#im not talking about indies here btw - many of them cant afford a physical print run

[gikairan]

With Alan Wake 2 not getting a physical release to "save money", and a potential lack of physical release for Starfield (we're not sure at this point in time after a deleted support tweet said it wouldnt have one)

I am literally on my hands and knees begging people to care about physical game releases

Physical game releases save you money!! Digital store fronts do not reduce the price of games over time. They never have. They never will. Hate the $70 price point for new generation games? If gaming goes full digital, nothing will ever get cheaper outside of store sales.

Physical game prices drop because they take up actual physical space. And stores that sell them reduce the price to get rid of inventory, to make room for new inventory.

Physical space is not a barrier to digital store fronts, so they do not need to reduce prices. EVER.

Dont believe me? Heres the current price for NBA 2k23 on PS4 on the UK Playstation Store (Ignoring the game is currently free on Playstation Plus as of typing this):

And heres how much it costs to buy NBA 2k22 AND NBA 2k21 on the UK Playstation store:

Theyre the same price. Despite the fact that 22 and 21 are "old" sports titles that are no longer getting updates (because 23 was released)

Right now, a physical copy of NBA 2k23 costs less than £20:

(I cant find physical listings for Brand New copies of the older games. But trust me... its not £59.99)

And sure, this is a game you probably dont care about. But this is also a game where a new version gets released every year, where the physical price crashes every year. And yet the digital store front is still charging Full Price for a version 2 years out of date.

Its not just crappy sports games that fall into this Bad Digital Pricing. Heres a game that came out 6 months ago:

Youre paying almost half to buy a physical version.

How about something critically well received?

And one not on sale:

The list goes on and on and on. And this is me comparing to Game.co.uk. .... Generally considered one of the most expensive places to buy physical video games. If i were to go onto Amazon, TheGameCollection, Hit.co.uk.... i'd probably find all of those games even cheaper.

This isn't even getting into the fact that when you buy a digital game, only you can play it. You cannot give it to a friend. You cannot sell it to a company to get a bit of cash for the next big game. You're stuck with it. Forever.

But what about sales? Steam is 100% digital, and they have Good Sales, right?? Wrong. If you were following Steam sales over a decade ago, you'd see they were a totally different beast to what they are now. Steam Sales a decade ago used to be a 75% discount on AAA games 2-3 years old. Youre lucky to get 50% on something 5+ years old these days. Most things are really only 25-50% discounts. Once Steam had gained a virtual monopoly over the PC game market, they dramatically scaled back the savings on their sales. Sales on the Epic Games Store tend to be more dramatic than Steam sales these days.... because they're doing the same thing Steam did. Offer ridiculous discounts in order to gain market share. Once they have the market share, they will stop offering such good discounts.

Refund rights with digital storefronts are also pretty poor. Here in the UK, if you buy something online... you have 14 days to send it back to where you brought it from if you dont like it. Brought that shiny new game but realised after 5 hours of play during the weekend that you didn't like it? You can just send it back and get a refund. It might be store credit instead of cash, but at least you can do it. Physical stores vary, but you usually get 48 hours to return something. Again, might be to store credit - but you still get your money back in some form. .... With a digital storefront, you only get 2 hours to play the game and decide if you want to keep it. Once you have played more than 2 hours, youre no longer eligible to refund the game.

.... 2 hours isnt a lot of time when you think about it. The FF16 demo is about 2 hours long, and most of it is watching cutscenes with very little gameplay! :D

And none of this is talking about how peoples literal jobs and livelihoods depend on the physical stores they work in. If physical games no longer exist, people will lose their jobs. Or how physical copies preserve games for the future, as digital store fronts on older consoles get sunsetted. And you cant expect a 20+ year old console to occasionally receive security patches so your card data is safe on their digital store fronts. You can always stick a physical version of a game into a console, but there wont always be a storefront to download it from. ...... Or the game could just be pulled. For good. Usually, this is due to licensed music expiring. Or it could be like PT.... where it was pulled, and literally removed from your library so it could never be downloaded again. If you own the physical copy, none of that matters. You can play the game for as long as the copy works.

A digital-only future for AAA gaming is something we need to be actively condemning

Dont buy digital-only consoles. Don't buy a digital game when a physical copy exists. Buy from your local video game store instead of Amazon.