Physical or Digital - what is your preference?

Usually, physical.

But if there's a sale, I go digital. Especially games I've missed out on.

Physical

Disc

Digital because I'm too lazy these dayzz to get up and change disks. lol :P

Part of me would want to answer disc, but truth is, games run slower from optical drives and all require HDD installation anyway. This being the case for PC and console. And I prefer having the games run from there to play better, so when only using a disc as a temporary carrier for the game, what's the point then? Essentially the plastic has become a redundant and obsolete middleman far as I'm concerned now.

I've also gotten to used to the convenience of having all my games on a single storage location, and just clicking the game icon I want to play at the time instead of disc swapping.

The main counter argument being that discs can be resold, but at the insane prices I can buy my games from digital, there is no reason to sell them to recoup my funds or have to put towards another already cheaper game. It just makes keeping them all in my collection very cost effective.

So for me it's digital all the way, especially for the prices, that is on PC not so much console where they always try to treat it like a brick and mortar store copy.

digital.

I dont like the clutter and its easier for me to just redownload a game instead of worrying about a disc getting scratched.

I dont care about collecting games and if a game shuts down the servers I probably wasnt playing it anymore anyway.

Prefer digital, but if I can get the physical version a lot cheaper then I would do that.

Physical for sure!

Both, depends of the price of the game.

Digital. I've had my PS4 since it came out in 2013 and I've only bought two physical copies - TLoU Remastered and The Division (traded in TLoU for a significant discount to get The Division otherwise I wouldn't have gotten it). I don't see myself ever getting back into getting the physical copies. I just like the fact that I can pre-load the game a few days before it comes out and play it at midnight on launch day.

Bobby Digital is my preference.

Eh i was never much of a trader/seller anyway so its no biggie.

I go all digital, unless the physical copy is way cheaper. Nintendo is the worst offender in that case, Sony at least has decent sales.

I'm just sick of swapping discs and them taking space, and I don't care to resell.

@FinalFighters: "Eh i was never much of a trader/seller anyway so its no biggie."

I see.

Physical

And why do I have feeling of déjà vu with these threads.

Do you pay full $60 price for your PS4 games on digital?

Yea. No taxes tho.

Digital on PC and physical for Nintendo consoles.

Haven't got a clue on the other two, digital is more expensive, but physical is just a distribution method, it's kind of redundant.

Exactly, as soon as you put it in, you get a version installed, which is then heavily updated off the bat. So it means a lot less to me for some reason than on previous consoles.

Phygital. I just download the disc.

100% Digital. Xbone makes it easy to share all my games with my sons on their xbox's. Its really nice to be able to play them in MP games or coop games from different rooms. this would not be possible with disks.

The way i like my women and that's not digitally.

Which I'm sorry to say, is a foolish way to buy your/our games. What makes the whole digital distribution model work, and this is even more important than the convenience of not taking the trip to the store and removing disc swapping; is that prices are substantially cheaper than the disc copy. At least that's the way it is on PC. This is why digital on console is more prohibitive and disadvantaged to the consumer. On a closed market locked down by a sole company (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo), they have unchallenged control of the pricing.

At the fundamental core, even Day 1 new release games should never cost full retail price when sold digitally. When you've removed the physical media, packaging, shipping, and most of all the retail middleman markup (Gamestop, Bestbuy, Walmart, etc...), the game should come to the consumer for much less with all those costs removed. Games had always cost $60 because Gamestop (and other stores) needed to make their share of the profit. But now we're essentially get our game directly from the source, the publisher... and still we're paying the extra "Gamestop fee"? Even though we didn't buy from Gamestop? That is complete bollocks!

The other principle is that spending $60 on a game that you can't re-sell is a poor consumer judgement. But then when I can get my game for $40 (I'm going by Canadian currency in this example, where PS4 and XB1 games now cost $80 at Gamestop and Bestbuy) and much more often far far less, then not being able to re-sell or trade is immaterial. I already saved up front, and know that the next game I get will already be cheaper, thus not needing to leverage that price with a previously played game. You know, that cycle we used to go through when getting our games from stores.

But yeah, I am aware of the politics at play here, how retailers pressure the publishers not to undersell them. But we as consumers don't have to take that sitting down. At the very least wait for a price drop or sale. Send a message that full retail for a non physical game is unacceptable.

While we do see on Steam new games being sold for the full retail price the first day (again that politics), the difference being that Steam is not the only digital vendor on PC; with competition from GOG, Green Man Gaming, Humble Bundle, Origin... PC digital prices drop that much faster than on console. Not to mention the abundance of sales and deals from Humble Bundle. Hell you don't even have to wait for sales when you can buy codes from 3rd party CDkey sellers like G2A,. Kinguin, CDkeyprices and so on. So many options, that game prices on PC is always cheap, and that's why digital is a plus for the gamers. Basically OPTIONS means better deals for us. But that's the difference between digital on PC and console - the former being advantageous to the consumer while the latter is not.

Yeah this was a hella long rant but it genuinely angers me to see gamers being taken advantage of. But all it takes to turn things in our favor is a little patience and self control.

LOL, good one ;)

Digital....

It's already a non-issue for a lot of people. 80GB will take me less than an hour on my 200Mbps connection. 10-15 min on 1Gbps fiber. I pay about $60/mo for internet.

I've even ditched my old HDDs in favor of faster SSDs because I can just re-download if I want to play a game.

Your games are attached regardless. Although there is the benefit of being able to sell your physical console games when your current-gen console stops working and your next-gen console is not backwards compatible.

@AdobeArtist While I agree with the sentiment of your rant, I will still pay for digital releases than physical. If it is going to cost the same (roughly, you don't pay tax on digital games), why would I wait a year or whatever for it to maybe drop in price for a game I want to play now? I get that the consumer shouldn't be paying the "extra" cost of the whole shipping or whatever. If Sony, MS, Nintendo offered their new release titles for say 49.99 instead of 59.99 digitally, who would buy a physical copy? That would cause places like Gamestop to file a frivolous lawsuits against those companies. That would be great to not have to pay full price for a digital game but the fact of the matter is that that is unlikely to change in the console market much like people pre-ordering games is unlikely to change. Given that fact, I'll stick to buying all of my games digitally for the convenience of not having to be at midnight release parties or having to stop by my local GS in order to pick up a game I reserved. That was great 10-15 years ago. Technology has moved us forward so that we have OPTIONS on how we want to buy our games.