As PlayStation and Xbox move toward a more digital future, Nintendo could become the last major platform where physical games still truly matter.
As PlayStation and Xbox move toward a more digital future, Nintendo could become the last major platform where physical games still truly matter.
Physical media is not the real issue here. I’m puzzled why it is the focus of attention, and I don’t know if the explanation is just stupidity or intentional detraction.
If console games could be downloaded, stored on to media you own, then installed again from that media, this wouldn’t be a problem. That’s the real issue here.
It’s been a good while since games bought as physical media, don’t come with significant day 1 patches. So, doing away with physical copies of the games have absolutely zero impact. What does, and has been an issue for years, is that you cannot archive games you have bought, with the changes you can expect as part of that purchase.
What’s the solution? Closest I can think of is GOG.
So, different people have different requirements.
From the preservation point of view, you are correct, but there are also some people who buy physical because of the ability to resell. I know many people like that, they can only afford new games by reselling the old ones.
You’re right.
Reason why I oversimplified the problem is because the solution is almost the same. If they didn’t care about DRM, it is exactly the same. A consumer friendly DRM would be one where a unique IDs follow a copy, and a physical copy you bought at the store (used or not) is the same kind of thing as what you would back up. Then, whatever standardised mechanism to validate this “key/license” on consoles, is allow-on-fail. If license service is down because the publisher doesn’t see a incentive, it should be a free for all. (Though arguably, this is better handled on the console level, but that’s mostly a technical difference)
End result is: you can always back up your games. You can sell your games (which upon them installing, invalidates the previous install, but that’s fair). The edge cases here where you remain offline, or how to deal with multiple copies in multiple places using the same key, so that resellers can resell the same copy multiple times, etc, are relatively easy problems to solve, especially when you give consumers the benefit of the doubt.
Piracy is mostly motivated by inconvenience. When it’s motivated by lack of money… they’re not exactly losing out on a paying demographic.
They can very easily deny you that unless either the buyer or seller keep their console offline.
Let’s simply fight for the actual right of resale even on completely digital purchases.
It is a compromise because all the other options are worse.
A lot of studios want some form of DRM, so a GOG model won’t work for them. For various reasons, an offline DRM scheme is considered to be superior to an online DRM scheme.
The only real solution for presenvation is 🦜🏴☠️⚔️… I mean… Asking companies gently to re-release their games on their updated digital stores :)
Microslop just announced the overview of a program where you can digitize your physical collection. Just shitting in the wind here, but I have heard that, for a while now, Xbox discs have had unique identifiers. So, they’ll take that disc license and lock it to your account so you can play your disc games digitally without need for the disc in the drive. Whether it downloads the data or installs from the disc, I don’t know. Plans also state sharing will be included where you send the license(?) to a friend. Details are vague at the moment.
This still has the same problems as digital though if it’s tied to an account. If your account is hacked or banned for any reason, your games are gone. If it gets tied to your account, no resale or lending. This is a band-aid solution to a problem they are currently creating. Maybe they figure something out for lending, but it’s still a shitty solution for a problem that doesn’t need to exist.