Yep.. they dont want people buying a used copy.. they want them to buy a new copy. Which weirdly, is a bullshit logic because i bet most used games, are bought AFTER they stopped selling new copies of them.
@mawnkey wear and tear is the biggest bullshit lie they fed all of you fools and you all fell for it. I have games from every era none of them showed any sign of wear and tear they still look new besides a few scratches I never put on them. That's what I get for lending morons my games.
This push to eliminate physical media is dangerous. I think you're right that it's mostly driven by penny-pinching, but I think there is also an ideological aspect behind it as well, to push, as you said, presentism, given the ease with which they can stealth-edit any movie, music, show, game, etc, after the fact, or take it away from you entirely, either for being found guilty of wrongthink, or simply because they decide they want to. Also, love the Sanctuary shirt!
What sucks is that very many games have been lost to history solely due to the fact of copyright. Something that was originally designed to preserve works is cutting its throat. For many games the only way to play them is by downloading the torrent but many of the games unless they were very popular we're not updated or remasterd. We are even having developers now going on to crack websites and downloading pirated versions of the game to start developing remakes. I mean when the developers have to start asking for pirated material back you know thier system is broke.
Sometimes you can ONLY get a game physically. I remember trying to get Deadpool, back when there were licensing issues, I could only get it at a physical store.
IP in a nutshell. I've heard the argument that all property is intellectual property. But I think physical property and intellectual property are mutually exclusive, and this is just one of several glaring examples why.
@@hagoryopi2101 "I've heard the argument that all property is intellectual property." Do you hang around complete morons... just by you saying that means you entertained that nonsense and then you go on to further prove that you aren't bright. The hilarious thing is you think that you are coming across as smart and an intellectual.
Not only video games. Imagine when they start editing films and videos like they've done with Roald Dahl and other books. When a streaming copy changes, how will you know? Own your media. It can't be erased, edited, or deleted.
This already happened recently with Disney and The French Connection. Got a couple mainstream news articles and then petered out. As far as I know, Disney never addressed it.
I also went to Target just the other day. The Nintendo section was well stocked, colorful and inviting. The PlayStation and Xbox sections were a fraction of the size, with hardly any games in stock at all. It was a barren wasteland, and I walked away depressed.
To give you an idea what it's like here in New Zealand the PS4 version of Red Dead Redemption just got released yesterday and the Resident Evil 4 remake cost $130NZ due to them giving us a limited amount of physical copies. Sucks!
Hard to sell PlayStation 5 games, when there aren't any to begin with. The PS5's library is a joke compared to the Switch. Even the Wii U had a better lineup of exclusives.
Between streaming media and "software as a service," we are well on our way to "renting" everything, and I don't think people understand the danger this represents. Others have pointed out that so long as you are buying a license, you have to abide by the terms and conditions, and that T&C's can be used to control behavior. However, I think the true danger is the deprecation of physical books, movies, and albums, because digital media enables censorship after the fact on a massive scale. Suddenly, "problematic" things are removed in the name of the zeitgeist, no matter how twisted or illogical the spirit of the times may be.
@@sbrazenor2 Yep. That, and fan-made stuff lately is outpacing the quality of AAA stuff. Most Pokemon ROM Hacks I've played have put the last few GameFreak releases to utter shame lol.
Walmart is the only place in my area that sells physical games. Looks like Amazon and PlayAsia get all that money now. I will own things and be happy. A lot happier than those people who will lose their collection when a company tanks or internet services become war targets.
I wouldn’t trust them long term if I were you. Start looking at Alts from beyond Amazon and playasia because those two are bound to screw customers just as much as Best Buy long term.
Precisely why an all digital future is BAD and not sustainable at all. It's amazing how these digital warriors advocate for this digital future just because they don't want their physical space being taken up while not wanting to handle said physical stuff at all, and because companies want to save a single buck. It also don't help that the reason physical releases don't that the full game is due to people begging companies to make games super realistic and rush the games out the door with day one patches that don't fit on the disc.
Personally, I’ve never gone along with this the reasons why I don’t play on PC is I don’t want to platform that is all digital once games go I’ll digital that’s it. I’m not gonna buy any new games. I’ll just stick with the older generations. I can still get plenty of games physically that way.
I've tried buying physical only, but not all indie studios want to waste money on making game cartridges, no one can predict how successful certain games will be.
@jeremiahcolon192 I also seem to just be enjoying older games that I could have played better or didn't finish. To be honest I think the last purchase I made was a year ago. And I was just desperate to play MW2two with an old buddy who I used to smash with on OG mw2.
I prefer digital, since in the end what I'm buying is a digital artifact and I don't get any enjoyment out of having a whole shelf unit dedicated to media. If Steam ever shuts down or bans me I'm just gonna crack everything I care about having. I paid for the thing locked inside the safe, if I gotta drill the lock to get into it I haven't the least problem with doing that.
As technology advances more into the realm of always online, cloud storage, and so forth, the more I’m looking toward ceasing to be online at all. We as a society need to start encouraging people to Buy Physical Copies of Games and Music. And if Developers and publishers don’t offer physical copies, Start petitioning them to do so. The best place to start is with Indie Games. Start encouraging them to get into the physical media market, even if starting in small limited run batches at a time. We as a society have willfully fallen into the trap of ‘push button convenience”, and it is harming us more than helping us. We need to start getting out of this habit, before it engulfs us.
Physical copies for indie games would be a thing of beauty to see. AAA games just don't cut it. Huge price tags, an obsession with graphics that demand expensive hardware, lacking polish in gameplay or just being bug-infested - and _maybe_ that gets fixed if people make enough of a fuss about it. And that's not even covering moral objections about how devs and artists get treated behind the scenes... It seems so rare that physical copies for smaller-budget/indie games are offered. Which is weird - I remember seeing all kinds of strange games I'd never heard of in game stores back in the day, but now it's all heavily-marketed AAA games and basically nothing else. It's bizarre. There _has_ to be money in that which is just going totally untapped - offering games that _didn't_ cost hundreds of millions to develop and market, on physical shelves. There's an opportunity to make bank that nobody's taking yet, and I really hope to see people trying.
It's only a feeling I've had (for a few years now) but I honestly do "feel" there is a slowly growing amount of people who want physical to come back and more analogue technologies (which always seem to last much longer) over digital tech. At least in the UK I've seen shopping centres really seem to be getting a lot of traffic and footfall the past year. I think people becoming jaded by social media is something that is helping, people wanting to actually get back out and see random people again rather than being attached to a screen all day *shrugs* again just a feeling.
I was buying a couple of CDs at a thrift shop last night and some young girl made a comment about CDs as she walked by. I think she was implying that I must be some kind of boomer for preferring to have a physical copy. Also, the bit-rate is higher on the CDs, so they sound more full and vibrant on a decent stereo or high end headphones. Also, I own those albums, so I am not beholden to the whim of distribution contracts, streaming service availability, etc. I had bought an album on Google Play Music at one point and when they killed that service I had a limited time to download a copy of it before it went away. My CDs don't give me ultimatums. 🤣
@@sbrazenor2I, too, still buy CD’s. The real beauty of the CD is that I can easily turn it into digital copies or “mixed CD’s” if I want. Recently got the Bluey Dance Mode album for my daughter on CD. Best purchase this year.
It's probably why I've taken to buying physical books recently as well. My friends think I'm nuts waiting 2 days for physical media to deliver just so I can say, "This is mine." But then again, they thought I was nuts about coof being a scam, too.
If you go to any gaming section of a store like Walmart, you'll inevitably see a bunch of kids walking through the aisles, interacting with the demo consoles, etc. Half the fun of video games growing up was visiting these little 'gaming meccas,' that felt like their own self contained theme parks for young kids. Losing those physical spaces would suck for young gamers imo...
I haven't seen a kid do that in years. none of my walmarts or targets have demo consoles setup anymore bestbuy is about it and its always empty on that side of the store.
As a kid and I’m talking 12-13 I’d walk into the store and look at all the games behind the glass and look at all the accessories and consoles and extra collectibles and the employees would talk to me about certain games and recommend games they liked to me. Now when I walk into Walmart or Best Buy it’s very depressing this generation of kids don’t even care they rather just play the game digitally and then delete it and move on. Where I guess I’m old school I finish a game and put it back on my shelf and when a family members over or a friend I can relive the memories by showing off my collection. For example my cozen is a big gamer and he was at my house and we were looking at my collection and just talking games and remembering the good old days. That’s what’s lost today.
@@ryans413 you don't need a physical collection to relive those memories tho. Im visiting my friends family and his brother has a big physical collection. I got no interest to actually sit down pull out a old console and play something talking about playing it those days is good enough. Digital is so convenient times of changed. Kids won't know what it was like 30 years ago to walk into best buy see the massive kiosks with tvs hanging by the ceiling playing nes / SNES titles and store reps recommending stuff but that's just how it is today. They're all playing fortnite and Roblox not our ancient stuff
All part of the plan, a struggling and hated company that’s part of the machine becomes the only place gamers can get them putting the people in a stranglehold.
Sadly, that’s going to get co-opted long term. Those people along with emulation communities and modding barely do any gatekeeping at all, doesn’t help that some of them have egos the size of cathedrals.
This should scare everyone and the fact that people just don't want to get up to change discs or understand how censored everything will become, we are about to be living in 1984.
Not to mention people took advise on not pre ordering games because of digital existing from Boogie who looks like the type who dosent want to get up for doing anything worth a shit in his life
literally love digital and have saved hundreds of dollars versus buying physical. its wild how far out of the way you'll go and inconvenience yourself just to have physical game cases clutter your house. you do you tho. I'd rather live in 2023 where we have gigabit internet with no bandwidth caps and I can buy a game and play it within 10 minutes of purchasing it.
Razor being based as hell. He's 1000% correct with his "you'll own nothing" take. You need to vocalize how grimly common stealth edits and currentism will be.
Razor has been based since Day 1 of being on RUclips. He hides his true power level though, knowing he’ll get the axe if he starts dropping serious blackpills on a daily basis.
Nintendo is holding on longer than i thought, honestly. If the next console supports physical media, and is backwards compatible with Switch games, ill be very impressed. However i think that even Nintendo cannot ignore the writing on the wall forever. If retailers are going to stop carrying physical games, Nintendo will naturally not sell as many of them, because they simply don't have the outlets to. Which will force them to push more toward digital than they currently even are.
In the last few years I've been building up my physical video collection. Looks like I'll need to pick up any physical games I'm interested in sooner rather than later.
This makes me sad. Ive still bought physical media whenever possible. So many great memories of excitedly checking out the box & manual of a new game on the car ride home. New generations will never know, maybe not even care. Damn whipper snappers! GET OFF MY LAWN!
most physical games don't come with game manuals anymore anyways. xbox wanted to go all digital in 2013 with the xbone people forget. internet wasn't good enough yet it is now not sure why people are surprised of this. I welcome it tbh.
I still buy physical media, I not only buy games but also DVDs. I have Home Alone 2 and the Uncut Dragon Ball Z. I also bought classic movies like The Tale Of Zatoichi and The Big Combo.
Minor correction. Best Buy is only getting rid of physical movies. That being said, I won’t be surprised to see them eventually follow suit and ditch physical games as well.
Target is also getting rid of physical media. The shelves are being emptied by last-minute binge buying, I got the last copy of Gilligan's Island at one store two weeks ago.
@@Lonovavir From what I can gather, Target’s physical media removal or the extent of it seems to depend on the store. Even so, there seems to be a coordinated effort to phase out physical media between these chains.
Last I looked they're charging at least 2x what older movies are worth and the new release movie section is basically the end of an isle. I'm pretty sure they'll still be selling dvd/bluray's online.
i used to love collecting the boxes to my PC games. the packaging was always so amazing. Shame kids nowadays will never know the joy of those boxes with a flip out panel to show game images in high gloss full color glory
while this is true its also just nice having a massive library of games availiable to you at all times. its worth the trade off. you can always get fan merch of said games if you love them so its ok.
They just need to change HOW they distribute games. They should just have a kiosk that has all the games with the latest patches that prints on demand to a flash drive . Bring back plug and play.
Convenience is logical. Less effort on the part of both the purchaser and the seller, relatively same outcome. Basic capitalism. Problem is, greater convenience should cost less: it doesn't. Inconvenient alternatives for enthusiasts should remain, even if they cost more: they're being phased out anyways. Convenience should be as close to the original experience as possible, or shed only the unnecessary: it's being abused to censor and to plan obsolescence. There's a lot of baggage to this convenience which nobody seems to care about, that's the illogical part.
I never thought that people had the kind of WiFi access necessary for a move like this. I still have to go over to friends’ houses in order to just download UPDATES. I can’t go all digital at the moment.
I know, but clock tower, a game that never released in the west(officially) is getting a LRG release next year. I don't want to give them money and stand by principle but damn I would love LOVE to have a physical copy of that game. I'll deal with the devil maybe just once.
8:46 - Skullgirls is the latest example for this. The devs released a new patch where the characters are now censored. Mind you, the fanservice is one of the game's main selling points. 8:57 - GOG is owned by CDProjekt Red. Unfortunately, they embraced ESG.
@@Wadacup I mean let's be for real though, it's only really gotten this big of a backlash because of coomers. Never heard this much of an outrage when the Confederate Naval Jack was removed from PS4 version of GTA 5
They can patch a steam game to fully remove it from your hard drive as well, the developers for back 4 blood updated the beta to where it deleted all assets and left a text file that said "there used to be a game here." they can fully delete your game if they want to and leave you with nothing.
Had that happen to me on the Xbox 360. Got a digital version of the TMNT 1980's arcade game. Played a while, then after a year or so I went back to play it, it was completely removed from my machine and the store. From then on, I refused to do digital download.
well yea thats the back 4 blood beta why would you want to keep a beta that was a limited time thing? seems like a very silly thing to complain about. I've been pretty much all digital on pc since 2004 and have yet to run into anything like that where I've lost game access to a game. if you buy it you keep access to it even if the game studio shuts down. betas and demos are a separate matter. and on steam you can buy any game and play it up to 2 hours and get a full refund so whats the issue?
They can't if you change the file path & location. Leave the Steam file directory to the game as is, but change the actual game's location. And play offline if necessary. And always turn off Steam's auto updates for games you think could be censored or changed.
Feels like our version of Fahrenheit 451/1984/Brave New World. Once everything is digital, problematic things will start to disappear. Questionable content will be erased. Stealth edits. You'll swear you remembered that movie differently but won't know since no other version exists.
I've been on the physical media bandwagon for years. If available, I get the movies, shows, and games I want on physical media. I wouldn't be surprised in the future if someone decides to stream All in the Family and the episodes are 15 minutes each because the streaming platform felt some of the language and content might be objectionable to a bunch of snowflakes. They can't wave the woke wand over or censor my physical media collection.
This will also most likely be tied to your social credit score as well. Everything from buying a game to banking is done digitally, if you do something they don't like they could just ban you from the system.
A social credit score would be unconstitutional and digital currency has already been blocked - Google Congressman Tom Emmers and the bill he got passed.
Problem with digital is there is no guarantee you keep what you pay for. They can shut down servers and everything disappears. There would need to be a digital archive that hosts all digital content and charges sellers to keep it going. If these sellers servers shut down, your purchases would be directed to the digital archive to get their stuff
@@vircentti Honestly, I don’t care I’m just gonna continue to buy my stuff physically and if I can’t buy it physically, I’m not going to buy it if the next concert generation does not have a way to play physical games I’m not gonna buy the consul just like the reason why I don’t own a PC for gaming
Hot Take: I think we need to focus a little less on preserving physical media and focus more on securing digital property rights and the eradication of DRM. Whether its a CD or code on a hard drive, if you bought it as a perpetual license, the instance you paid money for is yours forever and no pencil pusher, marketing executive, or despot should be able to change that or stop your ability to preserve that instance, whether it be by backing it up on multiple drives independent of the internet, rolling back to past versions, being able to play it without intrusive copy-protection background processes, or in the case of online games, allowing the creation of community and even peer-to-peer servers.
BTW, on The Saboteur example - the PS3 version had the nudity shit as a DLC that was later made free for all the owners - and it still is, no servers required.
I don't think the issue is digital sales as much as it is DRM. Not just DRM on the executable for the game, but the trend of having career modes, save games etc all need to be done on a server somewhere else. The modern Gran Turismo games and the latest Forza now require this, so in the future there's a better than good chance you won't be able to play these games, or significant portions of them at least. A game bought on gog or similar, that does everything locally, you can back up in as many ways as you like.
I found a physical copy of one of my favorite games, Kingdoms of Amalur - Reckoning at a Wal-Mart just recently. After hearing this, I'll be grabbing a copy of Destroy All Humans before that's gone. Glad I found out about this now before Christmas.
While stock of games is currently low, and there's going to be less available stock than a typical Black Friday blowout sale, they're still getting physical games in for this year's Black Friday. But Black Friday 2024 might be a completely different story.
@@ebonhawken574 I normally hate fantasy games, but a friend let me play his once (along with Dues Ex Human Revolution so I owe him a lot for turning me on to two great franchises) and by the end of the tutorial, I was hooked. Something about the combat styles and the wide array of abilities/weapons/armor got me hooked. It went from an amusing distraction to one of my all time favorites in no time.
buying a new game and not having to wait the two days for amazon is literally the only time i ever walk into a walmart. their stores are just so run down and i feel like i'm going to get robbed on the way to my car.
Razor mentioned something very important that I haven't heard anyone else talk about. The fact that day one patches have made physical media basically pointless. Sure, there are some games that are basically complete and have zero problems day one but these days 90% of the time videogames are released broken. What happens if you buy a physical disc for Cyberpunk 2077 but don't have the ability to download the patch? You're stuck with a glitchy videogame you can't play. We already have no true ownership over the vast majority of the modern videogames we buy.
That's a shame that Nintendo will be the only game company still supporting physical media in the next console generation/era....and of course this all just helps to destroy any kind of long-term game preservation....and the depressing thing is that *most* of the younger generations of gamers don't care....in fact they'll go out of their way to argue in defense of never owning anything at any point in life. (*imagine being so foolish as to eagerly defend greedy companies/industry that go out of their way to screw and scam the consumer any chance they get if it means earning an extra few cents)
@@hisaceinthehole3426Nintendo is a Japanese based company and they always focused on the Japanese audience. In japan, 70% of consumers bought physical games but who knows in 10 years from now in japan when the digital media buying from consumers increase.
The double-edged sword is that younger generations are fickle as f***. You piss them off once and they junk you. Corporations have trained them to do that, but it can backfire horrendously
Part of the problem with physical media sales is that a lot of games aren't getting physical releases. Or don't have easily obtainable physical releases such as games that only have a physical collectors edition with a $20 or $30 mark up and come with a buttload of extra stuff. There's no way to get JUST the game.
But it means shit because physical go's down in price way faster and for way more superior sales. Also plus you can resell it. Digital still sells way higher even after a long time buying physical will always be superior.
@@samza9622Physical copies will always be the best. The great thing about physical copies is you can lend them to coworkers, friends or relatives when you are done playing them. I don’t plan to buy super Mario brothers wonder and sonic heroes for the switch since my coworker is planning to buy those games one day. He also told me he will lend me super Mario brothers wonder and sonic heroes.
Sad thing is us old-timers are in minority for wanting to stick to physical media. The younger generations have already been conditioned to accept digital only media
Back in the late 90's, there was a competition between DIVX and DVD. The studios and profiteers wanted DIVX because you had to repay to watch the movie after a period of time. It was a much more profitable business model than you owning the media and having free use in perpetuity. The consumer hated the idea and went with DVD. 25 years later, and lots of social conditioning, people are going back to physical media instead of embracing digital only. Vinyl and CDs are making comebacks. So the outlets want to remove your access to physical media. What a shock. It's a corporatist land locking.
It's honestly really sad to see physical media being phased out. I remember back in the early 2000s it was always said this day would one day come. And now, we are closer than ever. I commend Nintendo for sticking with physical media on the level that they do. Obviously they also do digital sales, but at the very least, they release most their new games with a physical option. I personally would have no problem driving to the store to buy my games if it meant we could keep physical media around. I would do it without question, and still do whenever I am able. Movies I love - I try to get the physical copy. Old school video games - I go out of my way, and spend the extra cash to get a copy. All the same, I know, in the end; the tide is inexorably pulling us all toward a world of total digital sales. We can only fight as hard as we can; swim, swim, swim against the current that pulls us ever closer to that inevitable new reality. Like the death of the video store, it will come. Physical media will one day be a thing of the past. When that day comes - Preservation will lose an important foundational structure. It will be a sad day when convenience wins out. And it will.
The more important issue isnt even the physicality aspect, but the fact that phasing out physical is due to them wanring to lhase out your right to own anything. They envision a workd where you just indefinitely subscribe to something, whether your living pod, or your media. They should rewrite the copyright law that basically says you cannot own software because “oh no piracy!”
Here's the thing with Steam. You can backup your games onto physical media like a USB Drive or a Blu-Ray disc, and they will play in the state they were backed up on as long as you launch Steam in Offline Mode. Obviously theres DRM and such that makes that impossible but the option is there for pretty much every game
If physical games cease to exist, I will cease to be a gamer. That will make me extremely sad but I will stand my ground. I want to own what I purchase not rent.
Well if they're going to eliminate physical media, they should at least allow you to make an offline backup copy to keep in your possession that doesn't require an internet connection!
@@vircentti Sure, cupcake. Have fun renting ass-tier garbage from gov-run corpos who no longer have any incentive to create a product with quality or passion. Then have fun eventually being told when and how long you can game...if you remain a good little neo-serf and keep your vaccines up to date on your digital inmate ID.
i think once the tourists go away when games are no longer trendy things will change but i think the damage will have been done and healing will take decades.
Game emulation is what people are doing more in order to save old media of gaming from the 90s to present day , but even that is not fully capable because of some games being locked behind certain systems and lost forever , due to it not being open sourced for people to emulate it to save the game for future users
outside of big cities small mom and pop game retro stores won't survive imo. retro gamings far too expensive now and its just too much clutter. its honestly very inconvenient when you can emulate or just get it cheap digitally
@@ChosenOneDan If you’re living in some apartment, then sure it’s cluttered. If you have a decent size cabinet, it’s literally not a problem at all. I bought retro games at 20 dollars a pop when AAA games are really dumbed down, overpriced for an incomplete game which for a lot of it is a glorified movie that plays a lot of the game for you. And it’s 60 to 100 dollars for one game. It’s literally the new games that are overpriced as can be. And it’s obviously for a reason since these games have a sky high budget greater than many Hollywood movies. Retro gaming has been cheaper by far for me and very affordable as a family man with kids whereas some PS5 or XBox would be in comparison, me buying a car. I’m not kidding with the rediculous prices for new AAA games. I also got a Nintendo Wii laser so it’s fully resurrected, for 60 dollars. Seriously, the new games are the expensive ones and it’s not even funny. Of course I’m good with repairing game consoles and assembling my own computer, which some people don’t have a clue about how to do that. But it saves me plenty of money that I would be wasting on expensive PS5 and XBox games.
To an extent, I completely agree with the guys in this video the problem though is less and less and less people are actually buying physical media. It’s not worth it for stores to keep it in the store anymore, and let’s face it how many people want to take the time to put a disc in their machine and wait for it to load up just to start playing their game, when all they have to do is turn it on make three clicks, and their game starts in my opinion the second issue with this is now with Internet speeds where they are depending on where you live and your Internet connection you can literally download the game faster than it takes for the time to you to go to the store get the game, bring it home and then have to install it anyway to get it to play Now they’re not wrong it is simply convenience but that’s still the point more and more people today are choosing convenience
the version of physical media you described is the bastardized version. Pretend you have real physical media back, not some code in a box or a license on a disc, then go back through your analogy. You get property rights. You can resell the game. You can 100% go to the store and return with physical media and play it faster than downloading, you just don't remember real physical media!
Forgot to mention, I buy all my games physical, but I don't buy that many games. Starfield was the first thing in years that I had been truly looking forward to, but that obviously didn't work out.
@@lordfarquaad8601 Easy to say in hindsight. Yes, it's a Bethesda game, and yes, it's a game made in current day, so looking forward to anything is a dicey proposition. But the setting and everything was right up my alley, it looked amazing, so I was uncharacteristically cautiously optimistic.
This is a self-fulfilling prophecy/self-feeding problem: Company trying to cheap out: "Gamers aren't buying physical media! Boxes and discs are expensive. We can go to download-only to allow us put out more products with less risk to us" Old school gamer: "I like having hard copies of games though" Company: "Tell you what, we'll still make the big releases on disc but the smaller releases will be digital-only" Gamer: "But by reducing the offerings of physical media, you'll sell less physical media; it'll look like physical sales are declining but it'll be artificial because there's no supply. You'll be conflating gamers' lack of alternatives with a market preference." Company: "We've decided to go to digital-only releases due to declining sales of physical media" Steadily decreasing the selection of hard copies from multiple full aisles to an anemic endcap with 9-year old releases is naturally going to lead to declining sales of physical media. Grab what you can I guess and pray indie scene makes it cool to produce physical media again. Preferably with awesome manuals.
With so many digital storefronts on PC I'm surprised they even bothered with physical disc-drives this generation. Not to mention mobile gaming making an extra push on-top-of-it.
I haven't touched a dvd since like 2008. glad also just too much clutter. pcs look so much cleaner without a disc drive in them. more room for cooling and aesthetics.@@gogereaver349
yea its why I bought a digital ps5 I saw this coming why bother. ps plus extra is a great deal I got two years before the price got hiked up this past month
If you’ve tried in recent years to actually buy a physical game from Wal-Mart you could say they might as well just not carry them at all. They’re all locked up in the display and good luck finding someone who will actually open it for you.
There’s pirates stuff, and that’s never going away. For every pirate they shut down, there’s always a dozen that either pop up or someone else picks up for whomever got shut down. Unless they make the internet super exclusive where only politicians have access or some wierd super-restriction, it just isn’t going away.
I absolutely hate digital because it don’t feel like I own anything. Now I’m not saying I’ve never played a digital game or streamed Netflix because I have but something I really want to own I get on disc because having it in my hands in my home feels safe to me. I know people that keep physical money on them in a safe because they don’t trust there banks.
This is why I've been building my physical collection the last few years. Got around 300+ amazing physical games that I'll never be able to play all of already, so even if another good game never comes out, let alone in physical form, I'll be fine.
"press the spacebar, see he says SHAKEM." "Oh my God Mohammad!" "Dat pixel" "Dem Polygons" 😂🤣😂🤣🙃Yes, we are all gonna be burkka'd up in my dystopia, and the 2 sects' war will be between the devout who seek after the EPIC BEWBS of yesteryear, and the false prophets who gawk at the AI tatas of today.
This is why I'm glad I have such a veritable hoard of retro games and movies. I'm at the point where if I don't want to, I never have to purchase a new game again. I've also found lately that older games are just more fun. They don't hold your hand with the built-in "journalist" difficulty setting, and the lack of graphical detail and fidelity was compensated by the games just being good and fun to play. I still have a few games I've bought digitally, but the vast majority of my stuff is physical.
@@ChosenOneDan Not really. Barely fills up a shelf as far as the games go. As for the systems, they only take up an entertainment center. Nice try, though.
@ChosenOneDan I called it a veritable hoard. It's a stand up shelf set with 6 brackets on it. It takes up almost 4 of them. My DVD/Blu Ray collection takes up the other two.
@@Zac_Frost fair enough. I got a bag of old PS4 games I should trade in probably get $20 max for all 12 of them since game reselling values so terrible. Got a digital PS5 so can't do much with them and likely won't replay them. It's rare for me to go back to old games
Walmmart’s low physical prices killed gamestop, but yeesh amazon might be the only physical seller. Reminder: YOU DO NOT OWN DOWNLOADED GAMES. *YOU DON’T OWN THEM.* You have a _license agreement_ that can be revoked at anytime!
we'll have more problems that worrying about playing a game rofl. and you do realize that single player games digitally don't require a connection right?
@@ChosenOneDan some will, some will still be stuck at home or will have families stuck at home or will have a lot of down time and also unfortunately a lot of single player games nowadays do require a connection, and God forbid you don't have the storage space or like to play on Cloud It was also halfway a joke lol
@@baddragonite yea I mean I get it we all went thru COVID also. Most single player games I play atleast are fine in offline mode only company I know that isn't is mostly Ubisoft titles.
As long as gamestop keep selling physical media this will save GameStop. I don't play a lot of modern video games but I do buy sell and trade them. There's a handful of modern video games I play are just collections of old ones . I have thousands of games and never purchased a digital copy
When I import a game from Japan, the box is crammed full of goodies and unique bobbles. Years ago Japan started to subtitle some movies and some games with English subtitles. So you can 'import' a Japanese game and have a fully subtitled game. I get physical media, goofy collectibles all the time. It mostly comes down from companies giving the consumer less, and then said consumer returns the favor by consuming less. So then they offer us even less, so we buy less. The issue also comes to Japan specializing on low-unit-sales, Western/American companies want mass appeal and mass sales. Stamp a DVD with nothing else in it and sell for $2 and then wonder why it doesn't sell.
This just marks the end for me I’m glad I can quit and walk away. I got over 30 years of good physical media, movies and games to keep me entertained for the rest of my life. This digital only agenda. They’re pushing is absolute trash and I will not support it.
The BBC numbers included digital games sold on cell phones, and the 72% article included digital only sales to get to that percentage. It was a hit piece to shock investors into pushing for all digital games. If you adjust the numbers it's closer to 57% of people buy digital over physical when given the choice. The numbers are even further squeezed because the study did not consider the price point of physical and digital games sold.
Lets be honest. There is a specific group of people that helped cause this too. At every Walmart I have been to, everything, and I mean everything, is behind a plexiglass case.
The funny thing is that Walmart in my area always sells their games, especially switch games. Most people don't go to privately owned game stores because they can just go to Walmart.
I worry that the lack of physical media in the future will lead to more lost media. Not just with video games either but also shows and movies that are exclusive to streaming without any physical media ever made. I don’t want physical media to go away entirely.
It's why I will never play another Ubisoft game in my life, ever again. Well, not a new one at least. You go on vacation, and they lock you out of all your saves. Effing hate online 24/7. Was a big problem with Ubisoft even going back to the wii u era, they were the ones that required a daily software download, and now their servers are down. F Ubisoft. Makes me sad when I go back to play Prince of Persia, thinking about a time where that wasn't an unfriendly company or a bad word. OR EA BIG, when I hear that, I weep for the past. Not only did EA used to suck very little, most people would tell you it didn't suck at all. (loose adapted quote from Heavyweights)
The only online only games I've ever played were multiplayer, even as a kid back in the early 2010s I always found the idea of single player modes requiring an internet connection to be insulting.
if its a single player game and it requires a always on connection to even play it then yes thats bullshit and it should be spoken out about. I don't like always on connections at all but especially not singleplayer
@@ChosenOneDan Requiring the internet defeats the purpose of a single player, it's like requiring a television cable in order to watch a DVD, or needing permission from a library to read a book that you own.
well yes I agree with you almost anyone agrees always online requirements are dumb. they should be optional yes. but I still think digital is the future and isn't going anywhere. streaming shows this. noone watches live tv anymore outside of sports fans. physical sales are down more and more every year. its just more convenient to stream everything. gaming eventually will be 100% streamed over the internet and not need physical hardware either. the internet infrastructure just isn't there yet.@@johnnyjohn-johnson7738
Yeah I agree with him I've been calling this for years. Streaming and digital have killed physical media. I do both honestly because I'm just a nerd in general so if I can get it cheaper streaming I'll get it streaming but if I want a physical copy I'll buy a physical copy. The thing is I live in a place where there's always some kind of internet issue with Comcast so if my internet's down even though I downloaded a game from PSN on to my hard drive I can't play it because it has to connect to the internet so you paid 70 bucks for a game that you can't play. So the last three games I bought are digital and knock on wood I haven't had any internet issues but at least I can pop in the disc and play it and not have to wait. I used to love going to Best buy and seeing all the movies and the CDs on the shelves that was the main reason I went. Same thing with Walmart I used to go straight to their DVD section then it was Blu-ray I didn't really didn't buy games At Walmart but sometimes they had some really good games on the cheap aisle.
It was over when games started doing day one patches. Most people don’t own their homes, they don’t own their car, they don’t own their phone, and most of the media they consume is rented as well.
5:36 the reason why they still use discs is because it’s much much cheaper. Literal cents per disc. Nintendo cartridges are much more expensive to produce.
Every year, I can probably count on one hand (not using all my fingers) the number of AAA games that I enjoyed enough to want to have a physical copy, and every year that number gets smaller. A majority of these releases feel soulless, sanitized, and corporate to the point I don't even care about new announcements anymore. AAA game companies are not making games anymore, they're making checklist products designed to create an install base to siphon money from through microtransactions. The exceptions to that trend are the games that take risks and provide excellent value to the customer. Those are the games I would pay big money for if a premium physical edition was available.
No one realizes once they get rid of physical, they will RAISE the price of digital. Plus all previous physical games will go up even higher in price than they already are because no more games will come out physical
This will put a strain on them because the used game market is very useful when it comes to selling old games to help buy a new one which is something that can't be done with digital games where I can't buy their games they can't make money from me situation. If these companies were smart they try researching the economy with the customer budget to stay afloat until there is some recovery plan happens but they're doing the exact opposite.
With PS4/PS5, I almost always buy new releases, play them, get as much as I can out of them, and then sell them off. I get usually get $30-$40 back from my purchase. If I want to replay it down the line, I'll pick it up when it's $10 used. I also buy used physical games for cheap when the same game is way more expensive digitally. The digital storefront is for people with tons of disposable income who do not care about the ownership of the media they enjoy. Craig is 100% right about Nintendo. I was amazed how many times I bought a Switch game that had no patches day one. Switch collecting is huge as well. Lots of indie games are getting physical releases and are massively collectible.
The selection of games at Wal-Mart is generally abysmal, you get a better range of options by ordering from an online game store and this has been true for years. As for culture? Forget it! It’s mostly based on denialism and lying to yourself about reality and the past. As for games? Games today are pretty much overpriced movies.
Heads up for anyone with a steam account. There’s a lawsuit you can sign up for now where you could get up to 60 percent of all the money you paid in steam games back. That could add up to big money.
The loss of physical games isn't an issue for me, as I'm not much of a AAA-title gamer (I go with GOTY/Anthology pack released 2-4 years after release games), and I generally only get GOG games that are DRM free. But where this will show a loss for media companies from me is movies, tv series, and music. I absolutely refuse to pay for digital only entertainment media. (I will make an exception for music released on FLAC, but that's it). So with the loss of physical blu-rays and CDs, that means Hollywood will lose out on a few thousand dollars a year from me for the rest of my life. I also don't pay for streaming services (I get Hulu for free from my cellphone provider, and I get Prime for the free shipping, the streaming is tangential to why I have Prime.)
Damn I'm old... I can still remember when video games were sold in these HUGE, flashy, colorful boxes with not much inside them but some 3.5" discs and an instruction manual. Boxes eventually got smaller until now, I guess, they're gone altogether. BTW: I used to work for walmart in/near their home stomping grounds in NW Arkansas. Just FYI, *everything* they do is shady or illegal.
I’m old enough to remember when PC games came on discs in these big boxes sometimes crazy designed boxes and you sometimes get a music disc with it as well.
![YoungBoy Never Broke Again - Catch Me [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KxwEXXFQMTY/mqdefault.jpg)
Don't forget that the other reason publishers have wanted digital only for years is to eliminate used game sales.
Yep.. they dont want people buying a used copy.. they want them to buy a new copy. Which weirdly, is a bullshit logic because i bet most used games, are bought AFTER they stopped selling new copies of them.
Whats weird is the idea that software loses value once its owned. The same goes for why digital games are more expensive today.
@@panzer00 the software doesn't, but the medium it's on does due to normal wear and tear plus supply and demand in the used market.
@@mawnkey that's true i hadnt considered that.
@mawnkey wear and tear is the biggest bullshit lie they fed all of you fools and you all fell for it. I have games from every era none of them showed any sign of wear and tear they still look new besides a few scratches I never put on them. That's what I get for lending morons my games.
This push to eliminate physical media is dangerous. I think you're right that it's mostly driven by penny-pinching, but I think there is also an ideological aspect behind it as well, to push, as you said, presentism, given the ease with which they can stealth-edit any movie, music, show, game, etc, after the fact, or take it away from you entirely, either for being found guilty of wrongthink, or simply because they decide they want to.
Also, love the Sanctuary shirt!
Pushed by the need to be able to actively edit books that "you own". Disgusting.
They already did by removing Confederate flags from GTA 5 back in like 2015 or 2016. Post launch censorship has been around for a while.
@@ChrisLee1353-c6eI'm aware, but if physical ceases to exist, there will be no limit to it, and there will be no escaping it. That's the point.
You will own nothing
@malice5121Soyny also started it all to increase their prices from $70 games to $80 online subscription fee
What sucks is that very many games have been lost to history solely due to the fact of copyright.
Something that was originally designed to preserve works is cutting its throat.
For many games the only way to play them is by downloading the torrent but many of the games unless they were very popular we're not updated or remasterd.
We are even having developers now going on to crack websites and downloading pirated versions of the game to start developing remakes.
I mean when the developers have to start asking for pirated material back you know thier system is broke.
Sometimes you can ONLY get a game physically. I remember trying to get Deadpool, back when there were licensing issues, I could only get it at a physical store.
For this and the reasons discussed in the video, support the high seas, folks.
IP in a nutshell.
I've heard the argument that all property is intellectual property. But I think physical property and intellectual property are mutually exclusive, and this is just one of several glaring examples why.
@@hagoryopi2101 "I've heard the argument that all property is intellectual property." Do you hang around complete morons... just by you saying that means you entertained that nonsense and then you go on to further prove that you aren't bright. The hilarious thing is you think that you are coming across as smart and an intellectual.
Media preservation is the best ethical and moral argument in favor of piracy.
Not only video games. Imagine when they start editing films and videos like they've done with Roald Dahl and other books. When a streaming copy changes, how will you know?
Own your media. It can't be erased, edited, or deleted.
They are already editing films.
They were already editing out scenes from Tom and Jerry cartoons on video cassettes in the 90s.
Things that the WWE had been doing with anything involving Benoit but didn’t do the same with Snuka.
This already happened recently with Disney and The French Connection. Got a couple mainstream news articles and then petered out. As far as I know, Disney never addressed it.
The newer Spiderman movie already had dialogue removed and replaced.
The day I walk into a Best Buy and see no physical games will be the last time I set foot in any of their stores.
You have 1 year. Make it count. We digites will push you out and will win this war. We the king's now and you will own nothing and be happy.
Its only logical.
I haven’t bought a video game from Best Buy since 2015
I’ve bought a few from Best Buy here and there, admittedly it’s rare but I haven’t bought anything that wasn’t a game from em in over 10 years
@@addictofanime every once in a blue moon I bought movies and games but 7eah
I also went to Target just the other day. The Nintendo section was well stocked, colorful and inviting. The PlayStation and Xbox sections were a fraction of the size, with hardly any games in stock at all. It was a barren wasteland, and I walked away depressed.
To give you an idea what it's like here in New Zealand the PS4 version of Red Dead Redemption just got released yesterday and the Resident Evil 4 remake cost $130NZ due to them giving us a limited amount of physical copies. Sucks!
@@secondchance6603 😳 yikes!
In Canada a new game is about $120
Even in my target had a shrinking size in switch games because the stocks remain unused
Hard to sell PlayStation 5 games, when there aren't any to begin with. The PS5's library is a joke compared to the Switch. Even the Wii U had a better lineup of exclusives.
Between streaming media and "software as a service," we are well on our way to "renting" everything, and I don't think people understand the danger this represents. Others have pointed out that so long as you are buying a license, you have to abide by the terms and conditions, and that T&C's can be used to control behavior. However, I think the true danger is the deprecation of physical books, movies, and albums, because digital media enables censorship after the fact on a massive scale. Suddenly, "problematic" things are removed in the name of the zeitgeist, no matter how twisted or illogical the spirit of the times may be.
Just DL the crack
When you pirate a game you receive the 'Install.EXE'. Saved to a hard drive equates to a physical copy. Duh.
Support your local game stores folks, places like the store I run, there will always be a resistance to the “digital games only” dystopia.
Or just pirate
And when all else fails, go retro. With the retro collection I have, I never have to buy another game in my life if I don't want to.
@@Zac_Frostthere are even still developers of games for old platforms.
@@sbrazenor2 Yep. That, and fan-made stuff lately is outpacing the quality of AAA stuff. Most Pokemon ROM Hacks I've played have put the last few GameFreak releases to utter shame lol.
@@Zac_Frost I do think Nintendo is bound to crack the whip on gamefreak to do better long term.
Walmart is the only place in my area that sells physical games. Looks like Amazon and PlayAsia get all that money now.
I will own things and be happy. A lot happier than those people who will lose their collection when a company tanks or internet services become war targets.
I wouldn’t trust them long term if I were you. Start looking at Alts from beyond Amazon and playasia because those two are bound to screw customers just as much as Best Buy long term.
Smart man.
Precisely why an all digital future is BAD and not sustainable at all. It's amazing how these digital warriors advocate for this digital future just because they don't want their physical space being taken up while not wanting to handle said physical stuff at all, and because companies want to save a single buck. It also don't help that the reason physical releases don't that the full game is due to people begging companies to make games super realistic and rush the games out the door with day one patches that don't fit on the disc.
I too will own physical media and be happy. I have never trusted digital and never will.
The whole idea is that you’re happy from not having as much responsibility for something, for me, that’s nonsense.
I've only ever purchased digital when it became an absolute necessity. So, thanks guys. Thanks to everyone that quietly went along.
Personally, I’ve never gone along with this the reasons why I don’t play on PC is I don’t want to platform that is all digital once games go I’ll digital that’s it. I’m not gonna buy any new games. I’ll just stick with the older generations. I can still get plenty of games physically that way.
I've tried buying physical only, but not all indie studios want to waste money on making game cartridges, no one can predict how successful certain games will be.
@jeremiahcolon192 I also seem to just be enjoying older games that I could have played better or didn't finish. To be honest I think the last purchase I made was a year ago. And I was just desperate to play MW2two with an old buddy who I used to smash with on OG mw2.
@clxwncrxwn fret nothing, brother. Ive been pressed into a couple of digital purchases. But it was a bitter that set in rather quick.
I prefer digital, since in the end what I'm buying is a digital artifact and I don't get any enjoyment out of having a whole shelf unit dedicated to media. If Steam ever shuts down or bans me I'm just gonna crack everything I care about having. I paid for the thing locked inside the safe, if I gotta drill the lock to get into it I haven't the least problem with doing that.
As technology advances more into the realm of always online, cloud storage, and so forth, the more I’m looking toward ceasing to be online at all.
We as a society need to start encouraging people to Buy Physical Copies of Games and Music.
And if Developers and publishers don’t offer physical copies, Start petitioning them to do so.
The best place to start is with Indie Games. Start encouraging them to get into the physical media market, even if starting in small limited run batches at a time.
We as a society have willfully fallen into the trap of ‘push button convenience”, and it is harming us more than helping us. We need to start getting out of this habit, before it engulfs us.
Physical copies for indie games would be a thing of beauty to see. AAA games just don't cut it. Huge price tags, an obsession with graphics that demand expensive hardware, lacking polish in gameplay or just being bug-infested - and _maybe_ that gets fixed if people make enough of a fuss about it. And that's not even covering moral objections about how devs and artists get treated behind the scenes...
It seems so rare that physical copies for smaller-budget/indie games are offered. Which is weird - I remember seeing all kinds of strange games I'd never heard of in game stores back in the day, but now it's all heavily-marketed AAA games and basically nothing else.
It's bizarre. There _has_ to be money in that which is just going totally untapped - offering games that _didn't_ cost hundreds of millions to develop and market, on physical shelves. There's an opportunity to make bank that nobody's taking yet, and I really hope to see people trying.
It's only a feeling I've had (for a few years now) but I honestly do "feel" there is a slowly growing amount of people who want physical to come back and more analogue technologies (which always seem to last much longer) over digital tech.
At least in the UK I've seen shopping centres really seem to be getting a lot of traffic and footfall the past year.
I think people becoming jaded by social media is something that is helping, people wanting to actually get back out and see random people again rather than being attached to a screen all day *shrugs* again just a feeling.
I was buying a couple of CDs at a thrift shop last night and some young girl made a comment about CDs as she walked by. I think she was implying that I must be some kind of boomer for preferring to have a physical copy. Also, the bit-rate is higher on the CDs, so they sound more full and vibrant on a decent stereo or high end headphones. Also, I own those albums, so I am not beholden to the whim of distribution contracts, streaming service availability, etc.
I had bought an album on Google Play Music at one point and when they killed that service I had a limited time to download a copy of it before it went away. My CDs don't give me ultimatums. 🤣
you're definitely a boomer buying cds in 2023 versus just using spotify over bluetooth in your car. makes zero sense.@@sbrazenor2
@@sbrazenor2I, too, still buy CD’s. The real beauty of the CD is that I can easily turn it into digital copies or “mixed CD’s” if I want. Recently got the Bluey Dance Mode album for my daughter on CD. Best purchase this year.
It's probably why I've taken to buying physical books recently as well. My friends think I'm nuts waiting 2 days for physical media to deliver just so I can say, "This is mine." But then again, they thought I was nuts about coof being a scam, too.
I like the hunt for physical media.
Something to celebrate when you finally find a film or game you have wanted.
@@yetanotherspuart3993 I know that feeling well.
It certainly helps if you're patient and don't mind a little more waiting.
If you go to any gaming section of a store like Walmart, you'll inevitably see a bunch of kids walking through the aisles, interacting with the demo consoles, etc.
Half the fun of video games growing up was visiting these little 'gaming meccas,' that felt like their own self contained theme parks for young kids. Losing those physical spaces would suck for young gamers imo...
I haven't seen a kid do that in years. none of my walmarts or targets have demo consoles setup anymore bestbuy is about it and its always empty on that side of the store.
@@ChosenOneDan same thing. I haven’t seen a demo setup in years.
There aren't demo consoles set up anywhere wtf you on about
As a kid and I’m talking 12-13 I’d walk into the store and look at all the games behind the glass and look at all the accessories and consoles and extra collectibles and the employees would talk to me about certain games and recommend games they liked to me. Now when I walk into Walmart or Best Buy it’s very depressing this generation of kids don’t even care they rather just play the game digitally and then delete it and move on. Where I guess I’m old school I finish a game and put it back on my shelf and when a family members over or a friend I can relive the memories by showing off my collection. For example my cozen is a big gamer and he was at my house and we were looking at my collection and just talking games and remembering the good old days. That’s what’s lost today.
@@ryans413 you don't need a physical collection to relive those memories tho. Im visiting my friends family and his brother has a big physical collection. I got no interest to actually sit down pull out a old console and play something talking about playing it those days is good enough. Digital is so convenient times of changed. Kids won't know what it was like 30 years ago to walk into best buy see the massive kiosks with tvs hanging by the ceiling playing nes / SNES titles and store reps recommending stuff but that's just how it is today. They're all playing fortnite and Roblox not our ancient stuff
Gamestop might become the only place for purchasing physical titles in the not to distant future.
That stinks, because they all went extinct here leaving Walmart as basically my only choice
Support your local game store, places like the one I run. There are tons of places that aren’t game stop that would love your business.
...and their days are numbered as well, since I don't think they've been doing well financially for years at this point.
All part of the plan, a struggling and hated company that’s part of the machine becomes the only place gamers can get them putting the people in a stranglehold.
Gamestop is going to go bankrupt
Giving pirates more reasons to commit digital piracy.
Nintendo and Rockstar have both been caught selling pirated versions of their own games. Piracy is preservation.
yarrharr raise anchor lads the winds be calling
Oh boy....cue the Lazytown song...
Sadly, that’s going to get co-opted long term. Those people along with emulation communities and modding barely do any gatekeeping at all, doesn’t help that some of them have egos the size of cathedrals.
@@jackall-trades6149 what about the booty boogie? Or the pirate’s scorn from the donkey Kong country tv series? Those fits perfectly!
This should scare everyone and the fact that people just don't want to get up to change discs or understand how censored everything will become, we are about to be living in 1984.
Not to mention people took advise on not pre ordering games because of digital existing from Boogie who looks like the type who dosent want to get up for doing anything worth a shit in his life
We already live in a worse version of 1984
@@alvinyakitori8720 and we have lazy digital warriors to thank for that.
Physical for life. Digital should only be a secondary thing, not a primary means of getting our escapism.
literally love digital and have saved hundreds of dollars versus buying physical. its wild how far out of the way you'll go and inconvenience yourself just to have physical game cases clutter your house. you do you tho. I'd rather live in 2023 where we have gigabit internet with no bandwidth caps and I can buy a game and play it within 10 minutes of purchasing it.
Razor being based as hell.
He's 1000% correct with his "you'll own nothing" take. You need to vocalize how grimly common stealth edits and currentism will be.
Razor has been based since Day 1 of being on RUclips. He hides his true power level though, knowing he’ll get the axe if he starts dropping serious blackpills on a daily basis.
Agree
When you pirate a game you receive the 'Install.EXE'. Saved to a hard drive equates to a physical copy. Duh.
I hope Nintendo dominates the market simply because of its respect for physical media. That is a big selling point.
With the way Nintendo is slowly pushing us to go digital with their vouchers…
Switch 2 will disrupt and own big time BELIEVE ME ITS COMMING
@@therealjaystone2344 Unless they fully decide to remove physical, make sure you choose physical.
Nintendo is more and more likely going to at this point.
Nintendo is holding on longer than i thought, honestly. If the next console supports physical media, and is backwards compatible with Switch games, ill be very impressed. However i think that even Nintendo cannot ignore the writing on the wall forever. If retailers are going to stop carrying physical games, Nintendo will naturally not sell as many of them, because they simply don't have the outlets to. Which will force them to push more toward digital than they currently even are.
In the last few years I've been building up my physical video collection. Looks like I'll need to pick up any physical games I'm interested in sooner rather than later.
This makes me sad. Ive still bought physical media whenever possible. So many great memories of excitedly checking out the box & manual of a new game on the car ride home. New generations will never know, maybe not even care. Damn whipper snappers! GET OFF MY LAWN!
most physical games don't come with game manuals anymore anyways. xbox wanted to go all digital in 2013 with the xbone people forget. internet wasn't good enough yet it is now not sure why people are surprised of this. I welcome it tbh.
@@ChosenOneDan Yup, for me the Switch cases are the most depressing. Nothing inside but a tiny cartridge & a lot of empty space.
I still buy physical media, I not only buy games but also DVDs. I have Home Alone 2 and the Uncut Dragon Ball Z. I also bought classic movies like The Tale Of Zatoichi and The Big Combo.
Minor correction. Best Buy is only getting rid of physical movies. That being said, I won’t be surprised to see them eventually follow suit and ditch physical games as well.
Walmart ending the physical games sale on Xbox
@@therealjaystone2344 Already? Interesting.
@@JRH-1007 Phil Spencer knew what he’s doing
Target is also getting rid of physical media. The shelves are being emptied by last-minute binge buying, I got the last copy of Gilligan's Island at one store two weeks ago.
@@Lonovavir From what I can gather, Target’s physical media removal or the extent of it seems to depend on the store. Even so, there seems to be a coordinated effort to phase out physical media between these chains.
Last I looked they're charging at least 2x what older movies are worth and the new release movie section is basically the end of an isle. I'm pretty sure they'll still be selling dvd/bluray's online.
i used to love collecting the boxes to my PC games. the packaging was always so amazing. Shame kids nowadays will never know the joy of those boxes with a flip out panel to show game images in high gloss full color glory
while this is true its also just nice having a massive library of games availiable to you at all times. its worth the trade off. you can always get fan merch of said games if you love them so its ok.
Having Razorfist on your show just boosted my viewership ten fold. Hell ya Craig
They just need to change HOW they distribute games. They should just have a kiosk that has all the games with the latest patches that prints on demand to a flash drive . Bring back plug and play.
I like that idea more than what i fear they want to do which is streaming services.
GOG is a great example of that
if I can just download the installer and put it on a USB drive, that's just as physical as owning a CD
maybe they will put a empty flash drive and require to use internet.
None of this would ever take hold if people held ground. Sadly, nobody holds ground. Convenience overrules all, even logic.
Convenience is logical. Less effort on the part of both the purchaser and the seller, relatively same outcome. Basic capitalism.
Problem is, greater convenience should cost less: it doesn't. Inconvenient alternatives for enthusiasts should remain, even if they cost more: they're being phased out anyways. Convenience should be as close to the original experience as possible, or shed only the unnecessary: it's being abused to censor and to plan obsolescence. There's a lot of baggage to this convenience which nobody seems to care about, that's the illogical part.
I never thought that people had the kind of WiFi access necessary for a move like this. I still have to go over to friends’ houses in order to just download UPDATES. I can’t go all digital at the moment.
@andrewryan8507 It didn't have to die. Weak people like you don't want to OWN things
The human race is steadily approaching Wall-E
@andrewryan8507I bet you appreciate everything that much less with it all at your fingertips.
The bad news is that limited run games is probably gonna stay longer than necessary like the fbi, ugh….
Screw LRG
Unfortunately i have to agree with you on limited run games.
Maybe this will create a company that challenges LRG
Still didn't forget about that _one_ scandal this year (or was it last year?)
I know, but clock tower, a game that never released in the west(officially) is getting a LRG release next year.
I don't want to give them money and stand by principle but damn I would love LOVE to have a physical copy of that game. I'll deal with the devil maybe just once.
8:46 - Skullgirls is the latest example for this. The devs released a new patch where the characters are now censored. Mind you, the fanservice is one of the game's main selling points.
8:57 - GOG is owned by CDProjekt Red. Unfortunately, they embraced ESG.
First half of your take just sounds like coomers getting angry but you make a solid and concerning point with the second
@@PeruvianPotato you should get what was promised/paid for. Doesn't matter what the censorship is
@@Wadacup I mean let's be for real though, it's only really gotten this big of a backlash because of coomers. Never heard this much of an outrage when the Confederate Naval Jack was removed from PS4 version of GTA 5
@@PeruvianPotato I mean sure, but the game was a coomer game from it's inception.
They can patch a steam game to fully remove it from your hard drive as well, the developers for back 4 blood updated the beta to where it deleted all assets and left a text file that said "there used to be a game here." they can fully delete your game if they want to and leave you with nothing.
Didn't Konami do that with P.T. as well?
Wouldn’t surprise me if that becomes Steam/Gog policy long term.
Had that happen to me on the Xbox 360. Got a digital version of the TMNT 1980's arcade game. Played a while, then after a year or so I went back to play it, it was completely removed from my machine and the store. From then on, I refused to do digital download.
well yea thats the back 4 blood beta why would you want to keep a beta that was a limited time thing? seems like a very silly thing to complain about. I've been pretty much all digital on pc since 2004 and have yet to run into anything like that where I've lost game access to a game. if you buy it you keep access to it even if the game studio shuts down. betas and demos are a separate matter. and on steam you can buy any game and play it up to 2 hours and get a full refund so whats the issue?
They can't if you change the file path & location. Leave the Steam file directory to the game as is, but change the actual game's location. And play offline if necessary. And always turn off Steam's auto updates for games you think could be censored or changed.
Feels like our version of Fahrenheit 451/1984/Brave New World. Once everything is digital, problematic things will start to disappear. Questionable content will be erased. Stealth edits. You'll swear you remembered that movie differently but won't know since no other version exists.
It's like how there's a Black Eyed Peas song that everyone thinks is actually called "Let's Get it Started", now imagine that but everywhere
Thank you Razorfist for being on this show. Craig is a consummate professional and you are just the spice needed to move the needle for his channel
I've been on the physical media bandwagon for years. If available, I get the movies, shows, and games I want on physical media. I wouldn't be surprised in the future if someone decides to stream All in the Family and the episodes are 15 minutes each because the streaming platform felt some of the language and content might be objectionable to a bunch of snowflakes. They can't wave the woke wand over or censor my physical media collection.
THOSE WERE THE DAAAAAAYYEEEEEESSSS -Edith voice
🎵And you knew what you were then
Girls were girls
And men were men🎵
Will be the first to go probably… ☹️
This will also most likely be tied to your social credit score as well. Everything from buying a game to banking is done digitally, if you do something they don't like they could just ban you from the system.
All part of the control agenda.
A social credit score would be unconstitutional and digital currency has already been blocked - Google Congressman Tom Emmers and the bill he got passed.
Problem with digital is there is no guarantee you keep what you pay for. They can shut down servers and everything disappears.
There would need to be a digital archive that hosts all digital content and charges sellers to keep it going. If these sellers servers shut down, your purchases would be directed to the digital archive to get their stuff
This is why I buy most of my stuff physically, I don’t really buy anything digitally
Doesn't matter. You are not enough to stop the change.
@@vircentti Honestly, I don’t care I’m just gonna continue to buy my stuff physically and if I can’t buy it physically, I’m not going to buy it if the next concert generation does not have a way to play physical games I’m not gonna buy the consul just like the reason why I don’t own a PC for gaming
I want physical ALWAYS, but assholes and morons will destroy it cause they dont know what it will lead too.....
because most of us don't want physical anymore. the physical only crowd is a loud vocal minority and thats facts.
Hot Take: I think we need to focus a little less on preserving physical media and focus more on securing digital property rights and the eradication of DRM. Whether its a CD or code on a hard drive, if you bought it as a perpetual license, the instance you paid money for is yours forever and no pencil pusher, marketing executive, or despot should be able to change that or stop your ability to preserve that instance, whether it be by backing it up on multiple drives independent of the internet, rolling back to past versions, being able to play it without intrusive copy-protection background processes, or in the case of online games, allowing the creation of community and even peer-to-peer servers.
This makes sense to me. Gaming is changing...again.
BTW, on The Saboteur example - the PS3 version had the nudity shit as a DLC that was later made free for all the owners - and it still is, no servers required.
I don't think the issue is digital sales as much as it is DRM. Not just DRM on the executable for the game, but the trend of having career modes, save games etc all need to be done on a server somewhere else. The modern Gran Turismo games and the latest Forza now require this, so in the future there's a better than good chance you won't be able to play these games, or significant portions of them at least.
A game bought on gog or similar, that does everything locally, you can back up in as many ways as you like.
Physical media eventually decays over the span of decades. Don't buy consoles with non-trivial DRM.
I found a physical copy of one of my favorite games, Kingdoms of Amalur - Reckoning at a Wal-Mart just recently. After hearing this, I'll be grabbing a copy of Destroy All Humans before that's gone. Glad I found out about this now before Christmas.
While stock of games is currently low, and there's going to be less available stock than a typical Black Friday blowout sale, they're still getting physical games in for this year's Black Friday.
But Black Friday 2024 might be a completely different story.
Love kingdoms of Amalur, lot of good memories on that game
@@ebonhawken574
I normally hate fantasy games, but a friend let me play his once (along with Dues Ex Human Revolution so I owe him a lot for turning me on to two great franchises) and by the end of the tutorial, I was hooked. Something about the combat styles and the wide array of abilities/weapons/armor got me hooked. It went from an amusing distraction to one of my all time favorites in no time.
buying a new game and not having to wait the two days for amazon is literally the only time i ever walk into a walmart. their stores are just so run down and i feel like i'm going to get robbed on the way to my car.
Razor mentioned something very important that I haven't heard anyone else talk about. The fact that day one patches have made physical media basically pointless. Sure, there are some games that are basically complete and have zero problems day one but these days 90% of the time videogames are released broken. What happens if you buy a physical disc for Cyberpunk 2077 but don't have the ability to download the patch? You're stuck with a glitchy videogame you can't play. We already have no true ownership over the vast majority of the modern videogames we buy.
That's a shame that Nintendo will be the only game company still supporting physical media in the next console generation/era....and of course this all just helps to destroy any kind of long-term game preservation....and the depressing thing is that *most* of the younger generations of gamers don't care....in fact they'll go out of their way to argue in defense of never owning anything at any point in life. (*imagine being so foolish as to eagerly defend greedy companies/industry that go out of their way to screw and scam the consumer any chance they get if it means earning an extra few cents)
Its because they werent born with what we had. How can they understand or miss something they never knew existed?
@@hisaceinthehole3426Nintendo is a Japanese based company and they always focused on the Japanese audience. In japan, 70% of consumers bought physical games but who knows in 10 years from now in japan when the digital media buying from consumers increase.
The double-edged sword is that younger generations are fickle as f***. You piss them off once and they junk you. Corporations have trained them to do that, but it can backfire horrendously
Nah, Sony will still have disks with PS6
@@madjoe8622 Sony eyes on the American market now
Part of the problem with physical media sales is that a lot of games aren't getting physical releases. Or don't have easily obtainable physical releases such as games that only have a physical collectors edition with a $20 or $30 mark up and come with a buttload of extra stuff. There's no way to get JUST the game.
But it means shit because physical go's down in price way faster and for way more superior sales. Also plus you can resell it. Digital still sells way higher even after a long time buying physical will always be superior.
You don’t know how to embrace physical copies of games.
@@samza9622Physical copies will always be the best. The great thing about physical copies is you can lend them to coworkers, friends or relatives when you are done playing them. I don’t plan to buy super Mario brothers wonder and sonic heroes for the switch since my coworker is planning to buy those games one day. He also told me he will lend me super Mario brothers wonder and sonic heroes.
Sad thing is us old-timers are in minority for wanting to stick to physical media. The younger generations have already been conditioned to accept digital only media
The only way this stops is if we all boycott but we won’t.
The only reason why the gaming crashed in 1983 was the boycott from everybody
You won't I decided to boycott all these shitty companies trying to screw the customer with their greed. Never buying from any of these trash.
@@samza9622 Well all I can say Sir is I salute you. It’s the only way we can make a difference.
Least you're honest about the failure of modern day boycotts
@@PeruvianPotato What's with the blackpills? Modern boycotts have clearly been working, and the results are evident to anyone paying attention.
That why i have hundreds of physical movies they will have to pry them from my cold dead hands.
Hold one of your discs above your head with one hand Charlton Heston style.
Back in the late 90's, there was a competition between DIVX and DVD.
The studios and profiteers wanted DIVX because you had to repay to watch the movie after a period of time.
It was a much more profitable business model than you owning the media and having free use in perpetuity.
The consumer hated the idea and went with DVD.
25 years later, and lots of social conditioning, people are going back to physical media instead of embracing digital only.
Vinyl and CDs are making comebacks.
So the outlets want to remove your access to physical media.
What a shock.
It's a corporatist land locking.
The only problem with all of our physical games is, eventually,, they'll stop selling DVD readers and card readers.
It's honestly really sad to see physical media being phased out. I remember back in the early 2000s it was always said this day would one day come. And now, we are closer than ever.
I commend Nintendo for sticking with physical media on the level that they do. Obviously they also do digital sales, but at the very least, they release most their new games with a physical option.
I personally would have no problem driving to the store to buy my games if it meant we could keep physical media around. I would do it without question, and still do whenever I am able.
Movies I love - I try to get the physical copy. Old school video games - I go out of my way, and spend the extra cash to get a copy.
All the same, I know, in the end; the tide is inexorably pulling us all toward a world of total digital sales. We can only fight as hard as we can; swim, swim, swim against the current that pulls us ever closer to that inevitable new reality.
Like the death of the video store, it will come. Physical media will one day be a thing of the past.
When that day comes - Preservation will lose an important foundational structure.
It will be a sad day when convenience wins out. And it will.
It will be a sad day when digital gets wiped out by disaster because society is screwed.
The more important issue isnt even the physicality aspect, but the fact that phasing out physical is due to them wanring to lhase out your right to own anything. They envision a workd where you just indefinitely subscribe to something, whether your living pod, or your media. They should rewrite the copyright law that basically says you cannot own software because “oh no piracy!”
Here's the thing with Steam. You can backup your games onto physical media like a USB Drive or a Blu-Ray disc, and they will play in the state they were backed up on as long as you launch Steam in Offline Mode. Obviously theres DRM and such that makes that impossible but the option is there for pretty much every game
yup also this. most of the people whining in these comments clearly aren't the most tech savvy of folks and are stuck in their ways from the 80s
If physical games cease to exist, I will cease to be a gamer. That will make me extremely sad but I will stand my ground. I want to own what I purchase not rent.
And you do. I own 2 games that were delisted from the stores on PlayStation.
Well if they're going to eliminate physical media, they should at least allow you to make an offline backup copy to keep in your possession that doesn't require an internet connection!
Physical games sales stop......I stop gaming.
BINGO! or just retro game. No internet, no back door access. THe corpo glowies can 5UCK IT!
Bye bye. Gaming doesn't need you. I hope you follow through. There plenty of people and gamers to take your place.
@@vircentti Sure, cupcake. Have fun renting ass-tier garbage from gov-run corpos who no longer have any incentive to create a product with quality or passion. Then have fun eventually being told when and how long you can game...if you remain a good little neo-serf and keep your vaccines up to date on your digital inmate ID.
you can piss
off@@vircentti
@@vircenttiSaying all that isn't the big win you're proclaiming it as
i think once the tourists go away when games are no longer trendy things will change but i think the damage will have been done and healing will take decades.
Game emulation is what people are doing more in order to save old media of gaming from the 90s to present day , but even that is not fully capable because of some games being locked behind certain systems and lost forever , due to it not being open sourced for people to emulate it to save the game for future users
I wouldn't be surprised if small businesses begin to rise up buying physical copies of films and games like how record shops are a thing.
outside of big cities small mom and pop game retro stores won't survive imo. retro gamings far too expensive now and its just too much clutter. its honestly very inconvenient when you can emulate or just get it cheap digitally
@@ChosenOneDan If you’re living in some apartment, then sure it’s cluttered. If you have a decent size cabinet, it’s literally not a problem at all. I bought retro games at 20 dollars a pop when AAA games are really dumbed down, overpriced for an incomplete game which for a lot of it is a glorified movie that plays a lot of the game for you. And it’s 60 to 100 dollars for one game. It’s literally the new games that are overpriced as can be. And it’s obviously for a reason since these games have a sky high budget greater than many Hollywood movies. Retro gaming has been cheaper by far for me and very affordable as a family man with kids whereas some PS5 or XBox would be in comparison, me buying a car. I’m not kidding with the rediculous prices for new AAA games. I also got a Nintendo Wii laser so it’s fully resurrected, for 60 dollars. Seriously, the new games are the expensive ones and it’s not even funny. Of course I’m good with repairing game consoles and assembling my own computer, which some people don’t have a clue about how to do that. But it saves me plenty of money that I would be wasting on expensive PS5 and XBox games.
To an extent, I completely agree with the guys in this video the problem though is less and less and less people are actually buying physical media. It’s not worth it for stores to keep it in the store anymore, and let’s face it how many people want to take the time to put a disc in their machine and wait for it to load up just to start playing their game, when all they have to do is turn it on make three clicks, and their game starts in my opinion the second issue with this is now with Internet speeds where they are depending on where you live and your Internet connection you can literally download the game faster than it takes for the time to you to go to the store get the game, bring it home and then have to install it anyway to get it to play Now they’re not wrong it is simply convenience but that’s still the point more and more people today are choosing convenience
the version of physical media you described is the bastardized version. Pretend you have real physical media back, not some code in a box or a license on a disc, then go back through your analogy. You get property rights. You can resell the game. You can 100% go to the store and return with physical media and play it faster than downloading, you just don't remember real physical media!
This is why piracy is more important than ever, at least with pirated stuff you own something.
If its anything related to the Walmart I work at, its dueto the facts that it takes too long to get someone to unlock a case so you can buy it.
When the physical is gone, all digital subscriptions prices will skyrocket
"You'll own nothing and you'll be happy "
Thank you "gamers" you're creating you're own undoing.
Forgot to mention, I buy all my games physical, but I don't buy that many games. Starfield was the first thing in years that I had been truly looking forward to, but that obviously didn't work out.
Your mistake was looking forward to Starfield.
@@lordfarquaad8601 Easy to say in hindsight. Yes, it's a Bethesda game, and yes, it's a game made in current day, so looking forward to anything is a dicey proposition. But the setting and everything was right up my alley, it looked amazing, so I was uncharacteristically cautiously optimistic.
@@MatthiasPowerbomb It was easy to say in foresight too, but I get what your saying.
This is a self-fulfilling prophecy/self-feeding problem:
Company trying to cheap out: "Gamers aren't buying physical media! Boxes and discs are expensive. We can go to download-only to allow us put out more products with less risk to us"
Old school gamer: "I like having hard copies of games though"
Company: "Tell you what, we'll still make the big releases on disc but the smaller releases will be digital-only"
Gamer: "But by reducing the offerings of physical media, you'll sell less physical media; it'll look like physical sales are declining but it'll be artificial because there's no supply. You'll be conflating gamers' lack of alternatives with a market preference."
Company: "We've decided to go to digital-only releases due to declining sales of physical media"
Steadily decreasing the selection of hard copies from multiple full aisles to an anemic endcap with 9-year old releases is naturally going to lead to declining sales of physical media. Grab what you can I guess and pray indie scene makes it cool to produce physical media again. Preferably with awesome manuals.
With so many digital storefronts on PC I'm surprised they even bothered with physical disc-drives this generation.
Not to mention mobile gaming making an extra push on-top-of-it.
most pcs dont even come with dvd drives anymore been that way for years. luckily there pcs and you can just add one back on.
I haven't touched a dvd since like 2008. glad also just too much clutter. pcs look so much cleaner without a disc drive in them. more room for cooling and aesthetics.@@gogereaver349
yea its why I bought a digital ps5 I saw this coming why bother. ps plus extra is a great deal I got two years before the price got hiked up this past month
If you’ve tried in recent years to actually buy a physical game from Wal-Mart you could say they might as well just not carry them at all. They’re all locked up in the display and good luck finding someone who will actually open it for you.
I get my physical games on the internet, or at my bookstore/entertainment exchange. The Walmart selection is more expensive and limited.
Nobody will ever stop me from dissecting game files and burning them onto multiple discs
When everything becomes digital, then they can censor everything. The plus about owning actual physical copies is that they can't censor that
There’s pirates stuff, and that’s never going away. For every pirate they shut down, there’s always a dozen that either pop up or someone else picks up for whomever got shut down. Unless they make the internet super exclusive where only politicians have access or some wierd super-restriction, it just isn’t going away.
I absolutely hate digital because it don’t feel like I own anything. Now I’m not saying I’ve never played a digital game or streamed Netflix because I have but something I really want to own I get on disc because having it in my hands in my home feels safe to me. I know people that keep physical money on them in a safe because they don’t trust there banks.
This is why I've been building my physical collection the last few years. Got around 300+ amazing physical games that I'll never be able to play all of already, so even if another good game never comes out, let alone in physical form, I'll be fine.
In 20 years from now, we’ll be seeing collectors owning bootleg physical copies
@@therealjaystone2344That honestly depends if people are strong willed and actually have balls. So far the trends look pretty bleak.
"press the spacebar, see he says SHAKEM."
"Oh my God Mohammad!"
"Dat pixel"
"Dem Polygons"
😂🤣😂🤣🙃Yes, we are all gonna be burkka'd up in my dystopia, and the 2 sects' war will be between the devout who seek after the EPIC BEWBS of yesteryear, and the false prophets who gawk at the AI tatas of today.
Best Buy got rid of their games and film section 4 years ago according to the 80 employees that were playing with the merchandise in the store.
Sony stopped making physical media in 2020
@@therealjaystone2344 so if I basically say F Sony does that include my old MP3 CD player I just got working? That's gonna sting.
This is why I'm glad I have such a veritable hoard of retro games and movies. I'm at the point where if I don't want to, I never have to purchase a new game again. I've also found lately that older games are just more fun. They don't hold your hand with the built-in "journalist" difficulty setting, and the lack of graphical detail and fidelity was compensated by the games just being good and fun to play.
I still have a few games I've bought digitally, but the vast majority of my stuff is physical.
must be taking up a ton of your houses space too. not worth it
@@ChosenOneDan Not really. Barely fills up a shelf as far as the games go. As for the systems, they only take up an entertainment center.
Nice try, though.
@@Zac_Frost you called it a hoard of games but it only takes up a shelf? Must be a hell of a shelf
@ChosenOneDan I called it a veritable hoard. It's a stand up shelf set with 6 brackets on it. It takes up almost 4 of them. My DVD/Blu Ray collection takes up the other two.
@@Zac_Frost fair enough. I got a bag of old PS4 games I should trade in probably get $20 max for all 12 of them since game reselling values so terrible. Got a digital PS5 so can't do much with them and likely won't replay them. It's rare for me to go back to old games
Walmmart’s low physical prices killed gamestop, but yeesh amazon might be the only physical seller.
Reminder: YOU DO NOT OWN DOWNLOADED GAMES.
*YOU DON’T OWN THEM.*
You have a _license agreement_ that can be revoked at anytime!
Gonna suck for alot of people when the solar flare hits and the internet grids go down
we'll have more problems that worrying about playing a game rofl. and you do realize that single player games digitally don't require a connection right?
@@ChosenOneDan some will, some will still be stuck at home or will have families stuck at home or will have a lot of down time and also unfortunately a lot of single player games nowadays do require a connection, and God forbid you don't have the storage space or like to play on Cloud
It was also halfway a joke lol
@@ChosenOneDan keep in mind I say that having gone through multiple severe natural disasters.
@@baddragonite yea I mean I get it we all went thru COVID also. Most single player games I play atleast are fine in offline mode only company I know that isn't is mostly Ubisoft titles.
As long as gamestop keep selling physical media this will save GameStop.
I don't play a lot of modern video games but I do buy sell and trade them.
There's a handful of modern video games I play are just collections of old ones .
I have thousands of games and never purchased a digital copy
It’s the physical part that differentiates consoles from PC for me. I still play Gamecube too
When I import a game from Japan, the box is crammed full of goodies and unique bobbles. Years ago Japan started to subtitle some movies and some games with English subtitles. So you can 'import' a Japanese game and have a fully subtitled game. I get physical media, goofy collectibles all the time.
It mostly comes down from companies giving the consumer less, and then said consumer returns the favor by consuming less. So then they offer us even less, so we buy less.
The issue also comes to Japan specializing on low-unit-sales, Western/American companies want mass appeal and mass sales. Stamp a DVD with nothing else in it and sell for $2 and then wonder why it doesn't sell.
This just marks the end for me I’m glad I can quit and walk away. I got over 30 years of good physical media, movies and games to keep me entertained for the rest of my life. This digital only agenda. They’re pushing is absolute trash and I will not support it.
The BBC numbers included digital games sold on cell phones, and the 72% article included digital only sales to get to that percentage.
It was a hit piece to shock investors into pushing for all digital games. If you adjust the numbers it's closer to 57% of people buy digital over physical when given the choice.
The numbers are even further squeezed because the study did not consider the price point of physical and digital games sold.
1:20 Presentism can be summed up, it equals 1984.
Lets be honest. There is a specific group of people that helped cause this too. At every Walmart I have been to, everything, and I mean everything, is behind a plexiglass case.
Sheeit
The funny thing is that Walmart in my area always sells their games, especially switch games. Most people don't go to privately owned game stores because they can just go to Walmart.
Oooh-yeah.
As a PC gamer that doesn’t own any consoles, I have been digital only for years. I do buy physical media for movies and shows.
As do the most of us, physical owners are just now beginning to realize that they're the minority, have been for a while now. :P
I don't buy digital games. This worries me. I think they want us to actually own nothing.
I worry that the lack of physical media in the future will lead to more lost media. Not just with video games either but also shows and movies that are exclusive to streaming without any physical media ever made. I don’t want physical media to go away entirely.
Well hopefully the apocalyptic dark age doesn’t happen
There’s also the current trend of games that require an internet connection to even work, even if they’re not necessarily multiplayer games.
It's why I will never play another Ubisoft game in my life, ever again. Well, not a new one at least. You go on vacation, and they lock you out of all your saves. Effing hate online 24/7. Was a big problem with Ubisoft even going back to the wii u era, they were the ones that required a daily software download, and now their servers are down. F Ubisoft. Makes me sad when I go back to play Prince of Persia, thinking about a time where that wasn't an unfriendly company or a bad word. OR EA BIG, when I hear that, I weep for the past. Not only did EA used to suck very little, most people would tell you it didn't suck at all. (loose adapted quote from Heavyweights)
The only online only games I've ever played were multiplayer, even as a kid back in the early 2010s I always found the idea of single player modes requiring an internet connection to be insulting.
if its a single player game and it requires a always on connection to even play it then yes thats bullshit and it should be spoken out about. I don't like always on connections at all but especially not singleplayer
@@ChosenOneDan Requiring the internet defeats the purpose of a single player, it's like requiring a television cable in order to watch a DVD, or needing permission from a library to read a book that you own.
well yes I agree with you almost anyone agrees always online requirements are dumb. they should be optional yes. but I still think digital is the future and isn't going anywhere. streaming shows this. noone watches live tv anymore outside of sports fans. physical sales are down more and more every year. its just more convenient to stream everything. gaming eventually will be 100% streamed over the internet and not need physical hardware either. the internet infrastructure just isn't there yet.@@johnnyjohn-johnson7738
Yeah I agree with him I've been calling this for years. Streaming and digital have killed physical media. I do both honestly because I'm just a nerd in general so if I can get it cheaper streaming I'll get it streaming but if I want a physical copy I'll buy a physical copy. The thing is I live in a place where there's always some kind of internet issue with Comcast so if my internet's down even though I downloaded a game from PSN on to my hard drive I can't play it because it has to connect to the internet so you paid 70 bucks for a game that you can't play. So the last three games I bought are digital and knock on wood I haven't had any internet issues but at least I can pop in the disc and play it and not have to wait. I used to love going to Best buy and seeing all the movies and the CDs on the shelves that was the main reason I went. Same thing with Walmart I used to go straight to their DVD section then it was Blu-ray I didn't really didn't buy games At Walmart but sometimes they had some really good games on the cheap aisle.
Yeah my Nintendo Wii is old but it’s going to keep going for years since I restored it.
I hate Best Buy is removing physical media and Walmart this is a bad idea.
Really? Wal mart too?
@@hisaceinthehole3426 yeah I didn't see that one coming either.
It was over when games started doing day one patches. Most people don’t own their homes, they don’t own their car, they don’t own their phone, and most of the media they consume is rented as well.
I've seen a push for parents to buy kids digital so they can't break the physical copies 😮💨
How about they don’t get to play until they are old enough to not throw a device when they are angry?
They probably didn't count physical used sales when they arrived at 70%~90% digital
The problem with that statistic is that it includes microtransactions and DLC.
Wow...Christmas sales are gonna ba lousy this year for stores.
5:36 the reason why they still use discs is because it’s much much cheaper. Literal cents per disc. Nintendo cartridges are much more expensive to produce.
Every year, I can probably count on one hand (not using all my fingers) the number of AAA games that I enjoyed enough to want to have a physical copy, and every year that number gets smaller. A majority of these releases feel soulless, sanitized, and corporate to the point I don't even care about new announcements anymore. AAA game companies are not making games anymore, they're making checklist products designed to create an install base to siphon money from through microtransactions. The exceptions to that trend are the games that take risks and provide excellent value to the customer. Those are the games I would pay big money for if a premium physical edition was available.
No one realizes once they get rid of physical, they will RAISE the price of digital. Plus all previous physical games will go up even higher in price than they already are because no more games will come out physical
This will put a strain on them because the used game market is very useful when it comes to selling old games to help buy a new one which is something that can't be done with digital games where I can't buy their games they can't make money from me situation.
If these companies were smart they try researching the economy with the customer budget to stay afloat until there is some recovery plan happens but they're doing the exact opposite.
With PS4/PS5, I almost always buy new releases, play them, get as much as I can out of them, and then sell them off. I get usually get $30-$40 back from my purchase. If I want to replay it down the line, I'll pick it up when it's $10 used. I also buy used physical games for cheap when the same game is way more expensive digitally. The digital storefront is for people with tons of disposable income who do not care about the ownership of the media they enjoy. Craig is 100% right about Nintendo. I was amazed how many times I bought a Switch game that had no patches day one. Switch collecting is huge as well. Lots of indie games are getting physical releases and are massively collectible.
The selection of games at Wal-Mart is generally abysmal, you get a better range of options by ordering from an online game store and this has been true for years. As for culture? Forget it! It’s mostly based on denialism and lying to yourself about reality and the past. As for games? Games today are pretty much overpriced movies.
Heads up for anyone with a steam account. There’s a lawsuit you can sign up for now where you could get up to 60 percent of all the money you paid in steam games back. That could add up to big money.
The loss of physical games isn't an issue for me, as I'm not much of a AAA-title gamer (I go with GOTY/Anthology pack released 2-4 years after release games), and I generally only get GOG games that are DRM free. But where this will show a loss for media companies from me is movies, tv series, and music. I absolutely refuse to pay for digital only entertainment media. (I will make an exception for music released on FLAC, but that's it). So with the loss of physical blu-rays and CDs, that means Hollywood will lose out on a few thousand dollars a year from me for the rest of my life. I also don't pay for streaming services (I get Hulu for free from my cellphone provider, and I get Prime for the free shipping, the streaming is tangential to why I have Prime.)
I still save the installer files on DVD or an external HD. Sometimes I have a slow internet
Damn I'm old... I can still remember when video games were sold in these HUGE, flashy, colorful boxes with not much inside them but some 3.5" discs and an instruction manual. Boxes eventually got smaller until now, I guess, they're gone altogether. BTW: I used to work for walmart in/near their home stomping grounds in NW Arkansas. Just FYI, *everything* they do is shady or illegal.
I’m old enough to remember when PC games came on discs in these big boxes sometimes crazy designed boxes and you sometimes get a music disc with it as well.