Digital vs Physical Games

[Argi]

How are people planning on purchasing games?  I'm very interested in digital this time, if only because I want to see where it goes though losing some of the benefits of disc based games (like being able to trade them in) does suck though isn't a deal breaker.

[Crisp]

I'm going digital, but it'll probably take me the entire day to download the 40GB+ games off the marketplace with my terrible connection.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Physical for 90%. My internet speed is 3.5mb and I refuse to overpay for digital games. Only titles I'll buy are indie/non-retail releases.

 

Pay ?49/59 for a new game on the store, or wait a few weeks till it plummets to ?20-30 at retail in the UK? No brainer.

[spenser.d]

I'm planning on Digital for new games. We'll have to see how deals play out in the future as far as getting good prices on older games.

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

I'm going to try and stick to digital where I can, but we'll see how that goes ;)

[Nick H. Supervisor]

I'll probably stick to my current purchasing habits. If I see it in the shops I will buy it, but if I see it on the PS Store when I'm at home and I think, "I must have that now!" then I'll go ahead and buy it there.

[George P Global Moderator]

Games I really want to play I get quick and end up paying full price regardless of physical or digital.  If they do some good deals on digital though, and the price drops like it does with physical copies then I might go digital more this gen.

[The Dark Knight]

I stopped buying discs 3 years back. Purely digital now. The only time I buy a disc is if it is on sale and redeemable on Steam or Origin. I have also purchased digital versions of some of the old discs.

[REM2000]

Physical for 90%. My internet speed is 3.5mb and I refuse to overpay for digital games. Only titles I'll buy are indie/non-retail releases.

 

Pay ?49/59 for a new game on the store, or wait a few weeks till it plummets to ?20-30 at retail in the UK? No brainer.

 

Same here, it'll take ages to download on my crappy connection also, plus i like to lend my disc out to family and friends. I don't really trade in that much, but i appreciate that game and other stores make a living from it.  

[Nilus]

I have the bandwidth to download but when my PS4 arrives next week i'll be sticking with disc based games.

 

Although downloading is more convenient, there isn't the price advantage from what I can see so you'll be left shelling out full price for a game you can't trade in.

 

I don't tend to hoard a huge game collection on consoles, once i've completed the game or worn out the multiplayer then it gets traded in towards a new game.  I don't think I had more than 5 disc based games at any one time during the last console generation and was quite happy with that system.

 

If downloading was cheaper, say ?25-30 per game rather than ?40-45 or whatever it is on the next gen consoles, I would forego the trade in value and download.  I haven't bought a physical PC game in years, but then again PC pricing is different and combined with the steam sales it makes perfect sense to download on that platform.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

Physical all the way, why pay more for digital?

 

I have no faith in Microsoft selling digital games for a reasonable price. Even months (or years) after shops have massively dropped the price I imagine the digital copy will still be the same price as when the game launched.

I would love Microsoft to prove me wrong, however all throughout the life of the Xbox 360 digital game downloads have always been more expensive then purchasing a physical copy, even with the 50% to 75% sales earlier this year the games were still cheaper on Amazon, and many other stores.

I'll buy digital only games, e.g arcade games, however for full retail games I have no plans to pay more than I have to for the sake of not getting up and placing a disc in the console.

 

With the Xbox One been region free i'm half tempted just to purchase the NTSC version of games for ?37ish delivered from Play-Asia, since graduating and working full time i'm more than happy to wait a few days to play a new game.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

im going with whatever's cheaper. I rarely pay full price for a game. If the disc is cheaper when the time comes, i'll jump on it. Sometimes, though, PSN will have a PS+ sale w/ a nice discount on whatever game. if that's the case, i'll go digital.

[switch6]

I've found myself many times wanting to play an oldie, especially classics back in the Super Nintendo days. I remember selling a game (Final Fantasy 3 - US Edition), only to find a year later that I wanted to play it again and again. Lots of games that I have I find I'll go back to eventually. In this light, I'm tending to stick with digital copies from now on, as I don't see myself trading / selling any games I own in the future.

[(Account no longer active)]

I'm slowly stocking up on physical media. Feel sorry for those who purchased through Windows Live that will no longer be able to download their games soon.

[Roger H. Veteran]

I've only bought 1 brand new game the past 2yrs and that's Halo 4. LOL. I also have about 6 "new" games that i bought but still haven't gotten around to playing them yet. I bought them knowing i wanted to play them and they were cheap at the time but still haven't gotten around to loading them up to play. So with that sort of play time there's no need for me to rush out and buy anything brand new as it would sit there for months. 

 

I do also have a bunch of digital downloads though from sales and such plus a few arcade games. When they had those $2.99-$4.99 sales i picked up a bunch of games.

 

 

new = some months old so the discs were used but they are "new" since i've never played them before.

[red.]

It seems like in America buying digital makes sense if you have a good internet connection due to the convenience. But here there's the additional factor of being able to get physical game much cheaper than the digital version which means that i will probably get the disk this time around as well.

[fusi0n]

Disc games for me :)

[Fourjays Veteran]

Physical for 90%. My internet speed is 3.5mb and I refuse to overpay for digital games. Only titles I'll buy are indie/non-retail releases.

 

Pay ?49/59 for a new game on the store, or wait a few weeks till it plummets to ?20-30 at retail in the UK? No brainer.

Similar for me too. The pricing of digital games is ridiculous, even on new releases. If the pricing was right, I'd perhaps have considered it... until the size of next-gen downloads became apparent.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Similar for me too. The pricing of digital games is ridiculous, even on new releases. If the pricing was right, I'd perhaps have considered it... until the size of next-gen downloads became apparent.

 

Especially with games like COD wanting 40GB. With a 500GB hard drive you're screwed.

[spacer]

Physical. Going all digital when they're not cheaper by default is stupid in my opinion. Plus, ISP rates and data caps here are terrible.

[Thief000]

Digital only from now on. Have been doing it on the PC since forever (ever since Steam got 3rd party games on there) and I'm now converting my current gen console library to digital as well.

[+virtorio MVC]

If Microsoft (or Sony) want me to buy games digitally this generation, they're going to need to put in drives a lot bigger than 500 GB.

[Showan]

Anything I consider a must have (And something I'll never tire of like Mass Effect) will be a digital purchase

[Jarrichvdv]

I m going all digital purely for the instant switching feature of Xbox One. No more disc swapping and changing with voice commands. Sad that the XBL Game Store prices do not change that often compared to retail prices.

[firey]

Well, once I get a working ps4.. my plan is to physical as much as possible.  I can download fast, but still have an internet cap that costs an insane amount to go over.  This will change eventually, though I prefer physical when it comes to console games.