$700 and it doesn't even come with an optical drive, oof. The optical upgrade kit for the digital-only PS5 Slim is $80, so the Pro is probably going to be closer to $800 in practice unless you're already all-in on digital.
Partly due to used games, but even when buying new it's often cheaper to buy physical than digital due to retailers undercutting each other, while the digital store strictly adheres to MSRP until the game has been out for a while.
Digital works on PC because there is competition. There are dozens of stores you can buy from, and the developer or publisher can also just sell games directly. On consoles Sony & Microsoft have a monopoly on distribution. So being able to buy/sell/borrow used disks is a huge money saver.
I don't know about optical drives but I bought ~75% of my switch games as used cartridge.
I think a lot of people would stop buying consoles if they couldn't sell the games they have finished or do not like anymore to fund the purchase of other games.
Did you do it for nostalgic purposes? I buy the cartridges for nostalgic purposes. Most of the time the used games I want are only $10-$15 dollars less than a good Amazon or Target price.
I don’t think the younger generations care as much, they just play free games anyway.
> Most of the time the used games I want are only $10-$15 dollars less than a good Amazon or Target price.
I bought Zelda Breath of the Wild for 25€ while it is still sold around 60-65€ on my country's amazon market and is not available anymore in many places.
I mostly buy cartridge because I want to be able to play games regardless what happens of my nintendo account and I like being able to lend and borrow games with other switch owners.
I remember as a kid we would swap games with friends for a few months so we can have access to other games.
I think it’s due to “used games” market about 80%. Some people just like having physical media that can’t be taken away from them; others don’t care and are through with the game for a lifetime after they beat it/grow weary of it. I personally have tons of old games and kind of stopped buying new stuff after PS4. One day you’ll go to download “Gulliver’s Golden Adventure” for nostalgia and Steam will tell you to “fuck off, that game is gone”, but that won’t happen if you have it on vinyl
The PlayStation Store is a monopoly on the PS5, so there's no price competition there.
I compared the prices of disc releases and digital releases on the PS5 in early 2023 and you could often get the physical disc release for cheaper than the digital:
Final Fantasy XVI (PS5): 65€ disc / 80€ digital.
Hogwarts Legacy (PS5): 59€ disc / 75€ digital.
Diablo IV (PS5): 70€ disc / 80€ digital.
Resident Evil 4 (PS5): 60€ disc / 70€ digital.
I refuse to have any business with digital only purchases; for a few reasons:
1. Just like movies, you don't own anything. Revocation can occur at any time.
2. More likely than movies, you might find your game patched to add or remove content you do not want.
3. You can't give your games to the next generation. Which matters a lot when your exposure to gaming started from NES and Atari hand-me-downs.
4. Every game you purchase is chained to just yourself. Which is actually stupidly selfish when you have a large extended family also interested in games. The Switch is a hit for borrowing back and forth from a large network of relatives and friends (and, if Nintendo's reading this and questioning the resale market - this has caused a lot of games to get bought that wouldn't have).
5. If you have a large NES collection, there will be someone interested in paying for it. If you have a large Switch collection, there will be someone interested in paying for it. Physical games have some asset value, and it can be thousands of dollars for larger collections. Digital games have zero value.
> More likely than movies, you might find your game patched to add or remove content you do not want.
Well this is a complicated point. A lot of games these days rely on digital distribution for day-one patches, a practice which allows developers to continue working on and polishing the game even after it goes gold. Physical only really gives you the option of "no updates at all" (including no day-one patch) or "every update so far to date" (including updates you don't want).
I agree with the rest of your points, but I think that this one would be relevant only in a few extremely niche cases.
> Physical only really gives you the option of "no updates at all" (including no day-one patch) or "every update so far to date" (including updates you don't want).
For Switch games, you can always refuse to upgrade the game (the cartridges are read-only, the updates are stored as overlays on the microSD card or internal storage). Switch game cartridges are just fancy flash cards with a long-since reverse engineered communications protocol [1], and there's multiple card dumpers and reflashable cards on the market.
> 1. Just like movies, you don't own anything. Revocation can occur at any time.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you'll still rely on Sony's servers to get the updates that make the game playable, since it has become customary to ship games riddled with bugs to patch them afterwards (which doesn't happen with movies, yet).
And if they really want to target you specifically, they can still blacklist your console by id, unless you completely stop connecting your console to the Internet.
So, buying the physical version can only protect you against revocation in very specific cases, unless you want to limit yourself to playing the broken version that is shipped on the disc.
On the PS5 refresh, no, an internet connection is required to activate the drive, whether or not it came in the box.
On the Xbox One... you haven't been able to, for over a decade.
On Switch... Switch is just delightful. The game cards even come with the required system updates (criticism for lack of theming or music aside, the whole OS is under 400MB, so amazing things are possible). You can also update your game or system wirelessly, from any other Switch, which has a higher version of either, no internet necessary.
>On the PS5 refresh, no, an internet connection is required to activate the drive, whether or not it came in the box.
Because the disc drive and the main board are required to be paired with each other since the PS3/X360 era. People who repair PS3s (except super slims, for some reason) and PS4s need to re-pair the disc drive board with the main board (or failing both, replace both boards with one that has been already paired) every time there is drive replacement: https://www.psdevwiki.com/ps3/Remarry_Bluray_Drive (for PS3)
They've been paired for a long time as you point out; however, that's missing part of the story.
In the past, they were at least paired from the factory. If you pulled your Xbox 360 out of the box, and never connected it to the internet, it would still work.
The PS5 refresh's disc drive is not paired, even from the factory. Without an initial internet connection, it will not work, even out of the box. Also, unlike the Xbox 360, it un-pairs every time you sign out of your personal account.
Theoretically there is no problem with keeping your PS5 100% offline. It can read and play game disks perfectly fine without the internet. In practice though, plenty of games download additional content even if you have a disk, and there's no way to know in advance.
> If you have a large NES collection, there will be someone interested in paying for it. If you have a large Switch collection, there will be someone interested in paying for it.
Well, yes for the NES. There's a limited number of cartridges made, there is no digital substitute, and the official cartridges are not being manufactured anymore. The demand for NES games is a product of their scarcity.
But have you tried actually selling a physical copy of a modern game? It's not like you're making your money back, you're lucky to recoup 1/3rd of the MSRP if there's even anyone interested in waiting for your copy to arrive in the mail. But there's also complicating factors like piracy, the immediacy of digital storefronts, and the used market controlling (and lowering) the price of used games. Famously, a trip to GameStop with a stack of PS3 games is worth maybe $5 of in-store credit and a complimentary soda pop.
Nobody said you'd get all your money back. Used games historically were generally cheaper and unless we're talking retro games, used games are always cheaper. That's the point. You get games cheaper when you buy. You get some money back when you sell. The idea that you need to get everything you spent back is nuts.
Given most games won’t work without online activation, does it even matter in the case of PS? Or you’ll contain yourself to non Sony/Microsoft platforms?
On PC you have your choice of marketplaces so it's somewhat less of an issue. On console you're locked into just the one marketplace with digital-only consoles, so if Sony wants to charge $100 for a game then that's the price. Once you've paid the $100 it's also tied to your account which is not necessarily always guaranteed to exist or be accessible, and is non-transferable.
Whereas with a disk you can pay substantially less due to your choice of competitive retailers (in my region Space Marine 2 is $79 at some retailers or $109 from Sony), buy secondhand for older titles (most of my library is secondhand), and resell or trade-in games when you're finished with them. And of course it's not tied to an ephemeral account, so you will always have access to the titles you've purchased.
Also for my use case, my PS5 doubles as a Blu-Ray player which is worth a good $100-200 just by itself.
The situation for PC gamers is somewhat different than for console gamers. There's certain built in expectations in the market for compatibility across generations, long-term licensing, and free network services that just don't really exist in the console market. As a result it feels like you "own" games more with Steam and other similar services, while on consoles there is a history of closing down stores, and people simply losing access to purchased games.
Physical media gives the impression at least to console gamers that they "own" the game for the long term and the loss of a digital storefront won't impact them (even if it's not always true).
Mostly because I simply like having a collection to look at. It's like comparing a small library to a list of ebooks on Kindle.
But yes, other obvious benefits include sharability, resellability (especially these days. So many childhood favorites sell for 200+ dollars for some reason), a perhaps false sense of preservation (I know there are some icky server issues on gen 7+ consoles, even for single player games), and simply liking the feel of a case and disc.
I stopped buying physical years ago when Amazon got rid of their 20%(?) pre-order discounts. However, I'd not trade my PS5 for a drive-less PS5 Pro, even if it was for free. Most of my PS4 games are on disc and I couldn't play them anymore. If Sony were to allow me to insert the disc and get the games added to my digital library (many platforms did this for Blu-Ray movies), I'd reconsider. But in the meantime I am tied to my disc drive
In 40 years none of your digital only assets are going to work, if still accessible to you at all.
I played Excitebike [0] on a friend's childhood NES and CRT TV while visiting over Thanksgiving. All we had to do was blow the dust off the cartridge, and we were living in 1984 again. Having physical copies makes this scenario far more likely to succeed.
I'm shocked. 90% of my game library is physical. So if the console is priced at 799 € without a disc drive, and the drive costs an additional 149 €, that totals 948 € if I want to continue playing my existing disc collection.
No, thanks!
The disc drive is basically useless anyway from a long-term perspective (I don't say "preservation" because that's a farcical argument); because even on the bundled versions, it requires an internet connection to "activate" it. This also needs to be repeated when a user signs out or signs in as someone else.
On the other hand, you can sell a physical copy of a game you're not interested anymore. You can potentially buy another used game for the same money you got from the sales. Keep repeating and in theory you could play infinite games for the price of 1.
