Digital Games Will Win, Eventually
With the rise of digital media everywhere, the gaming industry has debated whether digital games are better, or will substitute entirely physical media like discs or cartridges. Even with the current gen consoles like the PS5, and Xbox Series X already on the market, they still have disc readers; even the Nintendo Switch has a slot for their own proprietary cartridges.
Despite discs being an option, the Big 3 have opted, from many years ago, to develop their digital stores. This is even more present with the current gen consoles, with fully developed markets with memberships and benefits.
Certainly, the 3 main console manufacturers have considered the digital side of video games. They have gone to lengths to invest a lot of resources to develop the platforms.
Convenience
The main reason for digital games is convenience. Consumer patterns have changed over the year; people tend to spend less time shopping, and more time home. Perhaps back in the 80s and 90s, going out with your family to the mall was all the fuzz. Shopping was quite an experience, and everyone capitalized on these trips.
Video game stores were a big thing back then. Even big retail and department stores had a dedicated section to video games. I remember going with my family shopping; I would steer off them and look for the video game section at our favorite retail store, or going to the mall, straight to the couple of video game stores over there. I remember staring at all the games I wanted, imagining how they looked, once put in my console.
The best feeling in the world for a kid is when dad tells you to pick a game! I would spend all the trip back home looking at the game box; reading the back, looking at the pictures or screen captures, imagining what the game is going to be like.
Perhaps nostalgia gets the better of us when debating if physical games should be kept in an industry that is clearly moving towards digital.
Rather stay at home
In the late capitalist era that we find ourselves in, we spend an awful lot of time commuting to work and back home, we easily lose 2 or 3 hours a day (if you are lucky) doing this, some people lose even more. We can say that during the week, we spend around half a day just commuting. That is 2 days a month, 24 days a year lost on our cars or transport method.
Cars are increasing in number, and roads stay the same. Traffic is an issue. This is why the world as a whole has shifted towards digital platforms. They provide us with options to do some tasks from the comfort of our home, with our preferred digital devices.
Broadband internet, the driving force
With the rise of broadband internet, virtually every retail store has a web site or app where you can purchase their products: food, clothes, shoes, you name it; they can be bought online, and you don’t have to drive to your nearest retail store to get them.
Digital media also became a thing. Getting music online was the first big thing back then. We migrated from CDs to mp3s. No one thought that the future was digital. The same thing happened to movies. Stores like Blockbuster were once popular, but with the rise of digital movies, they slowly faded away to oblivion.
Nobody thought that video and music stores would shift from a physical location to a digital place.
The same thing has happened to games. We have the option to conveniently shop for the game directly from the digital store, with the immediacy of ‘purchasing’ the game. You just have to wait for the game to download. Broadband is more and more common now, even internet speeds become faster every year. Downloading media is not a hassle anymore. Perhaps the main reason digital games were not as popular was the download size. Games are measured in gigabytes, and you need fast internet speeds to download whole games.
Consumers would rather wait an hour or so for the game to download, that to wait a few days for the game to arrive in the mail. Unless you are a huge fan of a certain game, you won’t drive or go downtown to a retail store or the mall, just to get that one game you want. Hopefully they have it in stock.
Immediate access to your library.
With our attention span being reduced more and more every year, having immediate access to your game library is crucial. Even if you own physical copies of a few games, you still have to manually switch discs or cartridges. Believe it or not, these 30 or so seconds it takes you to do that heavily influence your decision to play a game.
Digital games provide you with instant access to switch between games. It is one of the selling points of the Xbox Series X. You can resume exactly where you left off. You can have a handful of games ready to load instantly. Microsoft would not have invested resources into this feature if they did not think it was important.
A store with all the games in the world.
Another convenient aspect of digital games is the access to all the games made for a specific platform. You don’t have to worry if the game is in stock or not. Digital games will always be available for download.
As mentioned before, you don’t have to drive or commute to your local video game store or retail to get a game. You don’t have to worry if there is stock available for hot-selling games or pre-orders.
Digital platforms also provide the option of pre-loading the game before it becomes available worldwide. You will have the game ready to play the mere second it releases. Some publishers even provide early access if you get a premium edition, if you are willing to pay the extra money, albeit.
Day-1 patch
Infamously, most games will have a day-1 patch ready for download, even if you own the physical format. Once a game goes gold, and is ready for production, developers continue to polish certain aspects of the game. They will bundle all of this in a day-1 patch.
This decision comes from the publisher’s side of things. Logistically, they would rather meet a deadline, and distribute the physical copies of the games to retail, than to wait for the developers to fully iron out all the bugs and performance issues a complete game might have. Day-1 patches solves this quite conveniently.
Games as a service
Games are shifting towards the service side of things. Developers constantly update their games throughout their lifespan. It is quite common to see patches released every now and then, especially with multiplayer games.
Season or battle passes are quite common, and updating the content is how they keep the audience interested in the game. Games like Destiny, Call of Duty, Fortnite, Overwatch, and many more, have opted for this kind of strategy to secure a big chunk of the gaming audience during the game’s lifespan.
Don’t think for a second that owning a physical copy of a game gives you the full experience, or at least the vision the developers and publishers had in mind. Perhaps your copy will have performance issues, bugs or things that need ironing with a patch. An internet connection is required to update the game.
Games today are different from the games made before. Perhaps in the era of the Super Nintendo, PlayStation, or Sega Dreamcast, games were released once everyone involved thought it was more or less what they aimed for. Some of the games had bugs but there was no way to patch them.
Video games today are a service, and digital platforms are a huge part of why we see constant updates being released throughout their intended lifespan.
Wear and tear
Virtually all products will eventually get past their expected lifespan. Materials perish, they get damaged, a number of things can happen. Older games in cartridge form require maintenance so they can be preserved. Some game cartridges came with batteries so you could save your progress.
Opening the cartridge and cleaning the circuit board will also keep the game longer. Dust can really damage them if they are not properly stored.
CDs came to simplify that matter; however, the plastic and reflective sheet will eventually deteriorate. They also tend to scratch, and to be able to read them, the disc reader needs maintenance too.
When games migrated mostly to CDs, consoles developed the option of saving your game to a memory card, and later to their hard drive. Of course, this came at a cost. CDs are prone to scratches and the disc readers in the console need maintenance too. Dreadful were the days when a disc could not be read. That feeling of your heart sinking is one of the worst things you can experience.
Pricing
Another reason digital games are gaining market share is the fact that you can purchase them at their regular price. In some countries, physical discs incur extra costs, like importing and operating costs. Consumers buy the games at a higher price.
Digital platforms have discount sales all the time, more than actual retail shops. Perhaps you waited a couple of months to buy that game you wanted, now you see it’s 20% off. Instead of being on top of every retail store sale nearby, having access to your console’s digital platform will let you know what sales are happening.
Better value for your money
Every console offers memberships that provide a bundle of games ready to download from the get-go. It seems this subscription service is more and more popular. Microsoft offers a unified membership for those that own an Xbox and a PC. Sony offers PS4 and PS5 games ready to download, and a very decent list of classic games as well. Nintendo is stronger than ever in this aspect, completely revamping their digital platform. Their virtual console now includes Game Boy, Nintendo, and Super Nintendo games; the list keeps increasing.
Digital vs Cloud: Are we there yet?
It seems that digital games came here to stay, however, there has been an exponential rise in cloud gaming. Microsoft has been pushing this technology more than anyone. You can play a lot of their console library on PC via cloud gaming.
Sony offers PS3 and other classic games via streaming to your PS4 or PS5. Nintendo on the other hand offers a select list of games to be played via cloud. These are games that usually the Nintendo Switch cannot run due to their graphical demand.
Google tried a cloud gaming console of their own but failed after a couple of years. Some people pinpoint this to poor marketing rather than the idea of cloud gaming itself. Some of the consumers don't really care about latency or input lag.
In my opinion, cloud gaming will eventually be an alternative to digital gaming. It does not hurt the industry to experiment with it because the benefits in the long term can be truly beneficial. For sure we will get to a point where internet speeds and technology will reduce input lag and latency quite substantially.
Phil Spencer (CEO of Microsoft Gaming) dreams of a world where you can play virtually any game you want, regardless of who published it, anywhere, anytime. Just pick up your controller and have fun. TV, Mobile, Tablet, VR: it does not matter where, it's just a matter of playing what you want.
This utopian scenario is the perfect north for the gaming industry, this will push cloud gaming technologies where they can be actually considered an alternative over digital games.
What are your thoughts on digital games? Does nostalgia bias your opinion? Let me know in the comments below.
Happy gaming.
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