed for a lot of the country is still a bit iffy. Not too bad where I live but I would be pissed off if I was still on 1 Mbs and had to download 50GB+ .
The concerns of a lack of competitive pricing at launch are valid but I'm more and more patient these days. I'll wait 6 months and get the digital version in a sale for half the price or less. Must admit I enjoy not swapping out disks. -
Zomoniac 10,628 posts
Seen 11 minutes ago
Registered 17 years ago95% physical as they look nice in the collection. I only buy digital if there’s a sale and a price I can’t pass up. -
ilmaestro 32,932 posts
Seen 10 months ago
Registered 18 years agoPhysical media in 2017 lol -
ilmaestro 32,932 posts
Seen 10 months ago
Registered 18 years agoDizzy wrote:
You keep forgetting to buy digital?
Only on Switch I buy physical, for memory reasons.
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GloatingSwine 3,916 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 14 years agoMostly physical because it's still usually cheaper. -
Syrette 51,181 posts
Seen 1 hour ago
Registered 19 years agowobbly_Bob wrote:
Do you game in a cinema or something?
Switching discs is a pain.
You put more effort and energy into going to the toilet (unless you game on a toilet?).
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I like digital on PC and physical media on consoles.
Digital on PC because of the many different storefront and key reselling markets you can find bargains and discounts in abundance. Having a digital storage means that I don't have to worry about keeping installation disks between PC's.
On console I like psychical media because it allows me to resell and trade with other people. Also with no competition in digital storefronts, digital titles on console price tend to stay high. -
Nazo 1,951 posts
Seen 35 minutes ago
Registered 12 years agoWas 90% physical last gen, am 90% digital this one.
Having moved house recently, I've come to appreciate the importance of not accumulating lots of clutter. Also my PS4 drive is quite noisy, but the machine itself is pretty quiet the rest of the time so no discs is better for that.
I only buy stuff in sales these days so am content just to grab something when it's on offer. -
@SpaceMonkey77 I feel sorry for Volition and Visceral from the sounds of the postmortems on Kotaku it looks like they were both thrown under the bus by their publishers who demanded AAA gameplay but didn't want to pay for it. -
Bit of copypasta here from my comment on the Assassin's Creed Origins article:
Unless the publishers try and force gamers' hands (which would essentially be commercial suicide, but I wouldn't put it past them), it's worth mentioning even if this shift continues, it will flatten out eventually as gamers establish themselves on their distribution channel of choice.
For what it's worth, I was a PC-only gamer back until 2008, when Steam started being imposed on even physical releases of PC games and publishers tried to disincentivise physical purchases by essentially crippling them to remove any advantage that the boxed version had. I guess publishers expected gamers to cave in and many of them did. I've diversified: I'd say I'm now 70% PS4, 20% PC (for games you can't get physically on PS4), 20% others (Wii U, Xbox One, Vita, Android, soon also Switch).
Part of the problem - at least here in Germany - is that people often don't understand the restrictions on the boxed versions of Steam, UPlay and Origin games. I've worked in an independent games store and you'd be amazed how many people try to trade in used copies of PC games where the key had already been activated. "But I've only played it once," they whine. Tough shit - your game is worth precisely fuck all. I see the same thing at boot sales all the time.
People often quote the music industry as an example of one that has almost gone completely digital but that is, quite frankly, a bizarre myth. The shift towards streaming services has essentially distorted the revenue share, but it brings the least income per song for creators and distributors. In terms of album sales, more than half of music sales are still physical - CD has been stable for some time and vinyl has seen strong growth. This is largely because the album is a long-term acquisition, while single songs and streaming services are disposable goods. Outside of streaming, song downloads have actually been in decline for a while.
Movies are the same - digital is only growing because of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime et al.
I suspect the gaming industry will follow a similar pattern. Predominantly online experiences like Destiny will probably move to online-only distribution, as will exclusively annualised franchises like FIFA and NBA that have little collector's or resale value. The major AAA studios will probably try and force a shift towards the social gaming "trend" (in other words, a bubble) and the major indie and mid-tier studios will step up to fill the single-player void and meet demand for offline, single-player experiences. -
Some interesting points and the path you've presented could very well be the future. However, the games industry isn't the music or film industry so it's as equally as likely consoles could follow the PC market. As it stands now console game discs aren't much more than activation codes. Full installs, downloads and patches are required to play from day one and I believe it's only a matter of time before console discs, like PC, are only required to be used once until we eventually reach a time where they're not needed not at all.
Edited by Ragnor at 13:29:45 08-11-2017 -
@whatfruitlivesagain In the case of Volition it was almost certainly a case of putting the cart before the horse. Deep Silver have a pretty good track record as a mid-tier publisher of third-party titles and it seems to be profitable for them (and the developers I've heard of seem to have a pretty good working relationship with them), but they don't generate the kinds of revenue that you'd expect of a AAA studio.
So when they bought out Volition on the cheap from THQ's bankruptcy assets, I think they were at a loss to know what to do with them. It was probably bad planning on Deep Silver's part - they'd essentially acquired the rights to develop Saints' Row games, they suddenly had in-house AAA development capacity, but they didn't have the funds available to really create the kinds of games that you'd have associated with the franchise. The entire Koch Media Group (which also covers productivity software distribution and movie publishing in Germany and the UK) generates less than 10% of the revenue of EA.
So as I say, I'd be reluctant to be too harsh on Deep Silver. They give the developers that they work with a lot of creative scope. It's just that they seem to have underestimated the investment required when you have in-house development capacity and try to compete in the AAA segment.
Edited by FilthyAnimal at 13:44:34 08-11-2017 -
@Ragnor As it stands now console game discs aren't much more than activation codes.
I've no idea why people keep repeating this when it's patently untrue. A full install is irrelevant - all the data is still on the disc. Full installs were also often necessary on the PS3, especially from around 2009 onwards.
And there are VERY few games for which downloaded patches are essential for an offline experience - Skyrim on the PS3 (and even so, the Legendary Edition includes those patches), Assassin's Creed: Unity on the PS4 and XO. Also LA Noire & NBA 2K18 on the Switch, although it remains to be seen how long that charade will last.
It's interesting how people always drag up the example of The Evil Within to back this claim up, claiming that it was "unplayable" at launch. The unpatched version isn't unplayable. It had an unsatisfactory frame rate, but it was far from unplayable.
Edited by FilthyAnimal at 13:52:42 08-11-2017 -
Syrette 51,181 posts
Seen 1 hour ago
Registered 19 years ago@FilthyAnimal
Yeah, going from "discs are activation codes" to "full game installs" was a little bemusing. -
VanillaLake 684 posts
Seen 3 months ago
Registered 7 years agoI am leaning towards digital. -
FIFAfan 268 posts
Seen 1 year ago
Registered 6 years ago100% digital. I love the on-demand convenience, and resulting lack of clutter.
This also goes for music and movies as well. -
corrected -
coomber wrote:
Not having a disc doesn't stop you from playing your games. Contrary to what you obviously believe, and bar the very rare occurrence and obviously MMOs, all your digital games are still playable without the need of an online collection.
Physical 100%. Because when your servers die I will still be able to insert my disc.
For example I've 198 games on Steam and bar maybe 2-3 titles and several MMOs they're all perfectly playable offline.
Scratch your precious disc however, or your disc drive dies...yeah, good luck with that.
Edited by Ragnor at 19:58:14 15-11-2017 -
JoelStinty 9,530 posts
Seen 52 minutes ago
Registered 8 years agoI think as the medium moves towards a 75% digital purchase habit from consumers, the discussions about what happens to games we have brought will start to be a focal issue, i wouldn't worry too much about not being able to play your games in the future. It will be eventually dealt with. -
ghearoid 3,758 posts
Seen 3 weeks ago
Registered 19 years agoI've been scanning in my new Champions amiibo this week and swapping out my Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey game cards and thinking... "Why didn't I buy one of these digitally?"
Despite all the arguments against digital, I'm leaning more and more towards having most of my games digitally with just the occasional one physically. -
Physical media in almost all cases, although the ease with which I can download stuff on the PS4 has meant that I did buy Everybody's Golf and WipeOut digitally.
But I'm old, and I like the reassurance of having the disc in case something catastrophic happens to the console.
Plus, new game smell!
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