Physical Attraction?

[Wools]

While I've been furloughed for these past few months, my life's been upheaved. Looking for work, re-writing my CV and trying to keep myself motivated while essentially, being paid to do do nothing.

As time went on, I had to do something to keep my mind from going mad, so I made myself go for a run each day to give myself structure, only looked for jobs for 30 minutes each morning on LinkedIn and obviously, decided to clear out my backlog of games. What started as a distraction (I didn't play any games early on as I started to obsess about work) eventually became a great heal and I really started to play and complete loads of games. Witcher 3, Halo MCC, Doom, all were fantastic games to see the credits screen of and all of them were completed on Steam. During all this, I picked up a Switch and was presented with the dilema; Do I pick up all new Switch games on cartridge or download online? Eventually, I purchased Zelda, Animal Crossing and Virtua Racing on the online Nintendo Store as downloads.

As furlough continued, I started sorting out our house and a mate asked me have I sorted out my games collection? Well, since my PS4 2 years ago, I sold all my physical games and now just have a PC and Switch. On them, I have Steam and the Nintendo Store for all my main games but my PC doubles as a font of all consoles and handhelds, so I can emulate a PS2 to play Gran Turismo 4, to a SNES and fire up Super Mario Bros. 3 or do a few laps of F355 Challenge on Dreamcast. Slowly, it's fully dawned on me I'm digital only and I have no desire to go back to physcial media. Although there's clear advantages to physcial with no DRM etc, I feel emulation on PC combined with the convience of digital games on Steam really have convinced a previous luddite like myself, that the small number of pros of physcial collections have become null and void with emulation.

As we're all pretty hardcore gamers and collectors round this neck of the woods, I was wondering has 2020 convinced you that physical game collecting is pointless in the age of day 1 patches and emulation or has the thrill of owning boxed copies and digital store shut down's made you swear digital is a con that'll never replace a box on your shelf?

[kryss]

If I can get a discount on pre-orders, I'll get physical. Very rarely I'll get a CE.
Otherwise digital. Half "sparing wear and tear on the console", half "I don't have to get up to change the game".

[Atticus]

I mix and match but the value of digital for me is I can't trade it. That might sound like a massive negative but with a new physical release I have been known to put pressure on myself to finish it fast while the trade value is high ... and sometimes if I take a break from the game I'm likely trade it before finishing, thinking I'll pick it up cheap down the line. With a digital release that can't happen. I own it, it's worth nothing on the secondary market, so I can enjoy it at my own pace ... and there's no selling on a whim. I also like the convenience and less wear/tear on the system factor too.

As for physical copies, the only ones I acquire these days are generally through trades at CEX.

[dataDave]

I'm looking forward to my MiSTer box with everything retro I ever need on it. I don't miss keeping huge collections at all.

The best part about owning a collection is being able to sell it.

[Asura]

As we're all pretty hardcore gamers and collectors round this neck of the woods, I was wondering has 2020 convinced you that physical game collecting is pointless in the age of day 1 patches and emulation or has the thrill of owning boxed copies and digital store shut down's made you swear digital is a con that'll never replace a box on your shelf?

Tricky one, this.

I recently bought an RG-350M, and the plan is to liquidate my GBA collection, because the emu handhelds have literally reached a point where it offers an on-par experience to playing on my AGS-101. However, this is partially fuelled by how difficult the GBA has become to collect (with dodgy copies and inflated prices) vs. just how well the machine emulates (like pretty much perfectly).

Conversely, I still own a modded PS2. Would I ditch it if we could easily have a machine that would run PS2 games perfectly - the ENTIRE library, barring literally a handful of games (I'm talking less than a dozen out of the 2,000 or so which exist) - from ROMs? Probably? But that seems so far off, given how weird the PS2 is, that I doubt we'll see it any time soon.

When it comes to newer games though, it very much depends. I recently sold my copy of Xenoblade Chronicles because, after ~12 hours, it still hadn't grabbed me and I didn't want to play it anymore. If I had bought it full price digitally, that would've been a pain, but I was able to sell it to a friend for £30. I actually keep relatively few games; I tend to sell most of them.

Come to think of it, outside of MMORPGs (which exist in a their own bubble, in a sense) I've never bought a digital game "full price", that I can recall, and I don't think I ever will; note that I regard "full price" as ~£36; I can't believe people who have bought all these physical PS4 live service games which are £48 and ask you to buy more stuff on top. This is partially because even when physical games were the only option, back in the PS2 days, I would always sell games once I was done with them. I bought Devil May Cry, GTAIII and Final Fantasy X for ~£13 at launch because I bought them for £38, then sold them for £25 a few weeks later.

That being said, I have no strong attachment to physical for the sake of it. Having large shelves of stuff is something I see as a bit of an inconvenience, rather than a boon. Just giving it up completely involves too many compromises that I'm not willing to make. That GBA example is a good one, because in that case, going digital has almost zero drawbacks for me, the consumer.

[dvdx2]

I like having a games collection just in the same way as owning a vinyl /cd collection. Without it, you are just flicking through digital games on a screen or music files on a computer - very easy to forget what you have and abit soulless really. Saying that, I do buy digital games as well, from psn and my RGB-pi has pretty much full sets of 16-bit / arcade goodies, so for me it’s about balance. I have fairly small collections of Japanese stuff that I enjoy having and don’t see any reason to get rid of them (Ps1/saturn/Xbox/gamecube etc). I don’t need the space, cash or have a partner that nags me about it, so why not! I also have a small mint condition/sealed games collection of the stuff that I really loved in the past (and I do mean small), although the days of the mega collection are long gone though and I probably only have about 1/5 of what I used to own.

[wakka]

I'm torn on this these days.

I like having my collection of physical games from my years of buying and playing, but on the other hand I'm a bit sick of the sight of them and storing them.

I like having a physical copy of a game, but on the other hand the lack of manuals, lacklustre packaging and bug-ridden code on the discs makes them a bit pointless.

I like being able to trade in, but then again I rarely bother.

Physical is without doubt cheaper, but unless you are buying absolutely ****loads of games (which I'm not, to be honest, since most of the ones I buy seem to contain about 11 million hours of gameplay), you kinda have to look at whether the trade-in value is worth the time schlepping to the shop.

If you're a Neon Ignition type, tearing through the latest releases like wet tissue paper, then you can get a decent wedge back. But I end up taking ages to finish stuff, so by the time I'm done it's worth about 4p. Or I simply forget to go to the shop and trade it anyway.

So yeah. I dunno. I buy physical games but I don't really totally know why any more.

[Baseley09]

Modern stuff im digital only.

I love buying old games though, gives me a rush to have a Megadrive box pop through the door and bung that cart in.

[Dogg Thang]

I mostly play on the Switch and their account system is still archaic and terrible so, whenever a game exists in physical, I will buy the physical version. The limits placed on digital versions on the Switch are so bad that, even at a drastically reduced price, I wouldn’t go digital. The problem is that a lot of games are digital only now.

[fuse]

I still like physical stuff.

[QualityChimp]

You need to accept that if you're going digital, you're not going to have access to them later.

Later might not be decades.

Currently, I'm quite enjoying digital, but I'm only buying stuff when it's on sale.

However, I know at some point in the future, I'll want to re-experience something like PSVR titles and because of some complication or change of server, or licence expiry or company going bankrupt, I won't be able to and it'll bite me in the bum.

Another frustration is the move from the game actually being on the cart/disc provided, to minimum you have to download the game, rather than run it from the disc and at worst, the game is unplayable without a patch.

I can't play any MS Indie titles after my 360 died. I had to create a Canadian account to play Drive Club, I can't play OutRun 2 on my One, I lost a load of photos when Kodak cloud closed, same with Photobucket when it changed.
People lost music on MySpace and you don't inherit songs bought on iTunes.

I think the last gen (360/PS3) is the last time you can buy a game and it works out of the box.

[teddymeow]

I've moved to all digital on my PS4.

Xbox One is only being used for GamePass.

I've physical games for WiiU, PS3, 3DS though.

[speedlolita]

For Switch I stick to retail because I can resell for what I buy for nearly. For PS4 if I can get a digital version of a game cheaper than a Greatest Hits copy then I will sometimes, although other times I will just buy a non GH copy on eBay used for less. I will not pay out the ass to have a physical version of an indie game that costs less than a tenner on steam, that stuff is madness.

For older consoles it's been a mix of using roms and the genuine article, although I never dabble in emulation. Emulation just isn't for me, it isn't authentic enough an experience.

[wakka]

You need to accept that if you're going digital, you're not going to have access to them later.

Later might not be decades.

Currently, I'm quite enjoying digital, but I'm only buying stuff when it's on sale.

However, I know at some point in the future, I'll want to re-experience something like PSVR titles and because of some complication or change of server, or licence expiry or company going bankrupt, I won't be able to and it'll bite me in the bum.

Another frustration is the move from the game actually being on the cart/disc provided, to minimum you have to download the game, rather than run it from the disc and at worst, the game is unplayable without a patch.

I can't play any MS Indie titles after my 360 died. I had to create a Canadian account to play Drive Club, I can't play OutRun 2 on my One, I lost a load of photos when Kodak cloud closed, same with Photobucket when it changed.
People lost music on MySpace and you don't inherit songs bought on iTunes.

I think the last gen (360/PS3) is the last time you can buy a game and it works out of the box.

All true. Digital stuff is so ephemeral. I bought a ton of stuff from iTunes back in the day, but lost it all when my account was banned (reason being, I used to buy gift cards on Ebay at a discount, entirely legitimately. They banned my account because they said the gift cards were bought via credit card fraud. I explained the situation - that I was actually the victim here - but they said there was nothing they could do).

The problem with physical videogames is that in a lot of cases, what's on the disc these days isn't worth much of anything. It won't be fun trying to play Doom on PS4 from a disc in 10 or 15 years after they've switched off the server for updates. Without patches it's pretty unfinished.

Game discs are really just keys to unlock the download of the software now, with a few exceptions (e.g. first party Nintendo games).

[Digfox]

Physical media can be damaged, lost or stolen. Every format is locked in, in some way or other. I've still got my Steam account from 2003 (whenever the switch from Won was) and games attached to it. My Xbox Live account goes back over 13 years with purchases attached to it. My WoW character dates back to 2007. The risk is less the platforms and more games and servers closing (Marvel Heroes).

Although there's nothing as nice as a big physical collection if you have the space and money. I'm nearly all digital but still have physical Wii, Wii U, DS and 3DS games. Even my recent Switch Lite purchase has 6 or 7 physical games now. But I have no problem with emulation and/or did sell off large parts of my collection years ago. Don't miss it.

For other media I'm digital now with streaming and cloud purchases, but do run a Unraid server for films and lossless music.