Forever?

No. Nothing lasts forever.

Will it be around for a long ways ahead?

Yes.

I hope not

The day disc based gaming ️completely disappears is the day I stop playing new game consoles and pc for that matter since pc is largely digital and I'll focus on playing older games that I missed out on. That'll be enough to ride me over until I die.

I am sure disc based games will stick. How would they sell collectors edition? By just having a digital code for the game? That would be very strange since that collector's edition would not really be a collector's edition without a physical disc.

Nope, sooner or later it will be a thing of the past, even movies and music will be digital only content in some years.

It might take 10-15 years for that though.

The day when almost everyone in the world can download large files at high speeds is the time when disc based gaming will start to fade away over a period of years.

That is something that is far in the future. The Internet infrastructure around the world is not ready. And if we are going to do it with cables. Then were are talking decades.

Some physical media will be around forever. Its a little short-sighted to assume it'll remain a disc forever.

They'll be around, but they'll be the least popular option. Digital will outsell it tremendously. People need to realize that when the masses catch on to digital; and that means the majority that don't come on sites fighting for physical, there will be no hope for discs. It will be severely outsold. Developers will probably even start releasing they're games without discs.

probably not. i think it's inevitably going to go full-on digital, but they should really start charging less for the digital copy.

i think physical media is starting to feel archaic. i know I'm probably the minority on this site but discs are starting to feel like newspapers and faxes to me. they're delicate, slow, completely inconvenient compared to a hard drive and the only trade off is that you can pick it up. *shrug* onward and upward i say.

Disc won't be around forever but when it happens I'm done with gaming

Around as opposed to asquared? Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

Nothing last's forever.

No but what do I care I stopped buying disc.

Digital is great for convenience. However, 15/20 years from now will you still have access to what you have purchased digitally if these services go away? It's not like a physical game where you can just go grab it out of the closet. Something to think about in the long term. On a side note it also makes me feel like I don't really "own" it when I buy digital.

Data caps are still the biggest hurdles for downloading AAA titles (or any), the install size for some of the biggest releases later this fall are ridiculous.

I wouldn't mind if gaming went all digital, but the problem is with implementation.

Steam works great, as does Origin (they had refunds before Steam even did, so despite one's personal opinion on the service, they did actually do a few things very well), GOG, etc.. That's because there is competition on the PC platform and storage isn't an issue.

If I've learned anything by downloading console games, it's that proprietary storage devices are the devil. My Vita sees very few of my downloaded games because Sony wants me to pay $99 for a 32GB stick of flash memory, while Sandisk 32GB Class 10 Micro SDHC cards are $16.99 at MSRP. Which, that's strange, since Sony lets you replace the PS3/4 HDD with anything you'd like. Microsoft didn't with the Xbox 360 and you'd actually get banned from Xbox Live for using a non-Microsoft HDD (which, enter the same problem of overspending on storage the Vita has, here). Nintendo and Sony (for home console, anyway), seem to have this right since they let you use whatever you like for storage, thankfully (though in the Wii U's case, it's egregious because the onboard flash is abysmal).

Notwithstanding, there's the issue with Internet connections in one of the largest purchasing markets: The US. While some areas have absolutely no issues with speeds or data caps (myself included), it's abominable that some people have to deal with 5Mbps down/up speeds while also having a very strict data cap- there's a competitor in my area who has business almost exclusively in the area outside the city limits, offering at most 10Mbps down with a data cap of 100GB for around $55 per month. Many of the people who live in this area have no other choice for broadband service, and the business in question made some kind of agreement with the municipality to allow no competitors to use the lines for so many years, so there's little chance of a competitor finding it worth their time until that expires.

If the US and the console manufacturers get their shit together, all digital will be great. Sure, I love having boxes, but I can hardly pass up a good game on sale, no matter if it's digital or physical.

Of course it will, even PC games still come out on discs. Idk why anybody thinks that physical media will ever completely disappear.

It is too easy to get too many digital download versions that require deleting to free up more space (500GB). There is no real price advantage to digital download and getting the game on disk through the mail is easy. The big improvement would be if the devs allowed the game to install to the hard drive. The problem is that always leads to the game protection being cracked. PS4 games won't be exceeding DL-Bluray for several years. One thing to notice is games run straight from Blu-ray as they do from the hard drive, 1080p, 30 to 60fps. Map change load times take about 5 to 15 seconds, nothing cheaper and faster around the corner right now.

Eventually, no. Nothing is forever.

I think within the next 10-20 years physical media will be completely done for. I think this gen we will still see physical mostly with digital as well, next gen will probably be more 50/50 where some games are released physically and others only digitally. Some big and some small of course.

After that I think digital will officially take over.

No, it will always be there, but will shrink significantly and because of that, Gamestop will eventually become the next Blockbuster and disappear.

Of course disc based gaming won't be around forever. 28 billion years from now the concept of a game might not even exist anymore or we may evolve in to a form that transcends games entirely.

The technology for disc based games can only go so far. The largest commercially viable Blu-ray at the moment is 50gb, with a few larger versions being made (didn't a 250gb disc get announced at some point?) whereas HDD's are getting cheaper with more even storage on them, 8TB's might be expensive at the moment but are bound to be more reasonable by next year.

Once 4k or even 8k become the standard for games and films physical media will definitely be far too impractical to handle it, it will be either digital or streamed, so it will die the death it deserves. It's had it's run for quite some time now, time to hand over the baton to the new boy!

Digital is the future, the infrastructure is already there to provide it for the majority of us (I have fiber at roughly 30mb connection and I'm not that close to my exchange!), I downloaded GTAV in a couple of hours, less time than it would take for me to drive to a store and get it or to be waiting in for an incompetent postman to turn up at 3pm after buying it from Amazon lol

I was thinking about something the other day, do any of you guys think that since consoles are becoming more like PC's in the near future we may see a different distribution system of how we buy physical games. Like maybe future consoles will all have hdd, SD and disc drives to allow retailers the options of selling digital key codes or a in store physical download to the medium of your choice.

A distribution format like this would eliminate the need for retailers having to stock physical copies and possibly create a legitimate way to resale digital key codes back to their respective stores if they can be tied to a store or distribution account. Someone has to come up with a creative way for digital games to be tracked and sold/resold on a case by case basis, trough ebay, Amazon or something similar.

How cool would it be to one day just highlight selected games on your hdd and say sell keycodes on ebay or Amazon and have money either deposit straight into your account or as a credit in the digital store. Of course you wouldn't have access to those games after they are sold, but at least the digital download wouldn't completely lose its value the way it currently does.

Tell me again how the multiplatform strategy was supposed to fix everything. Look at your results and compare them to Nintendo, which keeps thriving with exclusives. Your loyal fans are gone. And let’s not forget the pile of IPs you purchased only to let them rot.

The worst thing is this is down from last years numbers/expectations which was down from the previous years numbers/expectations. You think about how long “down” has been a consistent part of the communication and you realize those subscriptions are what’s holding that boat together. The price cut of gamespass is still a price raise in a string of price raises. They are trying to use players to offset the missing revenue. Now call of duty is out of gamespass, which is literally WHY they bought the company. To draw people to the subscription. They realized they missed a boatload of money and that wasn’t sustainable. Now you pay for it like you would have if they never bought the company… so why buy the company? Mind you those billions still need to be paid back. Yeah it gives you a chance to say we make the biggest FPS… but the internal conversations must be brutal at high level on topics that really matter. Like revenue. Profitability. And ROI for the shopping spree.

Is this like the 10th quarter in a row they're down 33% on hardware how is that even mathematically possible. You would think their mediocrity would Plateau

Wuchang is great. Nine Sols didn’t have a physical copy so I never played it but I’ve heard good things so I will check it out. I stopped playing sports games many years ago when before the card dlc’s or whatever they’re called.

Last comment… ):

Great month for others, but not me. Hate soccer and soulslikes. Maybe Nine Sols is good.

🫡 it was fun while it lasted, N4G.

FC26!