Digital vs. Hard Copy

I've been thinking about this for quite some time and wanted to ask for System Wars opinions and reasoning.

Will you be purchasing your games digitally or the good ol' fashion way? Why?

Hard copy. I can resell them or lend them out.

I have nothing against buying games digitally. I just prefer physical.

I prefer digital. But the priceing on consoles is a joke. On pc you can get brand new game release around 45, to me that balance the con of not being able sell it. Hope some time in the future. Ms/sony let amazon and . Other stores sell codes, iy would add some competitive priceing

As a PC gamer, digital all the way. I don't have the room for a mountain of discs.

Hard copy any day. Plus that new game smell.

Digital has a lot more advantages than physical... however i do rather like having a physical copy. Maybe it's just the art box? idk... but i enjoy having more physical copy for my home consoles. However for handhelds Digital is the best way to go.

Depends on which system I am buying the game for.

well I have a PC, so pretty much all digital. Generally significantly cheaper as well

Unless it's a pc game, it's hard copy all the way for me.

I almost always buy my retail games in physical copy and purchase smaller arcade titles digitally. But with PS+ on PS4, I might be downloading some PS+ free titles to my console in the future.

Digital for me but only because of location. I don't want to drive miles from my town just to pick a copy up when I can just download it

Agree to an extent. I'm thinking definitely all digital for Xbox One because of the ease to go from game to game. And I have a 3TB HD that I'm attaching to it.

I'll be upgrading my PS4 hardrive sooner than later as well though.

I'll be buying a physical copy whenever possible. I don't trust any company with digital only content.

I will never buy 40-50GB's game digitally since it would take me like a week to download it. Small indie games will be the only ones I'll be buying digital.

So far, I'm setting myself up for a digital gen.

I've started to get pissed off with how much space video games take up. Especially considering I'm not playing these games which take up so much space!

Instead I'm buying digitally, all the games are there at the click of a button, no discs to find or plastic boxes to lose etc.

Plus I just got a great racing game for PC, so I might not even need a console this gen.

PC = Digital

Everything else = Physical

ti depends on the situation.If I'm at local shop and the hard copy is cheap, sure why not? But digital has some amazing sales and I can get them without ever leaving the house. I'm not firmly against one or the other. My friends buy their own stuff so we generally don't lend to each other, We just gift stuff through Steam.

I'm exactly the same way, my friend.

The benefits should be quite simple, digital lowers production and distribution costs and should make for cheaper games... though that's not really what happens. Digital can also allow for more flexible pricing, doubt Sony or MS will try to match Steam in that sense.

Digital titles save bookshelf room for gamers, especially ones that buy lots of games. They don't wear out the disc drive. They play off the HDD so no disc swapping (hey, it might happen even with Blu-ray), and no need to swap discs between games. And if they do it right it can cut down on used game sales which can help publishers, so publishers don't dismantle studios when games fail to be blockbusters as games can generate better revenues over longer periods of time.

Problem though with consoles, BC being a thing of the past there's less retention of product and/or rights. We need a solution to this, I feel it should take the route of cross platform rights sharing like if you buy an X1 game you get the ability to download it on both your X1 and PC, same for PS4, get the digital rights for PS4 and PC. That way years from now you can play your games on your PC when your console hardware wears out and you can't get replacement consoles.

no reason for me to buy digital version of a game, unless there is substantial savings over physical disk. You cant trade in or sell digital copies either.

On PC = digital. On console = physical.

Digital, no contest.

Cheaper prices, and no need to deal with a mountain of discs. They take a lot of room, can get lost, damaged, whatever... with digital, things are far more convenient and organized.

Plus if you live in a country with unfavourable conditions to live and you frequently sell or trade in your games, then at least you know that you're gonna keep a digital copy FOREVER.

Digital. Those plastic discs are archaic.

For me it is

PC = Digital at all times unless it is retail only or a dirt cheap deal for retail.

PS4 = Retail at all times unless it is a digital only game or a dirt cheap deal on digital.

For consoles... This.

PC is all digital, for me.

stopped buying retail about 4 years ago. Even with only a 6mbps DSL line i still prefer the convenience of DD services even if it takes me 8-10 hours to download a 20+ Gb game.

I'd love to go digital but thanks to the crappy internet speeds here, that is just not possible. So hard copy it is for me.

I went digital since my brand new 360 made a lovely circle on my brand new disc and I went hermit.

Not really a fan of archaic tech.

Collection value is with hard copies. I hate digital unless it's the only way to buy. I own probably over a thousand digital products/games and they aren't worth a damn. I can also sell my hardcopies as well, so besides being worth money as a collector, the ability to trade and sell is significant for me. I also find deals on retail hardcopies for pennies on the dollar, so it's not like I don't save money with hardcopy games. There's deals on digital AND Hardcopy retail games, if you look.

My answer is I buy games the good ol' fashioned way and I only buy digital games for ON SALE/CHEAP and only when those games are NOT available as a Hardcopy.

One example is Diablo 3. I bought quite a few copies of that on PC ON SALE due to stupid Blizzard always connecting online DRM, and that was before they announced a collectible, resellable console late port. I would have skipped the PC version if I knew I could have waited for that console version (PS3, PS4, 360). I will probably end up buying the PS4 version with expansion for $20 next year. I bought multiple copies of Diablo III and Starcraft 2 because at the time they were PC exclusives and I have multiple PC gaming rigs. I like PC gaming, but I use these machines for PC EXCLUSIVES since as a consumer I don't support the inability to sell/trade my games. Furthermore, I have a sizable collection of retro games that are worth $$$. Monetarily speaking, my digital games on PC and consoles (Wii VC, XBLA, PSN, Steam, etc) aren't worth jack $hit.

It's funny, my PC version of Diablo 1 and Starcraft 1 aren't worth much. Strangely my PSOne Diablo and N64 Starcraft are worth a lot money. That's something to consider. It takes experience to recognize this, but I know we live in a disposable society. People accumulate Digital games they don't like and can't sell them off, unlike hardcopies.

Retail unless I am buying for handhelds or PC.

Hard copies for me. Digital is awesome, until you lose access to games you paid for. Happened to me more than once.

Hard as much as I can.

I'd go all-digital for everything if the perks matched that of the PC.

As it stands I find it worrisome to consider buying digital games for any of the consoles or handhelds.

I would be more open to supporting DD on consoles if console were like PC in the fact that I can play all my old DD games. When I get my PS4, I can't play any of my DD games that I bought on my PS3. I build a new PC and I can play all the games I had on my last PC no issue. If they made a policy so that all PS4 DD games would work on all future Sony consoles, then I would support DD on the PS4.

Yep.

I feel there's very little security to DD on consoles, but in addition to that, there are no perks that come with choosing DD over Physical regardless. In fact, I'd say there are less reasons to go with DD on consoles than retail.

Then you Nintendo who take it to the next level, and lock digital games to the hardware rather than an account, so if your 3DS or Wii U get stolen, or break, then good bye games.

Digital ones are usually much cheaper, but I like collector's editions in physical form.

You do realise every other industry doesn't pit distrobution methods against one another to see which is better.

Nope. They want their product/service to available in everyway possible to as many people as possibe, theres no room for crap like like only available on this platform to special members. Games get in their own way.

I'd be 100% digital if my internet was faster

Right now I'm about 85% digital.

As a semi-retired collector, hard copy is in my dna but this gen I'm willing to go more either or.

Sony have just done this for PS3 titles!

I'm hoping Sony add Amazon buying for the PS4 and also spread it to my region. I've been looking on Amazon and the PS3 titles they're now stocking are at much lower prices than PSN, if they do it for the PS4 it's a game changer for me as it makes DD realistically affordable on console.

I'm hoping we might even find games cheaper as DD titles on Amazon than retail soon and they're often the best priced place for games already. Given Amazon wouldn't have to do anything with postage, storage and handling i'm hoping the savings might trickle down a bit to encourage DD purchase over retail.

Play as you download makes it more practical now too, apparently you're looking at an hour downloading tops on an ok internet connection before you can play.

This generation, im going all digital. It will force me to purchase less games and value the ones i do buy. I have a bad habit of buying games and not finishing them. Certain genres i will completely ignore this time around, like RPG's and most sports games. I always bought games that got good reviews or highly recommended from forum members, several rpg games like the Fallout games, Skyrim, etc, but i never played any of them because they bored me. No, i am sticking to genres i like no matter what people in these forums think about them. I like racing, some first person shooters, platformers, some action games, some fighting games, some casual party games and indies. I bought a 1.5 TB HDD for my PS4 and i am good to go.

yup, same reason for me. i dont have shelf space for bunches of game cases

yes they did, MS will have to follow suit. Well MS has few games on amazon for online codes but not many.

@sHaDyCuBe321: all digital. Every release is a midnight launch... In your home.