Physical, digital or streaming?

[Magmavision2000]

Just curious.

[Flojomojo]

All of the above. 

 

Physical is nice for collecting. 

 

Digital is is fine for playing, or "collecting" if you want to cut down on clutter. This is what I mostly do. 

 

Streaming is is too early to be useful right now, but as games become more like services, it should make more sense. Right now it feels dumb to have to download tens of GBs to patch an MMO every week. Network caps need to go away, they're stupid. 

 

For the purposes of discussion/debate, don't really care because I like what I like and others do what works for them. 

[DragonGrafx-16]

Should be a physical and digital option! And screw streaming (only the kind where you don't own the games, streaming PC games through an Xbox would be fine with me).

[Keatah]

A mix of Physical and Digital. And in some cases it's easy to go back and forth between the two styles. So that's a plus.

[Mord]

Rather hard to decide myself. I'm normally Physical Only but the console makers have seen to it that most physical releases are made of utter crap. Can't really get behind Digital when it's as expensive or at times more expensive than the physical option. (One of the big promises of digital was that it was going to make it cheaper - I guess the companies forgot to mention that it was going to make it cheaper for them and they weren't planning on passing on the savings.)

 

In the end I do tend to buy physical anyway although hearing about a game with massive bugs prior to me picking it up will certainly make me ignore the game entirely. If I buy digital, it's only because of a flash sale where it actually became cheap enough to justify. (under 20 bucks usually.) And I see that happen a LOT less than it use to, much like I predicted it would.

 

Streaming however is something I don't think I'll ever get behind. Even forgetting the likely way and amount they'll try to charge you for it, bandwidth is most certainly a BIG issue that needs to be dealt with before this becomes a viable alternative for the masses. 

 

 

[Skippy B. Coyote]

I go for physical whenever possible, since I like knowing that I'll still be able to play my games if my system dies and need replacing at some point in the future after the download servers hosting the digital versions of games are gone. However, sometimes there are games I really want to play that don't have physical versions available; and in those cases I'm alright with buying a digital copy as long as it's $20 or less. So while I do prefer physical copies of games for preservation sake I still pick up a few games digitally here and there. 

[Classic Pac]

Me I rather have a Physical copy because in case something happens, you can still play the game no matter what. I will get digital if I have no other option.

[digdugnate]

My lean is physical copies, especially for my Switch.  I do digital when there's no other outlet to get the game.

[Outdoormongoose]

Physical only if the game:

 

1) Works 

2) Full game is on the disc

 

I've pretty much only got a few digital. All of which are PSVR titles I'm replacing with their euro releases. 

[Punisher5.0]

Physical and digital only for me. My preference is physical but im ok with cheap digital games. Especially from like GOG where its somewhere in the middle. I am 100% against streaming games. I view it as end game for future classic gaming. I dont like companies having control of what I purchase.

[Keatah]

Since I do PC gaming, I don't mind the digital stuff because most of what I play can be put in its entirety on a USB disk. I can then install it on whatever PC I'm using. In that sense it's physicalized digital stuff.

 

Long ago I've ripped my PC floppies/games to standard USB disk too, for the same reason, ease of use in multiple OS'es or in DOSbox or a real 486 for example. In this case it's digitized physical stiff.

 

I abhor streaming services. There's latency and the aforementioned availability issues. What I buy today Imna wanna play in 20 years from now - if just for nostalgia. It's highly unlikely streaming will allow that.

 

I'm also against cloud GPUs. Something nVidia is doing with the DLSS AI super-sampling. Basically they stream special "high quality" textures to your game from their massive data center at the home office.

 

I've seen it in action and the quality is the same as what your local physical GPU does, it just looks different. And is no better or worse. And *if* it's better it's such a tiny improvement vs all the complexity and cost it ain't worth the trouble.

Edited July 1, 2019 by Keatah

[spacecadet]

Physical-only on consoles. Digital on PC, but mainly by necessity. I stuck with physical as long as I could.

 

I do like cloud saves and being able to play the same game on multiple PC's, though, not to mention that it's easy to find AAA games that are a year or two old for like $8 on these Steam sales. None of these things really apply to consoles, though. There just aren't enough advantages to digital downloads on consoles.

[dj_convoy]

I try to get physical copies, but I will certainly buy digital if need be; every console I have that has the ability to have digital games is loaded with probably more games than I could conceivably finish. Not super sold on the whole streaming thing, but whatever. 

[MrMaddog]

For PC games, digital is the only choice because no one sells physical PC games anymore.  And the ones that were sold before were full of malware & rootkits on the disks.

 

I do collect physical games on my consoles but only if I can buy them used at a cheaper price than digital versions (unless there's a sale).  The digitial games I do have are from both Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass, sorry but I'll take a subscription over spending lots of money on a single $60 game and paying extra for season passes & IAP lootboxes.  I have more important things to pay for like bills.

 

And please spare me the lecture on "software ownership", I already heard that from Linux fanatics who never moved on from the 90's...

 

 

[Keatah]

3 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

And please spare me the lecture on "software ownership", I already heard that from Linux fanatics who never moved on from the 90's...

 

That's too funny. My first HS girlfriend wannabe had a dad like that. All high and mighty with his PC XT. Fat. Balding. And a HAM Radio operator. Had his little alcove in the corner on a slightly raised dais. House a pig sty. God I remember going over there and making no more noise than a peep and he exploded because I messed up his concentration. He was conducting zip file backups of the then brand-new hot-shit 20MB HDDs. Dude put on the aire like he knew everything and couldn't be bothered with mere mortals.

[Tanooki]

Ugh I've been around that type, but still like it or not the software ownership argument, at least control of it vs faux renting it is real.  The other is just delusional ranting and grandstanding.

[Eltigro]

Physical if possible... but also, as already mentioned, I'd prefer it to be the actual game on the disc and not just some download command for the system to pull it off whatever service it uses.

 

I have lots of downloaded games, however... even games that have physical releases... but that's because either A.  I'm lazy and they had a good deal online or 2.  It's for my PS3 that has a broken drive and won't read any physical media.

 

 

[Galactus]

On 7/4/2019 at 12:29 AM, MrMaddog said:

For PC games, digital is the only choice because no one sells physical PC games anymore.  And the ones that were sold before were full of malware & rootkits on the disks.

 

I do collect physical games on my consoles but only if I can buy them used at a cheaper price than digital versions (unless there's a sale).  The digitial games I do have are from both Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass, sorry but I'll take a subscription over spending lots of money on a single $60 game and paying extra for season passes & IAP lootboxes.  I have more important things to pay for like bills.

 

And please spare me the lecture on "software ownership", I already heard that from Linux fanatics who never moved on from the 90's...

 

 

I can't believe there is actually someone on AA ripping on Linux. 

[Albert]

51 minutes ago, Galactus said:

I can't believe there is actually someone on AA ripping on Linux. 

Especially as AtariAge has been running on Linux for nearly 20 years (longer if you also include the 2600 Nexus).

 

 ..Al

[Keatah]

58 minutes ago, Galactus said:

I can't believe there is actually someone on AA ripping on Linux. 

 

There's many of us here that don't like Linux for whatever reason. It is what it is. And TBH no choice is right or wrong. The best choice is what works for you.

 

[Albert]

Just now, Keatah said:

There's many of us here that don't like Linux for whatever reason. It is what it is. And TBH no choice is right or wrong. The best choice is what works for you.

Yeah, I personally could not use Linux on the desktop, as there are far too many apps I need that are not available in Linux (the Microsoft Office suite as well as a variety of Adobe apps, for starters).  I have run Linux in the (distant) past, both when doing professional development (working at TiVo) and on personal machines.  I've also run BeOS and OS/2, and have had fun experimenting with different operating systems.  I will use the one that works best for my needs.  For the past 17 years or so that has been OS X. Before that it was Windows.

 

 ..Al

[Razzie.P]

I don't really care.  Physical games are never finished anymore, so it's essentially the same as digital, just with the added downside of cluttering up the house.  Digital costs too damn much considering there's no physical product, almost as if they forgot to pass those "savings" along to the customer.  And we're starting to see that they can pull the plug on your purchases if they want, so there's that.   And streaming just plain doesn't work properly yet.  So it all seems to have equal amount of suckage currently  ☺️

[Keatah]

I don't think the consumer ever realized or experienced the promised savings of the digital model. Yes.

Both digital and physical suffer from the same incompleteness and bugginess about equally. Yes.

And streaming doesn't work effectively for +90% of the gamers. Yes.

Kickstarter crap doesn't help either. Absolutely true.

 

And since we can't count on the delivery method to nudge us in the direction of better, or more complete, or more compelling games, the gamer must become almost hyper-vigilant about his or her choices. With the amount of shit published it becomes more than a full-time job - for if you just buy willy-nilly you're likely to be wasting money buying crap. And this applies to retrogames as much as it does modern games. Just because a homebrew is put on cart vs download rom doesn't make it any better or worse.

 

Years ago if I wanted something "quality" I'd get bagged games from the computer store. Was top notch stuff compared to most of the shit on free BBSes. The days of relying on distro methods to help determine quality are long gone.

 

[Galactus]

22 hours ago, Albert said:

Yeah, I personally could not use Linux on the desktop, as there are far too many apps I need that are not available in Linux (the Microsoft Office suite as well as a variety of Adobe apps, for starters).  I have run Linux in the (distant) past, both when doing professional development (working at TiVo) and on personal machines.  I've also run BeOS and OS/2, and have had fun experimenting with different operating systems.  I will use the one that works best for my needs.  For the past 17 years or so that has been OS X. Before that it was Windows.

 

 ..Al

 

It's probably best to just put this to bed.  I definitely disagree though.  I don't know if MacOS still runs on top of BSD, but that was pretty cool with OSX.  Not a Mac person.

 

[Albert]

3 minutes ago, Galactus said:

It's probably best to just put this to bed.  I definitely disagree though.  I don't know if MacOS still runs on top of BSD, but that was pretty cool with OSX.  Not a Mac person.

Yes, it's still based on BSD.  macOS is OS X, Apple simply renamed it a few years ago, presumably to be more consistent with iOS, tvOS, and watchOS (and now, iPadOS).

 

 ..Al