didn’t vinyl like just outsell digital last year? shit ain’t just going away
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I’ll have you know I regularly leave my carts out on my coffee table. Try doing that with a downloaded version.
Check and mate.
A good analogy would actually be vinyl. Modern vinyl is a pure physical medium in the way cover art is considered, colored vinyl, beautiful inserts.
I’m mostly digital these days and the big reason is because modern video game packaging sucks and while eco friendly, is flimsy. Manuals are dead. Even disc art is shoddy, filled with tons of legal nonsense and branding.
If publishers took the same care and consideration that vinyl and book publishers took, I would still get physical.
Shoutouts to the Wii U rounded discs btw. That attention to detail was nice. They also had great art, well the Nintendo stuff did. No manuals, though.
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Well everyone is streaming music anyway.
right, and vinyl still brings in better royalties and cuts for most involved…it’s seeing a really cool renaissance now
i’m doing more audiobooks than ever, and then buying used copies to highlight. i’m reading a ton of digital copies, and buying trades/omnibuses of my favorites. i frequently double dip when LRG gets a game i like. i just borrowed REmake 2 and evil within 2 off a friend for halloween games. my hardcore friend who runs a retro shop refuses digital games, and imports like every switch collection we don’t get.
my point is just that the dichotomy that we have to have either digital or physical is clearly bunk; both are clearly viable in this era, and i don’t see signs of that fading, just kind of adapting.
me, i’m perfectly fine with a future that only offers physical games as a premium/on-demand kind of thing for the ones i find shelf-worthy. a cursory look at my backloggery reminds me of all the rented/borrowed experiences i didn’t think i needed to hold on to.
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Even though I have everdrives, I only play real cartridges. I tried to use it and loaded it with my collection of ROMs, but I found the experience hollow. I felt like I used to when I used to play games on a PC and emulators in the early 2000s. I had a look at the huge list of content, then constantly switched games, not settling on one for more than a few minutes.
I get the idea of convenience, but it’s not for me. There is a sense of commitment when you have to get your arse out of your sofa to grab a game from your shelf, open the box and insert the cartridge in the console.
Having the game complete in box also matter for gameplay, as the manual and the additional documentation is often very useful to play the game correctly. A description of the commands, a incomplete map to get you started, a few chapters of lore to give you clues on what to do… Sure, you can get all this digitally, but then the experience itself is different. Just like with books, there is something to have the original thing in your hands.
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Wait, you’re saying current retail versions of Breath of the Wild are patched? That might make a good case for buying a second copy…
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That’s what I’ve been told. Why knows what stock you got at any store, but they’re definitely shipping updated versions. In some cases this is ‘worse’ for some people - you can’t get the ‘rude’ gesture in updated MK8D.
I forgot they patched something out. For some games they can make balancing changes to satisfy players who found the original frustrating but it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the better way to play the game.
Early Switch prints are easier to tell apart, luckily thanks to the ever changing nature of the Switch Online text (e.g. Splatoon 2 copies would originally contain text that mentions how online play free until late 2017, then free until 2018, then it would say a sub is required)
Because I don’t already own 4 fucking copies of the game…
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