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[DavJay]

With news of BestBuy moving away from physical media next year along with the rumored disc less Series X refresh, what are you going to miss most about having a physical copy of a game?

For me, it’s having those awesome midnight launch party lining up with my friends to be one of the first few to play the game online. That and talking to other gamers there with the same hobby. How about you guys?

 

[jshackles]

What I'll miss the most: having rights.

Rights to resell, rights to lend games to others, actual ownership rights, rights to repair, rights to copy (dump, save to a different medium, etc.)

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

Spending $50 a pop at HomeDepot on waterproof storage containers for all of it.

jshackles You miss the nes stuff you sold a few years back? I'll sell some of it back to ya at a 5000% markup.

J/K....for you only a 50% buddy.

Everyone else gotta PAY.

 

[acm2000]

what i miss most has already been long lost, game manuals to read while taking a shit.

im balls deep in digital now.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Nothing.

I worry far more about business going completely cashless, no shops at all accepting cash so the banks are able to keep tabs on where you spend your cash digitally than some games not being physical

 

[Banjo64]

Discs have always felt rubbish to me. Hate finger prints, hate that a disc drive can scratch them up. I like cartridges though, always have. Will be sad when Nintendo ditches them.

 

[adamsapple]

Steel books. I like collecting steel books. That's probably gonna be the thing I miss the most

 

[lughnasadh123]

what i miss most has already been long lost, game manuals to read while taking a shit.

im balls deep in digital now.

Absolutely this.

Also unwrapping them on Christmas.

 

[ahtlas7]

Easily sharing my library among my friends and family.

 

[jshackles]

jshackles You miss the nes stuff you sold a few years back? I'll sell some of it back to ya at a 5000% markup.

J/K....for you only a 50% buddy.

Everyone else gotta PAY.

You bring up a good point though - selling my old game collection financed putting a down payment on my house. It literally changed my life and allowed me upward mobility that I wouldn't have otherwise had access to. It's a benefit that's already paying massive dividends because my mortgage is nearly $1,500 / month cheaper than the cheapest rent in my area.

Buying physical games (that have resale rights) is almost like investing. You can get something back from your purchase - whether it be in a matter of days/weeks (your game is effectively cheaper) or months/years (game goes out of print and up in value over time). With digital purchases, you get none of that benefit.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

Everything. I already miss some reduced aspects - ie not getting nice big boxes and manuals for PC, or manuals in the case of console games.

I love physical ownership of the item. I still play a lot of older games and really enjoy being able to put the disc or cart in the console and play - no questions asked. I like having my own library of games that I can revisit any time or show to my daughter. I'm really not into digital games and the amount of games I buy will greatly diminish if/when we move to a digitally exclusive future/market. I'll buy deeply discounted and that's about it aside from an occasional title. I used to buy a lot of PC games but once it went digital I purchase very, very few. Same will happen to console games.

I love everything about physical games.

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

You bring up a good point though - selling my old game collection financed putting a down payment on my house. It literally changed my life and allowed me upward mobility that I wouldn't have otherwise had access to. It's a benefit that's already paying massive dividends because my mortgage is nearly $1,500 / month cheaper than the cheapest rent in my area.

Buying physical games (that have resale rights) is almost like investing. You can get something back from your purchase - whether it be in a matter of days/weeks (your game is effectively cheaper) or months/years (game goes out of print and up in value over time). With digital purchases, you get none of that benefit.

Agreed.

I have been collecting for years and the price of some of the stuff I have is mindboggling (well...list price, someone would have to actually PAY that price for it to be mindboggling).

Post COVID, retro stuff really went through the roof and now the industry is moving toward an all digital landscape, I won't be getting my hands on much physical stuff post 2025.

There will be the odd hyper collectable and small scale physical published titles for older consoles (see limited run's gameboy, snes, and nes games or all the custom carts you can get on kickstarter) but how much of that content is going to hold value?

Remains to be seen I guess. I have often thought about going the route you did and ditching my physical stuff but:
1) FOMO would probably kill me from not having it any more.
2) The amount of time it would take to sell it all seems incredibly daunting.

 

[CeeJay]

Honestly, nothing really. There pluses and minuses to each but overall I haven't really looked back after moving away from physical.

I still have a load of physical media and carts in the attic that went up there after not playing with them for a long time and them taking up so much room. Replaying them means a lot of hassle getting the old consoles down, setting them up etc. so I just never do it. I do regularly think though that if i had these digitally then there would be more of a chance to play them on a modern system with back compatibility ala Xbox. The old games I have probably have quite a bit of monetary value compared to a digital copy worth zero but, if i never play them what's the point? I have always bought games to play, not to collect or as investments and if i' not playing them i should probably sell them. I think i can sit on them for a few years yet as the prices of second hand stuff still seems to be going up at a fast rate.

 

[buenoblue]

The taste

 

[Bond007]

Actually owning something i bought....
Being able to share a copy with my son's in the same household?

 

[rodrigolfp]

The insane installation times. /s

 

[R6Rider]

That new game smell when you open up the case.

 

[Fbh]

- Being able to resell/trade
- Being able to lend/borrow
- Buying used
- Access to my games not being limited by an account that can potentially be hacked or locked away if I don't follow all the rules and limitations on some 200 pages regularly updated EULA
- Being able to buy games from multiple vendors, taking advantage of different sales, promotions and loyalty programs instead of only being able to buy from a single store run by the console maker.
- Being able to buy games after they have been delisted for any number of reasons

 

[Kupfer]

I will not miss anything. I will continue to buy my games on disc as long as possible. If that should not longer be possible at some point, that's it for the hobby, or new games. I have a backlog that will last until the end of my life.

Fuck the digital future.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Nothing.

I guess I will miss not hearing all the poor bastards making threads trying to get me to switch back to physical media like I'm leaving a starving puppy behind in the wilderness.

 

[_Ex_]

The ability to:

Archive a game physically to play years later whenever I want, no server/DRM-gating needed.
Resell a game after beating it.
Being able to give a game away.
Being able to trade games.
Being able to wrap a game as a present for a kid.

Enjoy leasing games in your all-digital totalitarian future folks, I'll have no part in it.

 

[SHA]

The smell.

 

[kirby007]

the fear if it still works

 

[Evil Calvin]

I'll just buy them off Amazon then. Unless digital games are sold at a discount I'll keep buying physical.

 

[ViolentP]

Opening a random box in the garage to find a bunch of old games and realizing I can sell them off.

 

[StereoVsn]

You bring up a good point though - selling my old game collection financed putting a down payment on my house. It literally changed my life and allowed me upward mobility that I wouldn't have otherwise had access to. It's a benefit that's already paying massive dividends because my mortgage is nearly $1,500 / month cheaper than the cheapest rent in my area.

Buying physical games (that have resale rights) is almost like investing. You can get something back from your purchase - whether it be in a matter of days/weeks (your game is effectively cheaper) or months/years (game goes out of print and up in value over time). With digital purchases, you get none of that benefit.

That’s a very good point and part of consumer rights to resell. Which is completely lost with move to digital.

And unlike Steam there is no key generation on 3rd party sites so no price competition. Physical is often cheaper via digital which is crazy town if you think about it.

Personally I like seeing my game library on the shelves, browsing, reading manuals (although that’s gone), being able to sell/trade stuff I don’t want / need and so on.

 

[Lupin3]

Nothing.

 

[Player Respawn]

Aside from all the positives of physical media, I really loved when Microsoft introduced the hologram on the inner disc of their games. I will miss playing around with those when/if digital takes over

 

[AV]

"Renting" games by buying them, finishing them in a weekend and sticking them immediately on eBay. I'm simply not going to play a lot of new releases at launch if physical goes away. The Dead Space remake was neat but I was never, ever gonna pay RRP for it. Ended up paying about £6 to have a fun weekend with it and then someone else got a discounted copy off me.

It's why I don't really blame publishers for wanting to move away from it. It's bad business sense in 2023. I still despair at the consumers who actively cheer it on though. Those publishers aren't your friends and you're celebrating having less freedom and choice for some brain damaged reason.

 

[_Ex_]

for some brain damaged reason

The immediate gratification generation. They'll learn the hard way the long term consequences.

 

[Aenima]

I will miss saving money, selling, lending, borrowing, games. Actually owning a copy of a game that i want to add to my collection. I will miss buying games day 1. Cuz when im forced to go all digital, ill probably stick to F2P games and the ocasional 20$ game that i find in a promo.

This years im already skipping 2 games i wanted to buy day 1 because thers no physical option. BG3 and Yakuza Gaiden. Will not pay more than 20$ for them now.

 

[Elder Legend]

That new game smell when you open up the case.

This is the face you make when you smell the case? Me too.

 

[R6Rider]

This is the face you make when you smell the case? Me too.

I open the games and record it for my OnlyFans.

 

[Elder Legend]

I open the games and record it for my OnlyFans.

DM the goods.

 

[killatopak]

Lending games or borrowing games and never giving them back.

Owning it. Playing pre-patched games. Most recent is AC6 boss getting patched to be EASIER.

Significantly lower cost barring Nintendo games. Those demons keep their value high years later.

No internet requirement especially when the space of the storage is full. You are forced to download again. Huge deal where I live cause internet cuts off in the most random of times for days even. I don't want to spend my expensive mobile data to download 100gb games.

 

[fart town usa]

Quality instruction manuals but those largely haven't existed for well over a decade.

I personally don't care anymore for the most part. I embrace digital but I'll always buy and prefer consoles that allow discs. I still buy the physical version of RE games and when it comes to movies, of course I want a physical copy.

I have all the physical games I want/need when it comes to retro and that's what's most important to me. I'm not worried about losing access to PS4/PS5 and whatever Sony does next. So modern games being physical/digital is mostly a moot point for me, unless you're the vanilla version of CP:2077 on PS4. Gotta have that for the sake of posterity, that's one trainwreck that shan't be lost to time!

Also, I don't want to trade my games in and I don't want to lend them to people. Been burned too many times, and why the hell are you trading games/consoles in Gaf??? Slap yourself, terrible habit that you will come to regret.

Digital is also fine for me because physical storage space has already long exceeded my capacity when it comes to plastic boxes, I need less clutter, not more.

 

[Moriarty1889]

Wont miss a thing because I will always have my physical games I bought to play. The digital future can piss off as far as i’m concerned.

 

[GHound]

With news of BestBuy moving away from physical media next year along with the rumored disc less Series X refresh, what are you going to miss most about having a physical copy of a game?

For me, it’s having those awesome midnight launch party lining up with my friends to be one of the first few to play the game online. That and talking to other gamers there with the same hobby. How about you guys?

Must have missed the memo. Best Buy isn't even applicable for gaming.



I'll miss the people who tried to misrepresent sales data the most.

 

[Sleepwalker]

I'm definitely going to miss all the misinformation on GAF.

 

[mckmas8808]

With news of BestBuy moving away from physical media next year along with the rumored disc less Series X refresh, what are you going to miss most about having a physical copy of a game?

For me, it’s having those awesome midnight launch party lining up with my friends to be one of the first few to play the game online. That and talking to other gamers there with the same hobby. How about you guys?

Nothing, because physical media will be here for some of us for at least another 10 years.

 

[Investor9872]

What I will miss most when the physical media is gone is the preservations of gaming.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Nothing, as I hate discs. I prefer cartridges.

 

[Salty Popsicle]

Once physical game purchases stopped including all the extras like game manuals with concept art, foldable maps of the game world, stickers, or even CDs containing the game OST, the appeal of having something tangible to hold in your hand began to wear off. Once 99% of games started to require a day one update, it made the entire concept of physical media redundant.

 

[mrmustard]

Nothing. The times of cool gimmicks, high-quality boxes with nice artwork and manuals (Nowadays games are so simple, you wouldn't even need none) are long gone.

 

[Salty Popsicle]

I will miss saving money, selling, lending, borrowing, games. Actually owning a copy of a game that i want to add to my collection. I will miss buying games day 1. Cuz when im forced to go all digital, ill probably stick to F2P games and the ocasional 20$ game that i find in a promo.

This years im already skipping 2 games i wanted to buy day 1 because thers no physical option. BG3 and Yakuza Gaiden. Will not pay more than 20$ for them now.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like ever since the industry started moving to digital, that games go on sale on the digital marketplaces much faster than in decades prior. In most cases, games will be 25% - 50% off within 3 months of release.

 

[DavJay]

Must have missed the memo. Best Buy isn't even applicable for gaming.



I'll miss the people who tried to misrepresent sales data the most.

*sigh* No one missing anything. BBY is shifting away from physical media. Not entirely for video games yet but the shelves have gotten a lot smaller over the years. With Xbox rumored to do away with a disc drive entirely next year, the shelves will be even smaller if not done away completely by then.

 

[saintjules]

 

[Famipan]

Wondering whether my physical games in the storage is rotten, stolen, water damaged, burned in a fire or destroyed in some explosion etc.

 

[IDKFA]

Like others have said, the option to resell or lend games to friends/family will be missed.

I went to digital only for reasons of space. I have a vast book collection and movie collection and I just didn't have room to add a video game library to the mix. If I had a bigger place then I'd 100% go physical where possible.

It'll be a sad day, but PC survived going all digital and I'm sure consoles will as well.

 

[Banjo64]

You bring up a good point though - selling my old game collection financed putting a down payment on my house. It literally changed my life and allowed me upward mobility that I wouldn't have otherwise had access to. It's a benefit that's already paying massive dividends because my mortgage is nearly $1,500 / month cheaper than the cheapest rent in my area.

Buying physical games (that have resale rights) is almost like investing. You can get something back from your purchase - whether it be in a matter of days/weeks (your game is effectively cheaper) or months/years (game goes out of print and up in value over time). With digital purchases, you get none of that benefit.

What was a ballpark figure for the down payment if you don’t mind me asking? Must have been a decent sized collection!