Is buying disc better?

Is it better to buy the discs or download the game? Because in my opinion you get the same thing in both cases because sooner or later the system or the games will fail and you will lose your games... Also discs tend to crowd your space and get dirty.

@hyksiu: Yes, buying on disc FOR CONSOLES is obviously better for the consumer.

It seems like this question is asked every week...

Corporations LOVE digital. It saves them money on paying $12-$15 to retailers, it saves them money printing a case, disc, and booklet. It saves them money having to SHIP product to stores, they don't have to worry about USED games...and they charge the full $60 with less price drops than retailers offer!!!! No way would I want to support that model unless I was the working for the corporation.

I WANT TO PREFACE BY STATING I HAVE INCREDIBLY FAST INTERNET. My internet DL speed has nothing to do with my principles on this matter though as I'll explain below:

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It seems like I answer this every week. Physical retail Disc BY A LANDSLIDE.

You get better deals in stores due to things like physical shelf space and overstock and you avoid horrible issues like what happened with MasterChief Collection pre-loaders for example.

The biggest issue though is I like to be able to Lend my games, Borrow games, Gift my games when I'm done, Trade my games, or even Sell my games in the future. Plus, I'm a collector. Why would I want a DD copy as a collector? Digital is worthless as a collection piece. I don't want digital comics or digital baseball cards for the same reasons.

Digital sucks save for one thing, convenience. That's all DD offers, but the trade offs are clearly not worth it. You spend more $$$, you get less product (case, disc, instructions, art, etc), and if you don't want it anymore, you are stuck with digital download since you can't give DD game away. You can delete it...what a waste.

You like Gamefly or renting games? If DD takes over, you can kiss that goodbye and the winner again is corporations.

Nah, I don't buy online games if there are physical copies. I like to be able to sell my games if I need to, or give them to friends and family. Or trade them. Can't do that with digital.

If consoles go the way of DD-DRM-ONLY in 20 years, I will become a 100% PC gamer. No point in consoles at that point imo as the one saving grace to me is the lack of DRM. PC gaming offers far more value per game, but you have to deal with pesky DD games and DRM. If they bring that to consoles, I'm going full PC.

What happens when Wii/Wii U's Nintendo Network, PS3/4's PSN, and Xbone's Xbox Live Service goes down to support the WiiWiiU, PS5/6, and Xbox 4/5? That's going to happen at some point. When the services no longer support old consoles (current gen and last gen) what happens to the DD games you deleted to make room for other DD games? If you bought the physical games, there is no worries. As a gamer and collector thinking in the LONG-TERM, it's actually more convenient to be able to install your older PS4/Xbone games whenever YOU want to and not have to be concerned about having to RE-download them on a service, especially if that service is going defunct in the future.

I'm going to find one of my old posts and save me some time! :)

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As a collector and consumer who likes the ability to LEND/BORROW/TRADE/SELL/COLLECT/GIFT my games, the answer is a physical, hardcopy of the game...for ANY CONSOLE game that offers physical.

For any games that are released in RETAIL PHYSICAL form on consoles, I'll always buy the console versions. Digital Copies should be cheaper. The greedy companies have us store their game's on our HDDs (Last gen consoles especially), these companies save money not paying the retail middlemen royalties, they save money not shipping the game, they save money having us transport and download the game with our bandwidth (using our data caps!), they save money not printing on a Blu-Ray disc, they save money on not having to print a manual, and they save money not having to create a case with artwork, and they save money not having a potential used game making it's way to the market. THE COMPANIES WIN with every Digital Copy they sell, and consumers lose. Someone might proclaim, but Digital is the future! Well, guess what? That future isn't today and right now we have a better offering with non-DRM copies of physical console games to choose from.

One major reason I buy consoles and games is the lack of DRM. I own four gaming PCs and I use them mostly for exclusives and super cheap, on sale DD games. If I see a multiplat, I buy it on console the console version has no DRM and I am free to collect the game for later. Pass to my kids. Lend my games to friends and families with ease. Gift my games to my friends/family if I don't like the game or I'm done with it. Trade my games with friends/family for other games. Trade my games with companies or internet. Sell my games to friends/family/internet/companies. I am a PC gamer. I am a console gamer. If consoles go the way of DD-DRM-ONLY in 20 years, I will become a 100% PC gamer.

Right now, consoles big advantage is non-DRM physical copies of games, and I'm not about to throw that away for convenience or being lazy. If I really want to be lazy, I can buy a console physical copy off Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Gamestop, etc from the comfort of my home.

YET these companies charge us the same price as RETAIL PHYSICAL COPIES?...and we LOSE consumer rights like LENDING/BORROWING/TRADING/SELLING/COLLECTING/GIFTING/RENTING the game? There is no incentive at all to justify a digital copy other than it's merely convenient. You give up too much and you pay too much and the companies laugh all the way to the bank. No thank you. Not to mention one day in the future Xbox Live for Xbone will be shut off and when those Xbone servers go down, so does support for Xbone digital games. They will release an Xbone 2 or Xbox 4 or whatever. They can't keep supporting ancient platforms forever. Why would I subject myself to corporate overlords when I don't have to? Why would I give up my rights to sell my games? Why would I pay more money for less? None of those problems are an issue with physical console games...which by the way many of these physical games I bought gain value over time, which won't happen with Digital copies. Case in point my Starcraft copy on PC vs. my physical starcraft copy on N64 (My N64 copy is a collector's item now worth $$$!). Same for my copy of Diablo 1 on PC vs. my physical copy of Diablo 1 on Playstation. My physical copies I've been offered over a $100 or more for these old console physical games. Those are two examples and I have many games worth a pretty penny. Thank god for physical copies.

None of this was meant to be offensive. Just a breakdown on why DD on consoles is bad for the industry and consumers.

Digital

I don't waste my time with physical.

Also companies save less than 3 bucks by doing digital and that's usually negated by the zero tax you spend on the digital game.

I just buy discs the only Digital game I own is dying light

Most of my games are digital purchases, I find it to be easier.

I like physical copies, but that doesn't mean that I don't purchase digital, from my prev gen I only own one digital PS3 game, the rest is physical; X360, mostly digital; Wii I only own 2 physical games, the rest ( like 80 or so ) are all digital.

Whatever tickles your fancy.

Depends on the price point, I usually stick with 20$ and lower digital purchases and games on sale. The rest I still prefer retail for a simple reason of getting a decent value back when I trade certain games in. Lately however, any major RPG I tend to pick up digitally since I don't trade in that genre and I get a excellent value in both longevity and content. Everything else however.

The only time I buy digital is when it's a game that was never released on disc and it's dirt cheap (i.e. 5 bucks or less).

There's just no real incentive to buy games digitally. Given the size of games and the fact that neither Microsoft nor Sony have made any real effort to improve download speeds, it's always faster to drive to a store and buy a physical copy. Digital is, at best, the same price of a physical copy and, after a few months, still full price while stores mark down physical copies to clear shelf space or have sales just to get you in the door in the hopes that, while you're there, you'll also buy some full price items. You can't trade, loan or sell digital copies - a pretty big deal for people who rely on those options to play more games than they could otherwise afford to buy. And, with digital, there's the ever-present concern of hard drive space, because even a 2TB drive isn't all that spacious if you're buying everything digitally and most games are around 30GB +/-.

What's the down side to physical copies? Clutter? I don't mind having a few bookcases devoted to shelving my collection of games. It hardly clutters my game room and, personally, I like having the collection on display; in-game trophies aren't nearly as impressive as a wall lined with the carcasses of games I've beaten.

Adults = digital

Children = physical

I'm going to go at that last part, the clutter. Now yeah when you're 12 and your game collection is important in who you are and you also don't have that many games it's great to keep them out. You only have a few bookshelves? That's great then you're either under the age of 15 or a person who doesn't play games that often.

If you started with games about 7 or 8 by the time you reach age 25 you have almost two decades of games around. Now let's see, in the average year maybe someone gets about what? 35 games? So there's just under 600 games but then you have to throw in all the bargain bin games you get, let's go with another 12? So there's another 200. By age 25 you have around 800 games. Every 5 years you get another 225 games. By the time you're 40 you have 1400 games or more.

That's not "clutter"

That's not even counting the whole collector's editions that take up even more space.

To the downloading that's insane, I have 50/50 and it takes between 20 mins to an hour to download a game and with so many games having pre download it's a non issue.

Hard drive space is a straw man's argument, a 2TB drive lets you hold 38 50gig games and have room for the OS and saves.

The games you have go everywhere you do, have the manual at all times, you don't pay tax, are ready to go at the press of a finger, and you can lend the games.

I didn't bring up fire, theft, or moving as well.

It doesn't matter which you go with. You're getting the same product, just in different forms. I go with physical because most of the time I can find a physical copy for less than the digital version. But if there's a good sale going on, I'll go ahead and buy the download version. And it's nice that it's quicker to install the physical version as you don't have to download a massive file, though I can see the convenience of having all your games stored on your system. Still, as far as the PS4 goes, I'm looking at using the default HDD for as long as possible and that's going to be much easier to accomplish when I can delete older game installs that can be much quicker to re-install if I have the physical version of it if I'm wanting to return to that game later.

On console? Physical. That's down to the near-static pricing of digital games. It's really strange how little they change on PSN/XBL.

I still go physical on most games as I don't like to buy a 70$CAD game digital also downloading a game that huge would blow my downloading limit and the speed as nothing to do with it as it took less than 3h to download TLOU but I got a 30$CAD upcharge because it blew my limit

I go physical, mainly because PS store in Australia is more expensive than the physical copies 95% of the time. It's a weird world where digital costs more.

@hyksiu: Physical>Digital

I certainly hope that digital prices fall and then I will buy all the stuff digital...

I'm 100% digital with my media intake. I'm simply too lazy to switch discs XD

When it comes to PS4, buying physical is generally better because the prices on PSN are ridiculous! Plus, I like having a collection

disc > digital

Personally, I prefer retail versions just to save on bandwidth and HDD space. Though we are stuck with digital content regardless, of which you prefer, since publishers don't care if a game functions or not when it hits shelves. Consoles now have the PC mentality that they can always fix it with a patch.

So, the only real benefit of Disk is that you can save a bit on HDD space and/or download bandwidth. And you can always resell a disk. At least. for now. (not the case with most PC retail content, though. Which I won't be surprised if Xbox Live and PSN adopt with their next consoles....if there is to be a next.

As for PSN/Steam prices... I only buy from them when the stuff is on sale. It's really the price that dictates which of the two version I end up getting. And when it comes to new releases that I just can't wait for.... well. Retail is the way I go with those, due to the downtime of downloading the whole game versus downloading a day one patch....

As to why digital rarely cost less than retail? It's political... PSN doesn't want to messup their retailers, so they don't under cost them. Even though they easily could if they wanted to.... It's just not in their best interest to do so... So we just have to be satisfied with the weekly sales and random weekend deals, as they come and go.

Yes buying the Disc is better. You can always sell the game after you are done with it. You can lend it to your friend, Return the game if you don't like it. Within the 7 day limit. Trade it in for store credit if you wish.

So having a game on Disc is better than a download version. You just have more options and don't use up space on your HDD. 500GB sounds like a lot, but it really isn't 500GB goes by fast. Plus you can always delete the game and reinstall it later. But if your account is tried to your console like the Wii and Wii U if your console dies or your HDD is corrupted. You S.O.L This is only a Nintendo problem but still/

I always try to buy the Disc, If possible

I like Physical Discs I love the fresh smell when opening the case for the first time, I love showing off my games collections to everyone, I love the fact I have the freedom to lend my games out or sell them when the time is right, Most of the time the Disc is cheaper than the Digital game in the UK.

Digital the only positive thing for it is, I don't need to get up off my lazy behind and put a game in the drive. the downside to Digital is you only buy the right to play the game, you rent the lincense off them, they could take that game away from you or ban you from playing it if the company went boost or Sony decided to pull the plug due to games being sync to your PSN Account, this of course is highly unlikely but it could happen. Plus here in the UK Digital games cost alot more than phyical discs and isn't worth my money, They can be anywhere from £5 more or even on some near £15 more just for the digital release, and Once you have that game, you cannot sell it, meaning if your a person who moves on to other games and never goes back then you have just wasted alot of money without any return on it

Physical disc every time for me, HDDs fail plus i like looking at a collection of games in their boxes its very satisfying.

I have 56 digital games and 77 disc games. There are pros and cons for both. For me, it pretty much comes to their price but if it was the same for both, I would prefer the disc. Here are their pros.

Digital games?

Pros: Less clutter, quick access, MANY digital games that are not available on disc, great deals with PSN on occasion that are even better than retailers and ebay

Disc games?

Pros: Better competitive deals overall, option to sell, nice case for collection, save hard drive space, take the game over to other homes

Depends who for. Digital is better for the corporations... Physical is better in the long run for consumers. (Freedom to Sell / Lend / Trade forever). With digital your options are limited.

Plus, depending on where you live. For example the PSN store prices in the UK are ridiculous, especially considering how cheap amazon uk sell certain games.