Topic: Are these prices making you cancel your purchases?

@rallydefault what do you believe is the chances Nintendo still has physical offerings in 10 years?

Just a thought exercise but 10 years is PlayStation 7 territory. Do you think Sony will be offering physical media in 10 years?

I always try to buy games physically. The reason is so that I can sell the game when I'm done with it, which is what these companies are trying to prevent by going fully digital. Growing up, pretty much all my games came from relatives, garage sales, and second hand stores. In a purely digital world, that wouldn't have been possible and I would have been priced out of gaming. So, of course physical media will go away because it's consumer friendly and the ceo needs his fifth mansion.

@WaveBoy Thats why I go digital mainly. Most games I dont trade in as I stated before so rather then take up space on a shelf collecting dust they are on a hardrvie. If I do want to go back and play them, I can, but very rarely do I. Yeah having the physical item on a shelf invokes warm fuzzy feelings when you gaze upon them and take you back to another time, but I still have those memories. I just dont have the space physically anymore for 40+ years of memories lol.

I'm thinking about waiting to buy Galaxy 1&2, since I don't want to bolster preorders and early sales.

$80 MKW feeling incomplete & the tanking 3 lap races, has also influenced this decision. I may abstain from buying full price nintendo titles from now until january.

@Tasuki It's funny I'm the exact opposite to you, having spent the best part of 15 years or so primarily a PC gamer the vast majority of my collection is on Steam so there is something rather refreshing for me with collecting physical games. I do like to display them and I do miss the little manuals we used to get with them.

I don't think I've traded in a game since the 360 days, I wouldn't even know where to go to do it near me 😄.

@Hapless I can see that. My thing is just space lol. I imagine if you had all your PC games physical from the past 15 years it would take up alot of room. I literally have decades of games, going back to NES era. So that's NES, SNES, Genesis, Gameboy, Playstation, Playstation 2, Dreamcast, GameCube, Xbox, Xbox 360, PS4 and a handful of Switch, Xbox One, Series X games as well. At one time I had them on shelves and it damn well took up all my wall space in my room. As it is right now a majority of them are in boxes in my closet. I also don't like alot of clutter and the past few years my mindset is if I am not going to use it why do I have it.

Dont get me wrong if you go back and play them on a regular basis then I can see hanging on to them. For me however with such limited gaming time and so many games to play, I dont have the time to play a game I already finished. Then those physical games just end up in a box in the back of the closet or on a shelf collecting dust.

@sixrings
Yes. 100% yes they will still be doing physical in 10 years. Bookmark it.

Now, you wanna move the goalposts and ask if Sony will be? No. They barely do even now. Even their games that are actually on the disc all have mandatory installs, so they still take up massive hard drive space and eliminate one of the nice things about going physical.

Another thing people don’t seem to get is that having a physical collection doesn’t just let you “trade” your games for a few bucks every now and then. If you actually hold onto your games, keep the cases and stuff, you can potentially make quite a bit of money in the future when the values go up.

My N64 and SNES collections were worth thousands, easily. But I was stupid back then and basically gave stuff away lol

@sixrings Physical will be alive, even barely just from limited "boutique" shops like Limited Run Games, Super Rare Games, Red Art Games etc.

I can see this in the next 20 years because there is a really loyal customers to physical gaming media

I haven't "cancelled" any purchases, but the realization that the DLC for Nintendo's games does go on sale on occasion (Pokémon being the exception) led me to decide to wait until DK Bananza's DLC gets a discount before buying it. And under the risk of FOMO, I'm also going to wait and see if any of the Switch to Switch 2 upgrade packs will also go on sale in a year or two (specifically the one for Kirby and the Forgotten Land).

@Zuljaras Exactly. There are to many loyalists and due to that factor alone there will always be physical copies.

Yeah it might be harder to find them but they will be around. Just look at records for example. 20 years ago you'd barely find them unless you went to see specialty shop. Now even places like Walmart and Target carry them.

@Tasuki Space would absolutely be an issue for me if I had my Steam library on disc. I have over 1k games on there so I'd have to box them up like you. My current physical collection is a mix of PS4/PS5 and Switch maybe around 20-30 games so I'm ok for storage atm although I don't know what I'm going to do in the future lol.

The other thing physical has going for me is that it’s a lot more enticing to revisit a game when I can pick up the box and look at the art and whatever. Opening Steam and scrolling my digital library just doesn't do it for me anymore.

@rallydefault I wasn’t moving the goal post. If two go digital it is hard for me to believe Nintendo will be the one who stays physical. I’m sure they will be happy to be able to 100% control the cost of games.

Game sizes are getting bigger and that will affect Nintendo as well.

When we are talking game key cards are you sure they hold the value you’re talking about.

There won’t be any limited run games if they don’t include a cartridge slot. We would be on switch 4 by then. I’ve concluded that you may think I’m negative Nelly but you’re optimistic Oliver. We shall see but I’m not going to bookmark it.

@Hapless Thats the problem for me the box art nowadays is just so bland most of them are just a picture from the game itself, nothing more. Now the box art from the NES or SNES library I can look at those all day. Some of them are pieces of art and some like Phanlax or Mega Man have an interesting story to them. And who can forget some of them like Metal Gear, Contra etc are just blatant ripoff that you wonder how they got away with them.

Even then I tend not to replay games right away especially if I finish the story. Maybe in like 20 years or so like I just did with Suikoden.

@Tasuki
You couldn't pay me to keep PS5 & XSX physical media in my house. That stuff looks straight up nasty. The epitome of bland and ugly. Flimsy cheap bendy blu-ray-like cases, with a sterile two-tone forgettable depressing banner Logo, with lazy stock CG cover art. Topped with legal text agreement slathered all over the backside, and even inside unless there's inverted Art work. And the discs look like crap now too. That stuff is just depressing. A mere shadow of a shadow compared to what we got in the 80's & 90's.

They're not even trying anymore. The Artistry of physical media is mostly long gone. They no longer feel like decor or anywhere near as unique or substantial as they once were with Atari, Commodore 64, NES, SNES, Genesis, GameBoy, PS1(Long Box) & Dreamcast(White Jewel) etc. People are desperate just have to have something tangible because to not have something is completely alien to them, and obviously they want re-sale value. But I couldn't care less at this point. The ugly bare bones stale physical media of today looks like an eye sore and just eats up space, space that i don't have, plus I'm so used to the convenience of digital, to the point where popping in a disc or Switch cart feels completely alien to me. lol

I do have like 5 physical switch games. Batsugun(Play Asia), Jim Power & the Lost Dimensions(Strictly Limited), TMNT: Shredder's Revenge(LRG), The Ninja Saviours, and the last was Donut Dodo(Pix'n Love Games), and I plan on snagging a few NS2 physical games like DK Bananza, Kirby Air Riders & Metroid Prime 4. The former 5 i ended up buying digital, so the physical copies go unused and just sit on a shelf. And I'm sure i'll double dip-digitally with those 3 NS2 games too purely for convenience. lol

NS1 & NS2 physical media look nowhere near as bad as XSX & PS5. Heck, PlayStation Physical Media has been awful since PS3. Wasn't too crazy over PS2's or XBOX(Original) either, once game cases transitioned into DVD cases. Wii's weren't too shabby, i actually liked them for their time, but not anymore. Video Game Physical Media became a lot less interesting and bland once PS2, GameCube & XBOX landed imo. Even N64 cover art looked like generic crap compared to the SNES and especially NES before it.

@Tasuki I can absolutely understand that I've always loved the art for Dragon quest on the NES. I think I just have lower standards having not being into physical for so long, I only started picking up physical games with the release of the PS5 so maybe It'll wear off.

@WaveBoy
I don't mind modern playstation I'm just glad they stopped with that weird spider-man text from the PS3. The PS1 had some banging art though SotN comes to mind for example.

@sixrings
I'm not talking game key carts, I'm talking normal carts with the games lol

And you did move the goal posts to start talking about Sony. It's fine. Everybody does it, no worries.

One thing that has really made me question still buying physical Switch 2 games is the red game case. I always leaned toward physical when a game included a reversible box art. But now that the game case is red, you almost can't see the reversible box art whatsoever, totally ruining the experience of opening up a game case and taking a moment to appreciate the interior box art. Pokemon games for instance have phenomenal reversible cover art, typically featuring an artwork of the whole region. ACNH, BOTW, FFXII and many more all had phenomenal reversible cover art. And it will be ruined by the ugly red plastic moving forward.

I've looked online to see the Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza game cases, and the interior box art is almost unrecognizable behind the red plastic. That confirmed my intent to opt for the digital Switch 2 bundle, and I'm still not excited to buy DKB. And I'm not really sure how eager I am to buy any other Switch 2 game physical because of this.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake is one exception, where they advertised a beautiful reversible cover art that doubles as a second box art. The reversible cover art fixes all of the Switch 2's woes, from that long red banner on the top to the bloated fine print on the bottom. Makes me really hope Square Enix continues to feature great reversible box art for the rest of their physical releases, including FFTactics.

@rallydefault I think whoever goes digital first the other two are going to be ecstatic to not be the bad guys but then to follow suit.

I understand physical media is a bigger thing in some areas. But you have to keep making cards which are increasingly expensive. At a certain point I don’t even know if it’s doable. And even though some people say they will quit gaming once it’s all digital I think all these companies are happy to call that bluff.

Again at one point Nintendo wouldn’t charge for online. Then they did. They said they would only ship a complete game. Then they added dlc. Now they add dlc months after a game is released. It seems Nintendo is willing to do exactly what the other companies are willing to do. They just do it last.

The prices don’t make me cancel my purchases but make me much more selective and buy a lot less. This is an actual blessing because I already have a massive amount of games and movies taking up limited space and buying less games will actually save me more money even though the game prices have gone up.