Opinion: Digital or Physical: What Will You Do?

GYGO: 'What’s your opinion? Would you go fully digital with your purchases or would you still enjoy having a trusty disk by your side?'

[Mikelarry]

for me its going to be a mixture of both. i tend to buy digital if its cheaper than physical or its a psn plus download.

[GiggMan]

I agree. PSN+ titles and indies will be downloaded. Retail games will be a mixture of both. I've been walking into stores to buy games for over 25 years so I will probably continue to do so.

I must admit that I do have to have the kids with me though. I'm getting to old to go in by myself lol.

[PsylentKiller]

First off, your never too old to play video games. The other day, in GameStop, I saw 50 year old man ride up on a Harley with his friend right next to him. They walked into GameStop and bought GTA V. On the way out, the man who bought the game, stopped by the Skylanders and started to tell his friend about how it works. He sounded like my 8 year old talking about video games. He was so excited.
Now, digital or physical. I've been buying physical copies ever since the Atari 2600 but I like the appeal of digital. However, I will only buy digital if I know that I'm not going to resell it down the line. Games like Halo, CoD, Battlefield, Gears of War, God of War, Uncharted are going to be digital because the story and gameplay are amazing. Sports games will be physical because they are useless when the new one comes out. Any game that is a one and done playthrough will be physical.
With the x86 architecture and the cloud, I'm pretty sure backwards compatibility wont be a problem anymore. So, I'm not worried about going mostly digital.

[GiggMan]

Oh I agree you're never too old. I still feel funny going into gamestop by myself but have no shame sitting in room with other 30 somethings playing local co-op split screen. I know it's silly

[BattleAxe]

Steam and PSN (PS3) for me. I hate clutter around the house.

[JRH7783]

You're never too old to play games. My oldest son is 13 and he can't beat me in basketball in real life nor on 2K. I tell him i've been gaming since the 80's when I had an atari as a child.

I'm more excited about getting the PS4 than he is...

As for physical or digital. I'm going digital for games that come out every few years like Uncharted or God of War, but if it comes out yearly i'm going physical so I can trade it in and get something towards the next version.

[Majin-vegeta]

I will always buy physical over digital when possible.

[MAULxx]

I'm with you Majin-vegeta. Physical>digital whenever possible, every time.
Whoever disagreed with you must not be thinking clearly.
I don't see how anyone can be against physical disc games that can be resold when the option to go all digital is also an option.

[slapedurmomsace]

@majin
completely agree. I'm 30 married with children, to take my son to gamestop or best buy and dual search for games is something that's just not possible with digital. Some ISP's have data caps, which causes a massive problem if you do anything else. Also I am that idiot that still has every single system I've ever owned, and still occasionally bust them out. Lets say I put my PS3 away for a few years, lets say 10, come back to play it, find out my hard drives gone bad, now how am I sure it'll still be available to re download? I know it sounds far fetched and probably doesn't pertain to most gamers, but thats just how I feel. I'm not big into emulation as I find the "experience" can get lost during emulation. Honestly I use my hard drive for freebies from PSN+, and that's about it.

[CYCLEGAMER]

Maybe a mixture of both, until I have more incentive to go all digital. Something like a price advantage would be nice.

[Clover904]

I'm with you. Sony is doing that a little. I believe both Killzone Mercenary and Puppeteer had discounted pre-orders.

[AKR]

With retail games getting bigger and bigger ~ going digital is going to be harder. Even with a 1TB HDD - it would only be a matter of time before it's filled up if games have a file-size like CoD: Ghosts, unless they go ahead and hire Nintendo to perform their arcane compression wizardry.

I think I'll keep buying retail games in their physical form, and leave my HDD space for indie titles, demos and apps.

[KillerByte23]

for me, probably both but at the moment the download sizes are slightly putting me of Digital for example

Killzone Shadowfall being 39GB,
Call of Duty Ghosts 49GB
Forza Motorsport 5 - 35GB
Dead Rising - 35GB
Ryse Son of Rome - 47GB

[GiggMan]

What's wrong with this picture when Call of Duty Ghost has the largest install size?

[pixelsword]

Nothing's wrong, it's just that their optimization techniques may not be at their peak performance yet.

[PawnSacrifice]

Ummm that's the mandatory install WITH a disk!
That's why I'm going digital, even now I haven't actually bought a Disk since Skyrim, & Live is actually having sales and price cuts. I got Max Payne 3 for $12 & Red Dead for $20 (Australian that is, a full retail game here costs $89 - $119)

[MASTER_RAIDEN]

obviously going for physical copies because i can resell. but digital is also fantastic, make no mistake. steam does digital in such a fantastic way. i really hope consoles see something like it soon.

[xXxSeTTriPxXx]

I would only go digital only if they cut the price like steam.

[patsrule316]

A mixture of both. The big retail games that I want will be in store purchases, but games that I kind of want but hold off on until they get a really nice sale on PS+ or are free would go that route. I plan on upgrading to a 1.5 TB hard drive for more space.

[purp13m0nk3y]

I was intending on going mostly digital as I have a decent Internet connection and a 200gb limit before the speed slows down.

But since the size of game data files have emerged, and the announcement that the PS4 can cache game data instead of having to do a permanent install. I think I'll mainly stick to buying the actual physical game.

Think I'll still grab a couple of launch titles In digital. Just to see how the whole streaming as you play thing works.

[4logpc]

I was going to go Digital to avoid tax, but I found some pretty sweet deals on XB1 games on Newegg. $12 off plus not tax. Cant beat that.

[kingdip90]

I know in maine of the usa they still try to get you to pay taxes on online and digital purposes. They can't really police it but don't expect things to stay that way forever

[Drewidian]

I'm intending on going all digital this time. I've had too many disks misplaced, damaged, or even just not with me to go that route anymore. Steam is wonderful for this and now that I'm used to it, I'm not planning on buying anymore physical disks.

[LordDhampire]

I love steam, but these games are just to massive....I remember I bought Max payne 3 earlier this year and it was like 33gigs or something like that....come on man...took me like a week to dl

[Drewidian]

I have a $99/month business 100MB/s connection paid for by my business so I get unlimited unthrottled downloads. I get it that I'm the rare exception, but I'm good with it. No more disks for me.

[MisfitsInc]

i'll continue going mostly physical, and only have a few full retail games digital.

[PsylentKiller]

Digital can be the better deal in certain situations. Not sure about the PS4 but with the XB1 digital purchases are linked to your gamertag and your home console. It's like two copies for the price of one. I'll have multiple XB1's in my home. The living room will be my home console. So, if my nephew wants to play BF4 with me he could play in the living room while I play in my bedroom and I would have paid basically $60 for two copies.

[MisfitsInc]

with physical media i like the security of knowing that if something happens to my games (rarely happens) it's 100% my fault, but with digital media, your harddrive can fail, if you have your games saved to the cloud, the server can be crippled. if any of those scenarios actually happens and you committed to going fully digital your entire library is rendered inaccessible. i'd rather lose access to one or two games instead of all of them.

[kingdip90]

@psylentkiller

I'm not sure that's how thr gamesharing works, yes you can have one game on multiple systems but I doubt they eoukd let you play that game on multiple systems at the same time...

[xXxSeTTriPxXx]

If I was on x1 I wouldn't dare touch digital (indies not included and demos).

Ps4 I would because I can swap out hdds and I do it already on ps3.

But I love owning physical copies, so like 20-80 percent in favor of physical.

[MAULxx]

Only digital I'll have is indies & the next Blood Dragon game, unless the next Blood Dragon gets a physical release.

[MRMagoo123]

Even if digital games where a lil bit cheaper you would lose the money you saved on getting the 50 hdds you would need to hold them all, digital is just not viable at the moment mainly because of DL speeds but also the space they would take up on HDDs

[rapidturtle]

I like a physical copy of the game. I also agree your never to old to be a gamer. I grew up playing atari, and have enjoyed every generation of consoles.

[ape007]

amazing comment, we gamers are such unique people, we see/experience stuff that make life so special

i believe that people who aren't gamers are missing out a lot

[LordDhampire]

Physical for me, I have terrible internet...but even if I had good internet I'd probably go physical I just like having cases and discs, and you get preorder rewards

[ape007]

physical>>>> digital, but i hate when i get lazy/busy sometimes

how about you order something and BAM there it is, a full physical copy

[the worst]

Physical just in case i wanna make some money back

[Rageanitus]

I am open for digital if it followed the same business model as Steam. The big advantage is you buy your game, you keep your game, and you are able to play these games on your future PC builds without restrictions.

[AceBlazer13]

till digital prices drop i'll go physical.

[josephayal]

How publishers can still charge $60 upto $100.00 for a title with no box, no cd, no manual etc?

[JustInTlME]

Physical, Physical, PHYSICAL! I only buy digital games when its an insane price, and when I know its something I would never want to trade in anyways. However….that isn't to often.

[Rageanitus]

this is usually found on steam sales.... the prices are quite awesome.

I find on consoles the digital games tend to drop in price slower! vs the physical disks in retail stores.

even when PSN+ the games are lower in price but its really artificial discount.

[kingdip90]

I have no reliable internet connection, its impossible for me to go digital unless they come up with an external device I can take to gamestop or Wal-Mart or wherever to download from the store

[FFRyan]

The last physical game that I bought was Red Dead on release. That was also the last time I played my any of my consoles. I will probably stay digital/pc forever but who knows really. I prefer the instant access to any of my games without having to look for a case just to find out there is nothing inside, eventually making my way over to the console and waiting for the disk to be read.

The other reason is that its probably $15+ cheaper to just buy it on Steam than it is to drive to and from plus tax. I also get to know that my money is mostly going to the developer after steam takes it cut rather than giving money directly to gamestop for a used copy of someone else's work that is still probably more money than a new release on PC. Plus I get the benefit of mods and such. Also steam sales *yay*

[Jac5al]

Mixture of both for me. I'll be getting KZSF on disc and BF3/Ghost digital at launch.

[Stoppokingme]

I prefer physical, I love that new game smell.

[jay2]

Keeping my Blu-rays.

[kelis901]

Due to the size of the games it won't be long before the hard drive is full