Gaming Will PC Games ever see physical releases again?

[pitterpatter]

I miss boxes and game stores and actually owning your games, etc.

 

[Deleted User]

I really heavily doubt this.

 

[Captain_N]

Unfortunately i dont think there will be physical releases. Look at the modern desktop cases. They dont even contain an optical drive. There is not even space for one in some cases. Its becoming more common. Most laptops dont have an optical drive. I to miss the boxes. I always thought the box was to large for what they contained. These companies cant wait till everything is digital. They can then control every aspect of it. Even more so with streaming content. They can keep selling you the same content over and over again since you never actully own anything.

There are some Physical PC games in target. I see the boxes. I dont know if they contain discs tho. Might be download codes.
igit
I love having physical media. when everything is digital/streaming i aint buying shit. gonna be 100% piracy. It will be the only way to own the download with out any DRM. The current young generation mostly prefers digital. They dont want to own anything. most of them dont even keep devices past 4 years. they get a new one and trade/sell/toss out the old model. the companies love this. they love when you get a new phone every 6 months.

 

[pitterpatter]

Unfortunately i dont think there will be physical releases. Look at the modern desktop cases. They dont even contain an optical drive. There is not even space for one in some cases. Its becoming more common. Most laptops dont have an optical drive. I to miss the boxes. I always thought the box was to large for what they contained. These companies cant wait till everything is digital. They can then control every aspect of it. Even more so with streaming content. They can keep selling you the same content over and over again since you never actully own anything.

There are some Physical PC games in target. I see the boxes. I dont know if they contain discs tho. Might be download codes.
igit
I love having physical media. when everything is digital/streaming i aint buying shit. gonna be 100% piracy. It will be the only way to own the download with out any DRM. The current young generation mostly prefers digital. They dont want to own anything. most of them dont even keep devices past 4 years. they get a new one and trade/sell/toss out the old model. the companies love this. they love when you get a new phone every 6 months.

I've just honestly stopped giving a shit about new releases. I have a lifetime's worth of a back catalog, so if it comes down to what you're saying about digital only, I'll just play that and these companies can eat my shorts.

 

[Paulsar99]

Here in my country pc games are still being sold physically although there aren't as many of them anymore and some are old games.

 

[Originality]

Why waste so much space putting a 5.25” optical drive into your computer case when you can get a perfectly good USB Blu-ray drive for £20 for the odd occasion that you’ll need an optical disk?

I stopped getting physical games when my wife moved in with me because we had to throw away all the old ones to reclaim space for more important things. I’m also tempted to do the same for my Blu-ray collection. Keeping everything digital saves so much space, that alone makes it worth the price premium over physical games.

 

[Alexander1970]

Hello.

Not long ago i think like @pitterpatter,it´s like on consoles with the modules/carts.

Last weekend i want to play a little of point and click adventures,Belief & Betrayal,Ni-Bi-Ru - Age of Secrets,Undercover-Operation Wintersonne and Eulemberg Experiment (in GERMAN language).

I´d thinked that my Windows 98/ME/XP CD´s no longer working under Windows 10 and so i search on GOG and Steam and other digital stores/platforms and guess.....NO not available in German.

Then i´ll gave the CDs a try and they worked. 1:0 for pysical medium.

I like both solutions as in this case mentioned.
Only sad thing about CDs/DVDs is that actual Optical Drives are very bad in reading the "old" copy protections like Starforce/Safedisk etc. that leads to tools who can make and mount images.....

Where digital downloads are very unimpressed about such things.
But you MUST have an Internet connection.For me it doesn´t matter how fast the download is.And if you don´t need Achievmensts and this thingelings you can play offline.

I understand that new releases are no longer comes on physical medium (today its only rational on BluRay with the huge amount of data).

But they surely never die,look at the return of the Vinyl ones.

 

[FAST6191]

As they seem to have conned people into thinking having stuff you can't resell/lend/share in a reasonable fashion is a good thing then I doubt it.

As far as machines not having optical drives so much these days then at present install sizes you could probably get away with a USB drive or SD card, such a thing might even double as a nice DRM measure.

 

[DeoNaught]

I think only AAA games at most. like Special editions, limited editions, etc etc
I went to my game stop once, and all the physical Pc games, like popular Indie games, were like $2
Special editions were like $5
though some people might like physical releases, not everyone does, and most copies don't get bought

 

[the_randomizer]

Digital only will only get worse, to the point of where we'll be forced to stream over a crappy connection and with bandwidth caps. I'd rather pirate.

 

[tech3475]

I miss boxes and game stores and actually owning your games, etc.

Really that's two different questions.

I've still seen physical releases for PC games but the DRM (e.g. Steam) makes them more or less shelf decorations, unlike with say consoles where the disc is the DRM.

 

[Taleweaver]

I miss boxes and game stores and actually owning your games, etc.

As @tech3475 points out: these are two unrelated things. I've seen game boxes *cough*EA*cough* that contain nothing but a download code, and on GoG I can just download the game and proof of purchase, and burn these on a disc if I'm afraid that GoG will go bankrupt and destroy all their downloaded content anywhere on the internet.

On topic: it's not like they are really gone, but...I think their high days are gone for good. It's been over fifteen years since steam was released, and it clearly has changed the market. The disadvantages don't weigh up to the benefits of cheaper production, less antipiracy hassle and faster patching. Bandwith and storage space are better than ever, and the newer platforms (android, apple) never even bothered to start with it. All this results in a new gaming generation that probably thinks of game disks in the same way we think of early walkmans.

And...*sigh* I won't deny there isn't some charm there. I loved browsing through these stores and checking prices. Heck...even checking whether my PC could run it in the early nineties was somewhat of a hobby of mine. But do I want it back? Nope. I can check, buy and play games on the toilet if I want to. Besides...I still go out to check game stores and marvel at boxes. It's just that they contain board games nowadays.

 

[nani17]

don't think they will

 

[Woomy]

The thing is, if game store keep selling them at the price of Console Games, people rather buy them online, haven't buy PC game in a store for years honestly

 

[D4X]

I don't see physical PC releases ever getting back to the way it used to be, sadly, and I believe it's only going to get worse.

I'm a collector of the old "big box" style of PC games. When games were released back in the '90s and early 2000s they were all competing for shelf space; whoever had the coolest, most interesting-looking box on the shelf was usually the one who drew the most attention, and we got some incredible box arts (and box shapes!) because of it.

Because of the rise of Steam and digital distribution of PC games, none of the distributors sees the need for physical releases anymore, except in the case of smaller Limited Run-style launches like SIGIL (the new DOOM episode by Romero), because people prefer the convenience of ordering a key online. Can't blame them, really.

I expect we'll see this happen to console releases eventually, too. Physical copies will dwindle until only the "Special" or "Collector's" editions will be the only physical copies you can buy.

 

[GeraldineRankin]

I miss boxes and game stores and actually owning your games, etc.

I think soon going to have this.
Why don't you play games on the console to have a store?

 

[ThoD]

Optical drives have been obsolete for well over a decade now (literally the only time I've ever needed to use one in the past 7 years was to dump all the driver disks for my PC onto a USB drive since it's MUCH simpler to use), so I doubt we'll go back to disks and stuff. I don't even want to have to make physical room to store the boxes, on top of how stupid publishers think putting AP measures such as having to use the disk every time you want to play is a good thing, so I've come to hate games on disks. If I have any sort of issues with digital-only they are that people with bad internet connections (like me) have it rough when downloading the games to install and also digital-only can potentially make it impossible to archive something in case of mass data losses (eg: a database getting fried and wiped clean with no one having a backup of the data).

 

[FAST6191]

Optical drives have been obsolete for well over a decade now (literally the only time I've ever needed to use one in the past 7 years was to dump all the driver disks for my PC onto a USB drive since it's MUCH simpler to use), so I doubt we'll go back to disks and stuff. I don't even want to have to make physical room to store the boxes, on top of how stupid publishers think putting AP measures such as having to use the disk every time you want to play is a good thing, so I've come to hate games on disks. If I have any sort of issues with digital-only they are that people with bad internet connections (like me) have it rough when downloading the games to install and also digital-only can potentially make it impossible to archive something in case of mass data losses (eg: a database getting fried and wiped clean with no one having a backup of the data).

I don't know if I would quite go so far as to say optical drives are obsolete. There are still plenty of use cases for a lot of people.

But anyway so put the games on a USB drive/SD card you buy in the shop, or indeed have the shop download onto an existing one if you want which would also serve to offset the shitty internet problem. If you don't need write speed then for the average game install size nowadays you can get down individually to about the cost of low ish (1000s) volume blu ray replication. In bulk you could exceed it.

 

[silverrabbit368]

I personally love to own some boxes, but I also love to download digitally. I love both of them. Boxes can be used as a collection, on the other hand, digital download can really save time and space.

 

[Superbronx]

I sure would like to see more physical releases but it's not likely. By the way, I have room in my pc for an optical drive and I installed one when I built it a couple of years ago. I have a huge stack of physical copies to justify that drive.