Support NeoGAF

[Putonahappyface]

I thought this is the type of model you like?

An all subscription future where you own nothing?

I think he is being sarcastic.

 

[adamsapple]

I thought this is the type of model you like?

An all subscription future where you own nothing?

I prefer physical for games that aren't on a sub service, regardless my personal preference doesn't take away anyone's choice, like Tesco are doing.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

Fuck Physical

Someone please put 'Physical' on that coffin, kthankxbye

 

[TGO]

I mean they had like about 3 new releases and the rest was whatever they got there hands on.
and the people that bought from there are the ones that have gone digital anyway.

Spoiler

dirty casuals

 

[TGO]

Fuck Physical

Someone please put 'Physical' on that coffin, kthankxbye

 

[Susurrus]

When I left the UK it was still all physical, and I used to love going to Sainsbury's at lunch time to look over the new releases. That said, I am delighted to hear than people are fully embracing digital now. Much better.

Why is it better to have less options, though?

 

[ByWatterson]

Joever

 

[Beechos]

Another nail in the physical coffin. I guess alot of people won't be playing games past this gen.

 

[gimmmick]

The best sales are on digital majority of the time. It's so easy to purchase games off psn and the best part is that I don't get charged tax. The way of conducting business for gaming are gone.

 

[StereoVsn]

Having physical titles in UK/EU is especially important as you can usually get physical games at retail for a significant discount vs digital. So this isn't a good thing unless you are a corpo drone.

 

[MScarpa]

Physical media is dead. Is what it is. If you want to game. It'll have to be digital.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

The best sales are on digital majority of the time. It's so easy to purchase games off psn and the best part is that I don't get charged tax. The way of conducting business for gaming are gone.

You dont get taxed buying digital copies? Which country are you in?

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

Shame, horrific future barrels towards us faster than ever.

 

[supernova8]

Let's be honest, nobody except mums was buying physical games by walking to a Tesco.

Haven't lived in the UK for almost 5 years now, but when I did I remember games, consoles, and accessories were often quite well priced. Cheaper than GAME and you also didn't have to deal with the annoying staff trying to upsell you on insurance for your discs or bla bla bla club reward bla bla thing.

Also fuck off with the whole "digital only wooooowwww party tiiiime" bollocks. I'm not interested in "collecting" games, I just want to be able to play a game, be done with it, and then sell it to fund my next game purchase.

 

[Torrent of Pork]

Retail floor space is a privilege to products that sell enough to justify the floor space.

 

[AV]

Haven't lived in the UK for almost 5 years now, but when I did I remember games, consoles, and accessories were often quite well priced. Cheaper than GAME and you also didn't have to deal with the annoying staff trying to upsell you on insurance for your discs or bla bla bla club reward bla bla thing.

Also fuck off with the whole "digital only wooooowwww party tiiiime" bollocks. I'm not interested in "collecting" games, I just want to be able to play a game, be done with it, and then sell it to fund my next game purchase.

Yeah, it's not a bad place to buy, same with other supermarkets. It's just that these days you can find those exact deals online in other places if you know when to look.

And I'm with you, don't get me wrong. I'm physical > eBay on big games until I no longer can.

 

[DenchDeckard]

Embrace the digital subscription service future!

.... :/ I love physical

 

[IDKFA]

Terrible, TERRIBLE decision. Digital future is a mistake that i am going to fight against it with all my power.

"Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same"

 

[rofif]

I was all physical up to this generation. My first few PS5 games were on disc.

I have a media room and my consoles are in a seperate media closet. One day, I got up, walked over to my shelf to pick up the box for the game currently in the PS5 and the box with the disc I wanted to play, then across the room to make the swap. I listened to the system loudly spin the completely unnecessary disc as I walked back to my shelf to restock the boxes when I finally realized how dumb the whole thing is.

Physical media only currently exists because in the past there wasn't another way. I decided to embrace digital at that moment and haven't looked back. Game discs are the new newspaper.

Dude wtf so it’s better to give away all your freedoms, ownership and price competitiveness because you are lazy to change the disc?
When I put in ff16 disc, it stays in there for 2 weeks and only spins when you start the game.

Digital got some benefits but your justification is just “bleh discs are dumb”. What if it were memory cards? It doesn’t have to be a disc. It can be much less physical media, but still physical enough to own it.

But discs are very durable now. You never see scratched discs while ps1 discs collected scratches just from looking at it lol

 

[rofif]

Physical media is dead. Is what it is. If you want to game. It'll have to be digital.

It is only dead because people keep repeating this. There is no reason to retire physical media

 

[rofif]

The best sales are on digital majority of the time. It's so easy to purchase games off psn and the best part is that I don't get charged tax. The way of conducting business for gaming are gone.

But psn speeds suck and sales are out of your control.
That and launch games are always cheaper on physical + you get some stuff with it

 

[jufonuk]

There is always CEX

But yeah near my mums there is a massive superstore and before there were rows of games for the three different systems. Now there were only a few MW3 games on discount sale.

A few games moving into JD sports which is weird. I do prefer physical games. I’m hoping physical games make a comeback like vinyl did.

 

[Success]

End of an era.

It is inevitable but most of the true OG Gaffers know that this is bittersweet.

 

[Tams]

It's time to embrace the digital future. If you don't like it then suck it up or stop playing games. Huge W

That's a terrible attitude.

 

[supernova8]

Yeah, it's not a bad place to buy, same with other supermarkets. It's just that these days you can find those exact deals online in other places if you know when to look.

And I'm with you, don't get me wrong. I'm physical > eBay on big games until I no longer can.

Oh yeah sorry that bit wasn't directed at you, should have made that more obvious

 

[Zheph]

Every little matters (to fuck us up)

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

I have been saying this for a while, we shud pick our battles. Digital is inevitable. We shud be/have been using this pre-digital time to be pushing Sony and MS to adopt certain digital storefront principles. ike refund policies, digital license user hand trading...etc.

But nooooo... we rather act like this transition to digital is even an option.

 

[old-parts]

It is only dead because people keep repeating this. There is no reason to retire physical media

For the platform owners there is every reason to retire it. they own the store and have full control over it along with all of the data of peoples spending habits, setting prices and so much more without having to deal with legacy physical media chain and dealing with third party store fronts.

Celluar broadband 5G, 6G onwards infrastructure will eventually replace old landline broadband with much wider coverage so those who think bad local internet broadband will stop this are mistaken.

I would like physical to stick around but its not looking good, in part the continued use of optical discs are also to blame, these are outdated and no longer fit for use. A single disc having to put it into the console vs all your digital games stored on drive and you have to install the game from the disc to the drive.

The Nintendo Switch because of its limitations and price point still has to actually use physical media with games running off them, unlike Blu-ray discs on Xbox and Playstation were its just a license authorization for installing to internal storage, unless those consoles change to a new physical format were physical actually matters its going to disappear.

 

[Hudo]

 

[Stuart360]

It sucks for physical lovers but being physical is just delaying the inevitable as i'm 99% certain than the next Playstation and Xbox consoles will not have disk drives.
This gen probably has another 5 or 6 years in it before we get next gen consoles, now look at the state of physical today, then imagine what state it will be in another 5 or 6 years. We will probably be talking 95% digital sales by the time next gen comes around.
Time to accept it guys and because this train isnt stopping.

 

[DinoD]

I don't mind buying digital, but AUS PSN store prices for new games are at least 20% more than physical copies from amazon or JB-HIFI.

 

[Cherrypepsi]

Terrible, TERRIBLE decision. Digital future is a mistake that i am going to fight against it with all my power.

Do you google things or are you throwing in one of these bad boys?

On topic: I live in Dublin and I didn't even know there were 8 gamestops here. Surprised they didnt close sooner.

 

[Impotaku]

People acting like Tesco is the main supplier of physical games, lol total non issue, get back to me when somewhere like amazon drops physical then we can start worrying. I can’t think of any time I have ever picked up a game from a supermarket, hell the last time I even bought a game from a physical shop was back in the 360 era, don’t even think there’s any physical stores left in my city that sell games I just buy online dont really give a shit about retail anymore.

 

[Proteus Maximus]

ln the last thirty years I've never bought a new release from a shop (big or small). Before the Internet, I would order via mail order, then once the Internet took off just ordered all my (new) games there. This news doesn't change anything. We gamers buy our phisical games online these days.

 

[systemr123]

Terrible, TERRIBLE decision. Digital future is a mistake that i am going to fight against it with all my power.

It’s a nice sentiment, you are right, and I love to see you defeat the establishment using all your power to fight.

Unfortunately you and everyone that agrees with you don’t stand a chance.

 

[AlteredForms]

Let's be honest, nobody except mums was buying physical games by walking to a Tesco.

Or children who want to cash in their good deeds and chores in the hopes of the PS5 latest release.

 

[akaFullmetal]

End of an era, will be interesting to see the ill effects from a digital only future where we don't have companies competing for sales and no trade ins, borrowing.

 

[Mr.ODST]

Tbf noticed this yesterady they removed every bit of video game based stuff from my local Tesco, gutted I last used my clubcard points to buy a game outright

 

[kruis]

Good points. Being able to buy physical discs onlineis more important than buying them from a brick 'n' mortar store.

 

[Putonahappyface]

I mostly buy physical content online these days anyway. Supermarkets always have a poor choice of games from my own experience. I'm sad at the downfall of Game though, seeing them reduced to a small corner in Sports Direct is depressing. I'll miss the midnight console launchs.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

What a big L for us customers who still prefer our games on physical media.

Amazon and a hundred webshops sell physical games.

Although it is somewhat ironic buying physical games on the internet.

 

[K' Dash]

Embrace the digital subscription service future!

.... :/ I love physical

what you're buying now is just a physical Key, it's been a while since games shipped complete and bug free, the last ones were in the PS360 era.

 

[gimmmick]

But psn speeds suck and sales are out of your control.
That and launch games are always cheaper on physical + you get some stuff with it

I usually wait till games are discounted, only a couple of rare moments I have purchased a game on launch.

 

[Facism]

Yeh i'm going to miss tesco charging £10+ more than online for physical.

 

[artsi]

There's a lot of anger and frustration as physical media is fading away slowly, but it's still happening.

 

[chonga]

The best sales are on digital majority of the time. It's so easy to purchase games off psn and the best part is that I don't get charged tax. The way of conducting business for gaming are gone.

Arguably yes - but less predictable, and the normal price is the full price.

With physical you rarely ever pay full price and if you do it will only be on a pre-order or around release day. From there on out it declines in price gradually as it becomes older, then occasionally you have discounts around say Easter, Christmas, Black Friday etc.

And it still remains that a digital game has zero future value. Physical does.

 

[Eotheod]

Shitty broadband bros for life! One of the worst chancellors we had (Helmut Kohl) decided the same thing and called off the whole initiative to get the glass fiber infrastructure built by the year 2000. And now it's an unorganizied clusterfuck of private companies trying to get that shit built.

It's that bad in Australia that Starlink has the second biggest market here. Labour were on track to have the National Broadband Network completed by 2015 I believe, well under budget and with eventually 1GB speeds. Liberal party gets in, destroys any idea of a competent network infrastructure by doing a deal with the Telstra devil to replace all last line of cable with copper to "save money" and in doing so fucks the whole thing up.

Fast forward to now, those who have access are in the cities and they already had fairly decent infrastructure to begin with. Plus the whole ordeal ended up being far more costly due to the pivot in infrastructure type and then eventual realisation the NBN needed to be full cable. Throw in outback/remote still reliant on ADSL 1/2 because Liberal party switched from rolling out to those areas first and instead went for cities in hopes of making money first.

It's a fucked system, and it inherently causes issues with things like digital uptake. I totally understand it's the future, as shit as it is going to be for the consumer in the long run, but it just isn't viable yet for Australia as a whole. There are no doubt other countries, but I guess the cost benefit ratio outweighs that.

I just wish we had more than the console makers market to choose from. As soon as it goes to just one location for purchase, you have roses in prices with no ability to shop elsewhere and a literal monopoly at play.

 

[nani17]

GameStop had a 90% off sale here in Ireland and picked up Ghost of Tsushima for 8 euros and PGA tour new for 8 euro's

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

what you're buying now is just a physical Key, it's been a while since games shipped complete and bug free, the last ones were in the PS360 era.

Not true with lots of games still.

 

[Fatal Chuck Yeager]

Suck for Ireland, Gamestop about to soar back to $700 per share any year now. There balls will be squeezed.

/s