I’ve been around from the very start of the gaming world with the Atari. I’ve touched on this before, but my neighbour introduced me to his Atari 2600 and I’ve been with games (on and off) forever and a day!
Over that time I’ve seen things come and go, success and failure and a massive increase in the gaming industry. It’s incredible really and unfortunately, rather expensive. You see, games (especially 2nd hand) are cheap to buy, but as there’s been so many of them and the same games are ported over to each generation, you have a tendency to buy them again and again. Well everyone’s playing them right?
I absolutely cannot quantify how many games I’ve bought, sold and amassed over the time period of 40 so years, but I can tell you it’s a lot. And in doing so a lot has been spent as well. Not only that, but the consoles themselves have been rather expensive too. Take the PS5 for instance, £500+, PSVR 2 £500+, Xbox Series X over £400+…….. That’s not to mention £400 for the Ps3 in its time…. On it goes. It’s an expensive hobby when you break it down. But now there’s a new issue. Digital games!
“Why?”you might be asking. Well I’ve recently noticed a trend simply by looking through the eshops of relative consoles. Have you looked at the digital prices of PS3 games on that store? Then there’s the cost that never seems to fluctuate on Nintendo’s flagship the Switch. The AAA games never seem to go down in price even though they are digital copies. No boxes, no art work, no physical presence and no resale value at all. You simply now ‘rent’ the games rather than own them. Let’s be straight here, a physical game is yours to do what you want with it and technically can be played for ever as long as the hardware survives, but a digital game is only there until they decide it’s available. When it’s not they turn off the servers and that game is gone forever.
It really worried me. On my Switch I have (not own) over 100 digital games, some really cheap and a few expensive ones. Now remember that the 3ds shop has now shut down. Nothing is available to buy anymore. I’m quite sure that eventually you won’t be able to get your paid games off their servers. Will I ever get time to even play all the games I’ve bought over the time…..no! Why did I buy them? Well it’s the age old scenario of feeling like I’m missing out. You see, all the games I’ve bought digitally were all on sale. Massive price drops have suckered me into effectively collecting them. My backlog is way too big, in fact I’ve had to stop buying them because I’ve simply too many and not enough time to play them. Remember I have multi consoles with 100s of games to play. Some are still in their original wrappers from a few years ago.
So the topic of this blog……. I like both digital and physical games. I see the benefits of both if I’m honest with myself. Digital because it’s mega convenient having all my games (or what I can fit on my hard drives) in one place ready to boot up at a moment’s notice (ha that’s a joke, when did something modern just “boot up instantly?”) . I love physical games because I like to collect and have these things in my home. Which do I prefer? Well……
It’s physical games. I love searching for them, I love owning them, I love the art work, I love seeing the games I’ve collected. Non of that is evident with digital games. They literally just represent a thumbnail on your harddrive and that’s it. No art work, no disc, no box, no soul! Nothing!
Over the years I’ve turned into a retro gamer, in fact my YouTube channel is called RETRO GAMING MAD( link below) and on that channel I play everything (sometimes new games too) from Atari to ps4 and Switch. I really love the old games on the Gamecube and the Ps2 mostly. I’m also fortunate in that these are available in shops currently, but as the need for digital games continue to take over newer games will eventually die in physical format and thus disappear forever. The retro market will get smaller as the collectors suck up all the older discs and shops selling games will eventually go away. I think that will be a shame.
But is it the end? Well if you look back at the market place for music and videos I’d have to say no it’s not. Why? Well the end of the vinyl records was predicted yet I walk into my local Hmv and there are a ton in today’s market. I look at the dvd film market yet I see, again, a ton of new releases in HMV. It’s the same with books. It was predicted that E Reader would destroy the paper of books yet the e reader seems to be the one that has disappeared and books are plentiful! Society has a habit of falling out of favour with new tech very quickly and quite often reverts back to what works best. Will this happen with gaming? I absolutely have no idea at all, but I do know that not everyone in the gaming world has even a connection to the net let alone a decent download speed. That’s a little bit of a problem for the gaming community. I’d like to think that both will continue onwards, physical and digital to please all current gamers. Will it? Who knows? I do know one thing though, having a digital only club loses jobs, costs more for the product and will probably see masses of games delisted and disappear forever. Now that isn’t a rosy future is it?
Think I’ll stick with my retro games.
Here’s more I’ve written about retro gaming and click the YouTube icon above to see my YouTube channel.
Retro Gaming Mad 