That surprises me. You can usually get physical copies for £10+ cheaper at launch and they also tend to come down in price quicker than on digital stores.
Not surprising. I don’t have a disk drive in my consoles.
Why do people preorder digital games?
Not surprising. I stopped buying physical games a good 6 or 7 years ago.
I haven’t bought a game on disk since the launch of Xbox One in 2013.
Thanks to Steam, Gamepass and lots of sales one doesn’t have spend lots on games. Unless your primary platforms are Nintendo or PlayStation.
I really miss big box pc games with all the gubbins inside.
People want deals and with the likes of steam, game pass and Nintendo store, you can find games at the price you want to pay way easier than what you used to be able too. Also it doesn’t mention pre-owned which has its own economy. CEX can be little bastards but have some good prices on older platform titles.
Aren’t most hardcopies basically boxed download codes now anyway? Collectors must feel hard done by.
Then the game wasn’t sold, a licence to play it was sold
Owning an Xbox Series X, if you buy a game on a disc that’s “smart delivery” enabled, chances you will be downloading the whole thing anyway as the disc only has the Xbox One version. 50gb Blu-ray is too small for both versions of the game.
That and I notice nowadays for newer games the physical copies aren’t as cheap compared to digital, to the point where I may as well download the game overnight/while I’m at work.
Also doesn’t help when games like COD MWII only ship discs with 70mb of data on all platforms.
Few reasons, I think.
1. Cheaper models of consoles produced without disk drives.
2. Physical game stores have become absolutely dreadful the past few years. GAME in particular pivoted massively towards merch and plastic toys, and the staff are clearly harrassed into not letting customers leave without offering them 100 different add ons, disk insurance etc.
3. The immediacy of digital downloads is so much more convenient. You don’t have to leave the house, wait a couple of days for your order to be delivered, if you’re pre-ordering then you can have it installed and ready to go for as soon as it launches etc.
4. The introduction of things like Game Pass and Playstation Plus offer such great value for money that it’s completely viable to simply pay the subscription each month and not have to actually buy individual games any more if you’re willing to wait a bit for some non-first party games to come to it.
I tend to buy physical from CeX so they won’t show up in figures.
Hmmm.
I don’t think this is taking into account the fact that these values will be skewed by the very large volume of £2.99 indie games, which obviously never get a physical release.
If you took into account AAA titles only, I don’t think it would be this high a %.
Regardless though, I’d still rather buy a disc, for the sole reason that once you’re done with it, you can at least trade it in, unlike a digital licence.
Would only buy digital as a last resort for consoles. Being able to make use of the second hand market, for buying or selling, is something no-one should be willing to give up.
Yeah I buy physical discs. Brought gow on ps5 a month ago completed it and sold it.
Cost to me was 15 quid
> About 30% of the sales came from mobile apps, which are sold digitally.
Ah, that helps.
How about we remove all games where there was no physical alternative to purchase then see the stats.
I think it’s only Nintendo keeping physical copies a thing. I’ll buy them and just sell them later, better value than their digital prices.
I wonder how XBOX Gamepass, PS Plus, Epic Free Games an the Prime Gaming services factor into this ?
If those games are included then it would appear I buy a lot of digital but only do so because they are free.
The bulk of games I buy are physical with the exception of the odd PC title or sale on a console.
Nintendo are kind of forcing this. Some of the ‘physical’ games you get in the shop are actually no more than a digital download code when you open the box. They are obviously trying to kill the second-hand market.
I just get stuff on Humble Bundle and cdkeys now. I only buy physical now if it’s two generations or older.
The only good things about discs nowadays is if you’re unsure of a game and you buy it on PS4/5 or Xbox One/Series X, you can at least sell it off and recoup some of the money. Games are very hit or miss nowadays. Just a shame Sony and Microsoft don’t have a refund system like Valve.
Other than reselling them (after completion or if it isn’t your cup of tea), I don’t see much of a point for discs anymore. Except for older titles which are locked to older systems of course.
The only physical games I buy are first party Switch games. Everything else is digital
The last time I went into a shop to buy a game was Elden Ring. The staff in Game were so patronising because I’d never played dark souls that I left it unopened and returned it the next day. They did everything they could to try and put me off the game and implied I was not good enough to play such a game.
Haven’t been back.
That does surprise me. You can often pick up games reasonably priced in sales but digital games are 10 – 15 more expensive when they first release. I’d much rather just Amazon and save the money
Im a pc gamer so buying physical editions of games isn’t really a thing for us, the last game I nearly did it for was fallout (buying the special edition with the rum, power armour helmet and “canvas bags”
So glad I didn’t end up buying it due to all the issues with the merch, mold inside the PA helmet, plastic rum casing around a normal bottle that struggled to actually pour the crap tasting rum, and the bags weren’t even canvas.
So glad I didn’t buy it, solidified me never buying physical editions with merch.
Same with digital tbh, bought cyberpunk on release, had major issues, waited about another year before I tried it again.
Even hogwarts legacy I’m gonna be waiting until reviews are in and probably even wait for about a week after launch to see how it runs on more diversified hardware, I have a slightly weird set of hardware that’s not the norm so 🤷
I only buy physical games, usually cheaper and I like the cover art on most, aswell as steelbooks
Not a gamer anymore but was with family at Christmas who are. They brought a game via digital there and then. For ease it’s fantastic but for presents and things it’s not the same is it?
To add, steam have had the ability to backup your digital library to your own storage devices for years now.
Less of an issue now with fibre internet but made sense back when we had slow speeds
I miss the days where you bought a disc and the entire game was contained on that disc for better or worse.
What happens in 20+ years when you fancy some nostalgia revisiting games that you used to play? You’ll find out that the server to download/update/perform a piracy check no longer exists and then your stuffed.
Even if you buy a physical copy, the data that exists on the copy is at best an incomplete buggy version that needs patching and will never play the way you remember it.
Remember when Microsoft got bad press because they were going to not let you play 2nd hand games on the XB1? Very few people do now anyway. They were just ahead of the time
I wouldn’t buy a physical game on a PC because it’s easy to add persistent storage.
On a portable games console like the switch, the persistent capacity ceiling is very low a so physical games make more sense.
30 comments
That surprises me. You can usually get physical copies for £10+ cheaper at launch and they also tend to come down in price quicker than on digital stores.
Not surprising. I don’t have a disk drive in my consoles.
Why do people preorder digital games?
Not surprising. I stopped buying physical games a good 6 or 7 years ago.
I haven’t bought a game on disk since the launch of Xbox One in 2013.
Thanks to Steam, Gamepass and lots of sales one doesn’t have spend lots on games. Unless your primary platforms are Nintendo or PlayStation.
I really miss big box pc games with all the gubbins inside.
People want deals and with the likes of steam, game pass and Nintendo store, you can find games at the price you want to pay way easier than what you used to be able too. Also it doesn’t mention pre-owned which has its own economy. CEX can be little bastards but have some good prices on older platform titles.
Aren’t most hardcopies basically boxed download codes now anyway? Collectors must feel hard done by.
Then the game wasn’t sold, a licence to play it was sold
Owning an Xbox Series X, if you buy a game on a disc that’s “smart delivery” enabled, chances you will be downloading the whole thing anyway as the disc only has the Xbox One version. 50gb Blu-ray is too small for both versions of the game.
That and I notice nowadays for newer games the physical copies aren’t as cheap compared to digital, to the point where I may as well download the game overnight/while I’m at work.
Also doesn’t help when games like COD MWII only ship discs with 70mb of data on all platforms.
Few reasons, I think.
1. Cheaper models of consoles produced without disk drives.
2. Physical game stores have become absolutely dreadful the past few years. GAME in particular pivoted massively towards merch and plastic toys, and the staff are clearly harrassed into not letting customers leave without offering them 100 different add ons, disk insurance etc.
3. The immediacy of digital downloads is so much more convenient. You don’t have to leave the house, wait a couple of days for your order to be delivered, if you’re pre-ordering then you can have it installed and ready to go for as soon as it launches etc.
4. The introduction of things like Game Pass and Playstation Plus offer such great value for money that it’s completely viable to simply pay the subscription each month and not have to actually buy individual games any more if you’re willing to wait a bit for some non-first party games to come to it.
I tend to buy physical from CeX so they won’t show up in figures.
Hmmm.
I don’t think this is taking into account the fact that these values will be skewed by the very large volume of £2.99 indie games, which obviously never get a physical release.
If you took into account AAA titles only, I don’t think it would be this high a %.
Regardless though, I’d still rather buy a disc, for the sole reason that once you’re done with it, you can at least trade it in, unlike a digital licence.
Would only buy digital as a last resort for consoles. Being able to make use of the second hand market, for buying or selling, is something no-one should be willing to give up.
Yeah I buy physical discs. Brought gow on ps5 a month ago completed it and sold it.
Cost to me was 15 quid
> About 30% of the sales came from mobile apps, which are sold digitally.
Ah, that helps.
How about we remove all games where there was no physical alternative to purchase then see the stats.
I think it’s only Nintendo keeping physical copies a thing. I’ll buy them and just sell them later, better value than their digital prices.
I wonder how XBOX Gamepass, PS Plus, Epic Free Games an the Prime Gaming services factor into this ?
If those games are included then it would appear I buy a lot of digital but only do so because they are free.
The bulk of games I buy are physical with the exception of the odd PC title or sale on a console.
Nintendo are kind of forcing this. Some of the ‘physical’ games you get in the shop are actually no more than a digital download code when you open the box. They are obviously trying to kill the second-hand market.
I just get stuff on Humble Bundle and cdkeys now. I only buy physical now if it’s two generations or older.
The only good things about discs nowadays is if you’re unsure of a game and you buy it on PS4/5 or Xbox One/Series X, you can at least sell it off and recoup some of the money. Games are very hit or miss nowadays. Just a shame Sony and Microsoft don’t have a refund system like Valve.
Other than reselling them (after completion or if it isn’t your cup of tea), I don’t see much of a point for discs anymore. Except for older titles which are locked to older systems of course.
The only physical games I buy are first party Switch games. Everything else is digital
The last time I went into a shop to buy a game was Elden Ring. The staff in Game were so patronising because I’d never played dark souls that I left it unopened and returned it the next day. They did everything they could to try and put me off the game and implied I was not good enough to play such a game.
Haven’t been back.
That does surprise me. You can often pick up games reasonably priced in sales but digital games are 10 – 15 more expensive when they first release. I’d much rather just Amazon and save the money
Im a pc gamer so buying physical editions of games isn’t really a thing for us, the last game I nearly did it for was fallout (buying the special edition with the rum, power armour helmet and “canvas bags”
So glad I didn’t end up buying it due to all the issues with the merch, mold inside the PA helmet, plastic rum casing around a normal bottle that struggled to actually pour the crap tasting rum, and the bags weren’t even canvas.
So glad I didn’t buy it, solidified me never buying physical editions with merch.
Same with digital tbh, bought cyberpunk on release, had major issues, waited about another year before I tried it again.
Even hogwarts legacy I’m gonna be waiting until reviews are in and probably even wait for about a week after launch to see how it runs on more diversified hardware, I have a slightly weird set of hardware that’s not the norm so 🤷
I only buy physical games, usually cheaper and I like the cover art on most, aswell as steelbooks
Not a gamer anymore but was with family at Christmas who are. They brought a game via digital there and then. For ease it’s fantastic but for presents and things it’s not the same is it?
To add, steam have had the ability to backup your digital library to your own storage devices for years now.
Less of an issue now with fibre internet but made sense back when we had slow speeds
I miss the days where you bought a disc and the entire game was contained on that disc for better or worse.
What happens in 20+ years when you fancy some nostalgia revisiting games that you used to play? You’ll find out that the server to download/update/perform a piracy check no longer exists and then your stuffed.
Even if you buy a physical copy, the data that exists on the copy is at best an incomplete buggy version that needs patching and will never play the way you remember it.
Remember when Microsoft got bad press because they were going to not let you play 2nd hand games on the XB1? Very few people do now anyway. They were just ahead of the time
I wouldn’t buy a physical game on a PC because it’s easy to add persistent storage.
On a portable games console like the switch, the persistent capacity ceiling is very low a so physical games make more sense.