Physical Discs Still The Future Of Gaming

Shiny game discs games aren’t going the way of the dinosaur anytime soon; they will be around for quite a long time!






A lot of people have been predicting the end of physical media for years saying digital is the future. However, this generation has not seen a shift to digital media yet. One of the reasons is that console manufacturers also don’t want to force digital due to the limitations of internet connectivity worldwide and the huge size of games, which are now as big as 100 GB and console hardware also now sport 1TB hard drive space.

It’s very easy to fill up storage if you just download digitally and then micromanage space. If you delete digital content, you need to re-download it and then that may take any amount of time, depending on your internet connection. Physical discs are not internet dependent and you can just load the data off the disc as and when you please and delete it as often as you want. This makes micromanagement very simple.

Plus, physical media offers unlimited freedom to gamers in terms of ownership rights as it is easy to sell or buy used copies. The downloadable content code vouchers may have been redeemed by previous owners but one saves money buying used most of the time. It was Sony Corp (ADR) (NYSE:SNE) that first marketed this as part of the PlayStation 4 reveal and gamers loved the Japanese giant for this move. Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) initially did not support this for Xbox One but after a severe backlash, it followed suit. Also, midnight releases of games won’t be possible if stores won’t carry physical copies of games and fans are known to really enjoy picking games up in store at launch and meet other gamers as well.

Physical media clearly is the future. At the same time, collector’s editions come with awesome goodies along with the physical disc. When you pay $60 for each game, you want something tangible to represent it so physical discs really are awesome for that. Clearly, physical discs are still the future and it will be a long time before digital completely replaces them. As for now, both will co-exist and complement each other.