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Digital or Physical Distribution?


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Which do you prefer? Digital or Physical Distribution? 

 

For me, I prefer Digital because:

 

  • Discs get lost/scratched/broken
  • Discs take up physical space (I live in a small mobile home, and don't have a good "gaming room" set up for my collection and I have a huge retro collection and they're in boxes stacked sky high in closets where i don't even know wtf I have in there anymore LOL.)
  • I don't (usually) trade-in or sell my games on the 2nd hand market, so not interested in this benefit of having a physical copy of the game.
  • I'm pretty confident that steam will be around for 10-20+ years, and that if it ever were to go out of business, at least I would have had enjoyed the games for a significant length of time - Plus, there's still other store-fronts that offer DRM free digital distribution where this is not an issue.
  • I am very much an entitled little sad American, who wants her games right now = instant gratification. I live in a teeny tiny town, it's about a half hour drive to a walmart or gamestop for me to purchase my games. I could order online, but then pay shipping and still have to wait for the game to arrive in the mail. Many times with digital releases you can "pre-install / patch" and be playing by midnight while other suckers are standing in-line for midnight release, or waiting for the next day's mail to arrive.
  • I like being able to "catalog" my collection, search it easily, conveniently, add tags, or arrange my gaming library to my liking. Steam makes it so fast/simple to find my games (I have over 400 games on steam, and probably a few dozen non-steam games which I've added to the steam library just for ease of use, being able to search and organize them etc.)
  • You just push one button and you're in the game, steam is always running in the background, and with auto updates enabled, your games are always up to date.
  • You don't have to dig out consoles, controllers, and cords and wires. Less hassle = more time spent gaming!
  • For Sony and maybe other providers too, the digital versions of games are "backwards compatiable" while the physical discs are not. Such as I can play a PS1 or PS2 game on a PS3 (or PS4 if I had a PS4). And I can play my PSP games on my Vita. This is a big attraction to me since I'm always playing my older games.

 

The only thing I dislike about digital distribution is the physical space it takes up - which isn't an issue for PC gaming now that you can have like a 6 TB harddrive these days, but for console gaming, it does indeed suck, especially for Nintendo Consoles where even the "deluxe" version of their console has an insanely small harddrive. -- But often times I focus on just playing 1 or 2 games at a time, tops, since I play about 95% RPGs, which take 60 to 100+ hours to beat. So I don't mind only being able to have a few games installed at a time.

 

While the collector in me does miss the glory days of the 90s, with full color manuals, boxes, plushies, tshirts, jewelry, watches, or other goodies with the "physical games" - very few games even release with manuals or if they do these days, they're in black and white, they just don't make them as nice as they used to. If they went back to the old days having really nice packaging, and etc, where you'd want to display them, then I could see myself purchasing certain games for my collection again :)

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  • Management Team

For my early years of my life it always has been physical and it was the good old times that was lovely till this day, I was running an old computer back then and so physical was the only option that I can go about and back then it was the one and only option other then floppy disks xD As from today that I still got the discs versions for the Grand Theft Auto 5 and some other very big games that are not 4 discs, reasons since I have crap internet back at my old home and would of taken so much days and money to download, not like now where I can download games with unlimited data.

 

The Answer to all questions on what I prefer is the digital version. I can repeat again but @Xenokitten is right from the points above. Thanks for the helpful good facts and points you have added and explained.    

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  • 1 month later...

A long time ago I use to be all about the physical copy. But like you said XenoKitten they take up way too much space and the discs overtime get lost/scratched and doesn't work anymore. I buy everything digitally these days. Same for my music.

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I prefer physical because one I have been doing it all of my life, number 2 I can trade the game in if I don't like it.  Another reason why I like it is because I like collecting stuff and adding it to my collection. But sometimes I do have to order digital because it's quicker and you can download the game instantly. Plus digital games don't get scratched.  Sometimes PSN have discount on games like WWE the over year. WWE 2K15 was free on XBOX for a week. But they are both sides to this.

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  • 3 months later...
  • 1 month later...
On 3/14/2017 at 4:35 AM, jrd95 said:

I like physical. Mainly because you can trade it back

Exactly, also it gives you an immense pleasure of supporting the company which you like by legally purchasing them. Also i stores like cex sell the used ones for a really good price.

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Well physical releases should be better because you have the physical media which should mean if the developer goes bust you should still be able to play your games but due to disk rot meaning you will have to back up your games anyway. This means in the longer term it may not even matter if you go for a physical or a digital release.

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  • 2 months later...

Digital is always better for kids because they tend to scratch games.  For instance, you might even leave a game for one day in the hands of a 4-year-old and then it will never play again.  Note, games are often quite expensive so it's no laughing matter.

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  • 2 months later...

When you buy a game, what do you usually go for? Do you like buying the Physical copy of the game or do you buy and download digital copies? I like the physical copy of the game. It makes me feel like I actually own it and it's kind of like a collection.

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  • Management Team
27 minutes ago, Canadian said:

When you buy a game, what do you usually go for? Do you like buying the Physical copy of the game or do you buy and download digital copies? I like the physical copy of the game. It makes me feel like I actually own it and it's kind of like a collection.

 

Already an topic has been made and for that I have marge it.

 

 

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If I helped you out in anyway can u please click this up button arrow . Thank You!!!

 

 

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  • 5 months later...
On ‎13‎/‎09‎/‎2016 at 2:46 PM, Xenokitten said:

Which do you prefer? Digital or Physical Distribution? 

 

For me, I prefer Digital because:

 

  • Discs get lost/scratched/broken
  • Discs take up physical space (I live in a small mobile home, and don't have a good "gaming room" set up for my collection and I have a huge retro collection and they're in boxes stacked sky high in closets where i don't even know wtf I have in there anymore LOL.)
  • I don't (usually) trade-in or sell my games on the 2nd hand market, so not interested in this benefit of having a physical copy of the game.
  • I'm pretty confident that steam will be around for 10-20+ years, and that if it ever were to go out of business, at least I would have had enjoyed the games for a significant length of time - Plus, there's still other store-fronts that offer DRM free digital distribution where this is not an issue.
  • I am very much an entitled little sad American, who wants her games right now = instant gratification. I live in a teeny tiny town, it's about a half hour drive to a walmart or gamestop for me to purchase my games. I could order online, but then pay shipping and still have to wait for the game to arrive in the mail. Many times with digital releases you can "pre-install / patch" and be playing by midnight while other suckers are standing in-line for midnight release, or waiting for the next day's mail to arrive.
  • I like being able to "catalog" my collection, search it easily, conveniently, add tags, or arrange my gaming library to my liking. Steam makes it so fast/simple to find my games (I have over 400 games on steam, and probably a few dozen non-steam games which I've added to the steam library just for ease of use, being able to search and organize them etc.)
  • You just push one button and you're in the game, steam is always running in the background, and with auto updates enabled, your games are always up to date.
  • You don't have to dig out consoles, controllers, and cords and wires. Less hassle = more time spent gaming!
  • For Sony and maybe other providers too, the digital versions of games are "backwards compatiable" while the physical discs are not. Such as I can play a PS1 or PS2 game on a PS3 (or PS4 if I had a PS4). And I can play my PSP games on my Vita. This is a big attraction to me since I'm always playing my older games.

 

The only thing I dislike about digital distribution is the physical space it takes up - which isn't an issue for PC gaming now that you can have like a 6 TB harddrive these days, but for console gaming, it does indeed suck, especially for Nintendo Consoles where even the "deluxe" version of their console has an insanely small harddrive. -- But often times I focus on just playing 1 or 2 games at a time, tops, since I play about 95% RPGs, which take 60 to 100+ hours to beat. So I don't mind only being able to have a few games installed at a time.

 

While the collector in me does miss the glory days of the 90s, with full color manuals, boxes, plushies, tshirts, jewelry, watches, or other goodies with the "physical games" - very few games even release with manuals or if they do these days, they're in black and white, they just don't make them as nice as they used to. If they went back to the old days having really nice packaging, and etc, where you'd want to display them, then I could see myself purchasing certain games for my collection again :)

I own Physical, but I do agree, I also prefer Digital. Any new video games that I purchase, I will purchase from the Xbox store. You listed some good reasons, and I agree with all them, and my reasoning is the same as yours to why my preference is buying Digital Games instead of Physical Discs.

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