Do you think physical games will go extinct?

No it won't go extinct and the demanding for physical collectors is too high for physical games go extinct.

No sony is building a new bigger bluray for next gen im mostly digital though

Of course it will at some point, its probabily a while away.

Newer generations of gamers will care less and less about pieces of plastic and will just see it as clutter.

In a generation or 2.

It probably will eventually but hopefully that time is a long ways away yet. As long as physical media doesn’t go away during my lifetime then I’ll be happy. I still buy my movies and music on physical formats as well and people had been saying that those would be digital only for quite some time.

You forgot the important part: rumors

YES...But not in this lifetime...maybe 300-400 years.

Because all the old games will die cause of disc rot, and people will move onto digital.

One day all games will be streamed, and I am serious. The potential there is a lot more than physical boundaries, and it will be good for the planet if we all stop buying CDs, Blu Rays and physical copies of games even if it's a bummer for collectors and classic gamers like me.

Definitely, it's inevitable. Gaming is only going to get worse in the distant future. The days of owning a complete one-time physical copy will be long gone in the year 20XX. Lootboxes, microtransactions, DLC and 5 different versions of digitised copies will be the trend. Probably is now.

It will eventually - it wont be next gen but maybe the gen after that.

Like Fahrenheit 451?

Yes. It virtually is on PC. Collectors can still get physical goodies with a key

Yes, even the collectors will be buying a key with some goodies in a box, eventually.

No.

Agreed

For me, physical media doesn't have as much value, in that so many games have gigabytes of updates and so much dlc and a general heavily relience online, that outside of some Nintendo games, and older console games, I have no attachment to physical media.

The benefits I see for physical media are just faster install of those large games over downloading them. Downloading big games just isn't practical for many.

Eventually? Sure. At least in the traditional sense.

Physical sales of games will eventually stop. I just don't know when that will be, but it's inevitable.

Price digital games cheaper than physical and I can see it happening sooner rather than later.

I hope they will soon. they are waste of space.

everything is digital nowadays. and due to steam i doubt anyone care about physical disk of PC games.

next gen console should only be digital.

Hope not. I really value renting as it allowed to be play most new games across three different platforms under $ 200 per year. I receive new games usually 2-5 days from release date.

I'd be willing to go for a much better "Netflix style" distribution from Sony or MS though but it needs to have all major releases and available within the week of release. Also has to be under $ 200 but it is inferior to rentals as it's more platform agnostic.

I guess it really depends on how MS/Sony wants to implement the "Netflix style" distribution. It'd be fantastic if I only have to pay a monthly fee say if a new exclusive came from MS and available on their digital sub then I'll just pay for a month to finish their exclusive game.

Until then, I hope physical is here to stay.

It also makes me wonder if Sony or MS value the bluray functionality as a feature. I personally don't care about it.

It might eventually go extinct, but I can't see it happening any time soon

Yes. I don't think the demand will be there in a few years, provided internet bandwidth continues to fall in price. I doubt streaming is going to take over completely because latency, but I can imagine a not too distant future where AAA file sizes have got so big that it's become impractical to install whole games anymore. Clients install an engine, while other content gets streamed in as needed.

If all the advanced countries of the world have very high-speed Internet bandwidth (United States and Canada) and where the cost of online is at the price of paying for electricty, there I will be convinced that physical games will eventually become obsolete. I really do not think it will happen during my lifetime, but in the distant future.

Nah. I still like buying PC games physical, and I buy all my console games on a physical disc.

Yes and stores like GAME will go out of business.

Killing physical games would be detrimental to the industry. Console sales would be reduced drastically. New IP’s would become non-existant.

Gaming would become terrible, boring and have no games.

Look at Steam as the prime example. I log on and can find nothing but endless trash shovelware. Nothing stands out. It all looks like indie trash 5000.

Physical games creates brand awareness among other positives.

I've always thought they should stop selling disks and instead just sell a kick ass statue or relic from the game, with a digital code somewhere on it....

I'm absolutely done buying physical games, but I'd buy a cool collectors thing from some of my favorite games...

But yeah, physical is as dead as buying CDs to me...

@ajstyles: huh? Why would new ip be hurt? It's cheaper for a company to invest in selling codes than making unnecessary disks that no one wants....

What exactly are you siting? Your post hurts my brain... "gaming would be terribly boring and have no games..."

... Because of doing away with disks? Huh?

Why they havn't already is beyond me...

CEX and GAME are huge rip offs.

I'm amazed that so many think that physical games won't "go away". There's no doubt that they will.

Only when the WHOLE world has a fast and established internet connection....... some parts of the world are still no where close to that so they rely on physical copies.

Interesting that RDR2 is 35% more expensive digital (PSN) than if you buy it at a local retailer where I live. That's crazy. And physical you can resell so it has more value. With pricing like that physical won't go away.

Long term it kind of has to I think.

@Sushiglutton: thats a fair point, for some reason the big three insists on having horrible prices on their digital games... as long as they do that, I guess their will be a demand for physical games!

Haven’t bought physical game on pc since diablo 3, but after buying a switch I find myself buying all my games for that physical, since the Nintendo store is ridiculous priced...

I think in the future physical copies will only be available as a collector's edition, and even then it will be the equivalent of a key on a disc and you will still download the entire game.

I sure hope so.

its literally pointless garbage generation at this point

Yes, but you know what's ironic?

The game publishers and corporations like Microsoft and Sony would probably love to stop producing physical copies- they'd save money that way- but they still ship their brand new products with only 500GB or 1TB or internal storage.

Physical copies are getting zoned out.

Everything will go extinct, even humans. I think PS5 era will probably the last time we ever see new consoles, so that means the last time we see physical games. Many people dont even want PS5 xboxnext, they are happy with current gen graphics. Im one of them. I prefer physical but people are going digital more and more so it doesn't have a future, just like humans. RIP.

It has no sense to continue publishing physical video games. Digital is not only future, but also right now. I don't remember myself buying a physical video game since N64.

What is with the cynical attitude? I rather like to hear the optimistic hope of man than the defeatist rhetoric of the doomsayers.

Well for most of America between east coast and west coast the Internet is pretty shi**y and is capped to maybe 1TB a month....

So until they solve the slow internet of taking 6 hours to download a 60GB game then there'll still probably be physical copies around.

Now if they are to move away from disc into SSD drives / thumbsticks...then that could be possible.

I don't really want that the physical version of games go extinct, I love having this version, the box, the CD, all that stuff inside and there's a lot of people building collections of them

Yes, eventually physical media will become extinct.

Even though I like physical media it's getting harder to avoid digital, actually, I own thousands of games but very few physical copies, foe example, I own something like 300 X360 games but own only 15 discs, the remaining 285 games are digital spread along several HDDs, the most discs I own are PS3 games and many of them are only available in disc ( like KZ2 & KZ3 ). My moded Wii has hundreds of NES, SNES, GBA games stored in the SD card while Wii and GC games are stored in a couple of HDDs, I own only 4 Wii physical games and something like 10 GC games.

Man I hope there'd be more digital rentals.

I'd hate to be the guy that has hundreds of games only to be mistakenly banned one way or another. Hope the bans are soft so all games are accesible.

Probably, in the far far future. I dont really care much though. I'll keep buying them physical while they exist. Once they cease to exist I'll probably stop gaming as much as I do now.

I'll see things from the bright side. Whenever they go extinct, my copies will definitely go up in value. People underestimate the value old physical things can reach. Some N64/PS1 games are sold on Ebay for absurd prices, let alone some rare vinyls/CDs, etc, etc EVEN if they can be aquired digitaly