The Digital Games Fallacy

What is wrong with digital games? Blogger Arthanis goes over the pros and cons of the current game digital distribution market.

[Griever]

The biggest problem with digital games is that if a game turns out to be bad, you cannot get rid of it and recover some of your money. You also cannot sell your old games that you have played to death and put the money in to something else. By the end of the gen, you lose a hell of a lot of money for buying digital games.
The best thing about digital games is that you cannot lose or break it. It is always there for you to download whenever you want to. I like that about digital games. If you are buying a game which you are going to keep then there is nothing wrong with going digital.
However, I like to have something physical to show for my money. Also when friends or cousins come over, I can easily show them what I got. It also looks good on the shelf.

[MysticStrummer]

Digital games should also be noticeably cheaper than their disc based counterparts, from day one.

[Griever]

I completely agree. Since there are no manufacturing, storage and shipment costs digital games should be cheaper. Unfortunately, that is not possible because it would ruin the business of retailers as everyone starts to buy digital. Furthermore, the retailers may reprise buy refusing to stock products from the relevant company. Making digital games cheaper will create quite an industry wide mess.

[TheSaint]

This is the main thing for me, when I can buy the game for £60 online or £45 in a store, there is something inherently wrong.

[blackblades]

A real gamer don't get rid or sell there games, also a smart gamer would get a game on sale which buying on sale would be cheaper the buying then selling.

[Griever]

My friend, that definiton of "real gamer" would exclude 95% of the gaming market. lol. All of us sell or tradein our consoles or games at some point. At least, the smart ones do so that not all of their hard-earned money goes in to the dumpster. For example, my PS3 was 3 years old, I had played almost all the games and it was on the verge of death with a broken HDMI port. I sold it for $200 and sold the games with it as well since they were not backwards compatible with the PS4 anyway. So does that makes me a "fake gamer" or a wise gamer? I recovered $300 from my old nearly dead console and games. That is the main benefit of physical games.

As for buying at sales, you cannot consider others stupid for buying sooner. Millions of people buy games day one. Somebody has to take the step and buy day one or out of sales period so the prices can fall gradually. There would be no sales or even the gaming industry if everybody started to wait for sales to buy.

[Scatpants]

All this time I thought a "real gamer" did whatever the f%ck he wanted. Thanks for correcting me.

[aLucidMind]

A real gamer enjoys video games; nothing more, nothing less. While I'm the type who keeps all my games, that doesn't make me or anyone like me a "real gamer"; it just means I like to horde my games.

A smart gamer would also trade in their games. You can buy new game, beat it, then trade it in for $30-$40 at Gamestop or Best Buy... then put it towards their next game which is essentially only $25-$35 after taxes.

A smart gamer would then, if the game they traded interests them, use sales in combination with price matching and +xx% trade in value deals to make a profit to further fund their hobby and passion.

The only time I would claim someone isn't a "real gamer", is when they claim the definition is anything beyond enjoying gaming as a real hobby. So I must ask, are you a "real gamer"? If so, stop trying to make "gamer" into a clique when it isn't; it is a label used to show a level of passion and/or love in your hobby.

[TheSaint]

Thats a fallacy that you just invented.

[Razputin]

You are not 5 years old. How dumb and irresponsible do you have to be to lose or break a game.

Only on some rather extreme circumstance where you slip and fall hurting yourself and breaking the game disk or something do I see this as plausible but even then there is a slim chance.

For the PS4 and X1 Blu-Ray discs are thicker and denser than DVDs and CDs so I don't see this happening easily.

The only problem with physical is that if you wanted to play a game in 30-50 years from now and your console actually works, the laser may not work or be as strong to read the disc.

[SilentNegotiator]

I accidentally disagreed.

I agree, it's not easy to break or scratch a blu-ray disc. And in 30+ years, you'll be able to emulate any game from today.

[blackblades]

Stolen which happened to me a couple times. Nature seen that plenty of times to someone else. Kids breaking it which happened a lot to my friend. You say it's not easy to break but a lot of his disc broke.

[Razputin]

Because of simple irresponsibility. I'm sorry but the argument is moot.

Why on earth would a kid be near a grown mans games/discs.

I have 3 nieces and not a single one goes near my games and if they do, they know not to mess with them.

[Scatpants]

One thing I like about digital games is if you make a friend's PS4 your primary PS4 and they make your PS4 their primary you can share games no matter where you are.

[LordDhampire]

The bad thing about digital is a fixed xbox one harddrive

[isarai]

The thing i dislike about digital is that it takes ownership out of your control. If i have it physical, then no matter what i still have and can play that game, but go digital and there are so many factors out of your control that can lead to you losing your entire digital library.

[SilentNegotiator]

I love the KotH reference.