Physical media continues to hang on. But a recent sales report from PlayStation shows just how little of an impact it has to the company's revenue. The document details the composition of PlayStation's earnings for the 2024 fiscal year. The biggest driving force was add-on content, which made up...
I still buy physical whenever possible. But I’ve also come to accept that I’m a dinosaur for doing so. PC ditched physical a very long time ago, mobile never knew it to begin with, it’s a matter of time before consoles drop it someday too. It’s inevitable.
I think a lot of people still see physical as the most secure form of preservation, that in 50 years when download servers are gone we’ll still have our discs. But in an era of patches, updates, and DLC, how often is that 1.0 on the disc actually going to be the version you want preserved in the future?
Asking myself that question sort of forced me to acknowledge that my preference for physical media may just be more sentimental than practical.
This has been my concern, as well. Games rarely ship as a finished product anymore. All the disc is really good for is acting as a token for ownership. But even that is limited, as the disc often doesn’t even have enough space to fully install a playable version of the game, and you still need to be able to download the rest of the game from official servers.
Some of the Game of the Year editions used to have the full game on a disc, but even towards the end of that trend, companies just started packing the original disc with dlc codes.
I sell games back. You can easily recoup 75% of your cost.