Pros and Cons of going to an all-digital game library

[ODogg]

Well after just over a year of being all-digital I think I'm qualified to give a good pros and cons of digital versus physical discs. Now I own both Xbox One and PS4 but this little article is not really console specific but I do much more gaming in general on my PS4.

If you dig up some old threads from when the systems launched I was pretty much against going digital. Mostly because, in the past on the PC I had been burnt badly by buying digital and then later not having a physical copy when my system crashed or I moved or etc etc. I just didn't like the idea of not having a tangible product in hand.

That perspective has changed.

The biggest reason I decided to go ahead and try digital came down to the fact that I had two of each system, one upstairs and one downstairs, and I did not want to be running back and forth retrieving discs. Yes laziness is a great motivator and god forbid I have to get up and walk up the stairs to get a game.

I believe my first digital game that I really utilized a lot was Madden 15. Although I bought games digitally prior to that the Madden game was the first game I saw fit to play a lot, both downstairs and upstairs, and let me tell you, the ability to just fire up the PS4, start Madden immediately and play really got me hooked. That led me down the path and I've been mostly all digital every since.

However, it's not all sunshine and puppies....there are still some things I've begun to notice that I don't like...but I still think I'll remain mostly digital. So without further adieu here are the pros and cons. I'll list the cons first so that the last thing you take from this is the pros

CONS

1. Let's start with the obvious. You're gonna need a bigger hard drive and that costs money and takes time to install. Now I suppose you could delete and reinstall all the time but I must say, my PS4 was filled within 6 months and that was when I was still buying physical copies. So upgrading, at least in my opinion, the hard drive in your system is something you should do anyways so to me this one isn't that big of a deal but I know to some of you out there you may not want to incur the expense.

2. I can no longer sell my games back to a store. I also can no longer gift or loan out my games to my nephew or my friend Mike. My nephew doesn't even have a next-gen system so it's not huge right now but my prediction is that this Christmas he will. Normally I'd have about 5 or 6 sports games to give to him but now I have...well pretty much none. My friend Mike has a lot of kids so I usually just give him my old games that my nephew doesn't want so his kids will have something to do and get some use out of games that I no longer want. Again, I don't have much to give to him at all because of now being mostly digital.

3. I don't get the good pre-order deals like physical copy buying people do. Not many games offer much in the way of pre-order, or at least not like stores. I pre-ordered Madden 16 and all I got was some very generic theme. And with the Best Buy Gamers Club Unlocked now $30 for 2 years, I wonder if it's time to consider going back to physical at least for some games that I may want to resell or give away when done playing.

4. There's no way to cancel if you do see a better deal on a physical copy. Astoundingly, at least in Sony's case, you cannot even cancel to pre-order the same game collector edition at a higher price. I pre-ordered Mortal Kombat and then a week later saw they had the version that was normally $99.99 for $89.99 and decided I wanted to upgrade. I called Sony and was told they couldn't do it. Mind you I wasn't even cancelling but trying to spend MORE MONEY and they didn't want to let me do it. After asking to speak to a supervisor though they did go ahead and cancel my order (event though their policy says strictly 100% no cancels on digital pre-orders). I understand why they don't want people to cancel but to upgrade? Come on...

5. If you upgrade or change your drive it takes forever to re-download everything. Yes I know the games are the same size as physical but it's much quicker to physically install from media versus downloading unless maybe you have Google as your ISP, which I don't.

6. You aren't going to ever be able to get lucky and score the game early. I have fond memories of chasing down NCAA and Madden early and have many stories to tell about doing so (as in walking in the store up north and meeting FLIGHTWHITE, LOL) but this is sort of a moot point with everything going digital.

7. This one is related to #6....maybe I'm old school but I've been gaming since 1978 and I sort of miss the UPS or FedEx Truck watch. I was just coming home from getting some groceries now and saw a FedEx truck in front of my neighbors house and my first instinct was "I wonder if there are any Madden 16's on there by mistake??". There's just something about seeing that big ol' Brown (or white) truck pull up and know he's bringing you Christmas in a small package.

8. If they take the server down and/or no longer offer the game then you're pretty much screwed. I must say, this one doesn't affect me much really at all because I move on when new games come out. However I realize there's a large amount of people still playing games from 2006 or whatever. Those people may be out of luck if their favorite title is removed from the "cloud" and they want to re-download. Or simply play if the game must connect to a server.

PROS

1. Let's start with the obvious as to why most of us buy digital. Convenience. It's very easy to just fire up the PS4, scroll to a title and immediately start the game. Yes I know a lot of you physical media only people have heard that a million times but until you actually do it a bunch you cannot appreciate just how easy it is. I will say this, even if you don't plan to go digital, you should at least look at your #1 played game, we all have one, and that should be digital.

2. Speed of starting a game. Related to #1. No more hunting a disc. Looking everywhere for it. Realizing your idiot friend placed Madden 15 in the FIFA 15 box. Or worse....

3. Losing a disc forever. I loved Skyrim for the 360. Absolutely LOVED IT. Until one day when I went to play it and it had gone Jimmy Hoffa on me and completely and utterly disappeared. I searched the entire house for hours. I looked everywhere. I couldn't even find the case! Now if I buy the next Skyrim for my PS4 digitally then I won't ever have to worry about my Skyrim just deciding to go MIA on me.

4. If you own two systems, as I do, it makes managing your game library so much easier to simply buy digital, have it related to your profile and then install on both systems.

5. It's high tech. Let's face it, the future is in the cloud, whether we like it or not. Fumbling around with a bunch of discs is like being in 1993. It's pretty damned cool when you have someone come over and just whip around showing them games without having to be swapping out discs like we're in the PS2 era or whatever.

6. Pre-loading games in full, ready to play at midnight. This is a really nice feature to have, no waiting for install.
So there you have it, the pros and cons. While there are more cons above on the list the pros take the win as they are larger in my opinion. However, I do have some concern about the pricing and the companys failure to price more competitively.

I mean if you think about it with no distribution, no disc and no game box in all reality games should be $49.99 online and $59.99 in stores. That may make some folks switch. Until a lot of people see a real incentive to change, and that is usually monetary based, we will not see an across the board adoption of going all digital for your games library. And that's a real shame I think because, although there are definitely issues that need to be addressed, going all-digital is the right way to go..

[87Birdman]

One more I would add to a pro is if the disc reader goes bad you can still play your games. This is sorta what prompted me to upgrade as my 360 disc reader went bad a few months before the new systems came out so it became a Netflix box and any digital games I had.

And to piggy back on that no scratched disc. If the disc can't be read you can't play and with kids and my son someone's leaves his game out. With digital if there is an error you can usually just redownload it.

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[LowerWolf]

I see it mentioned fairly frequently that you need a bigger HD going digital, but since you're installing the full game even from a disc now, don't they take up the same space?

Anyway, I really like the idea of digital, but until there is a monetary incentive, I'll stick with discs. I get 20 percent off up front (GCU) and then can trade a game for credit on the back end. That overrides the convenience of digital for me.

[SEGA_LOYAL_FAN]

Con # 6 is definitely something i will miss. Now that i'm in my early 30's i dont like to run around from mom & pop shop to get the early goods. All i do to counter that is call out sick the day of the game release and just play all day long.

Pro # 6 is my favorite thing to do with digital copies...this goes back to calling sick again hehehe.

You're correct though. I don't understand why they charge $59.99 for the digital version of the game when it's costing them less for distribution. Unfortunately it also carries into digital video distribution since they keep the buy prices the same for bluray and digital copy along with charging extra for "Ultra HD" digital copy...lol

[Gilley]

As soon as the prices for digital games drop like physical games do, I'll likely make the complete switch over to digital.

[RockinDaMike]

Going digital doesn't benefit me at the moment because I live out in the middle of the ocean with cell phone Internet and limited bandwidth.

I hope the next console doesn't go all digital because that will shut out a big part of the world. Hopefully by then my island will have fiber optics line laid out.

I totally understand going digital though, I probably would have if I was back in the states. The fact of eliminating a potential mechanical failure with discs makes it worth it for me.




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[mestevo]

Pro: I can play almost 80 titles from anywhere in my house via Surface or my gaming PC from my Xbox. It's the remote play ability I was hoping for from Sony but the control scheme, profile management and general plarform deprecation. Those aside, the PS4 offers a similar convenience...

I'm fine paying a premium for the convenience. That's not enough for everyone though and that's OK.

[redsox4evur]

One big con you missed, unless I missed it, and probably did. But you can't trade in or return your digital copy. For instance, you pre-order Madden 16 think it's trash, if you have a physical copy you can take it back to GameStop, BB, Walmart, Target, wherever you bought it from and get your full money back. But with digital you are stuck with the game no matter what. Also going along with this you can't get the good trade in deals. Like with Madden 16, you can get it with GCU for like $8.

Also Mike, I can't see all-digital gaming happening for awhile because of guys like you. The ones that don't have the best internet and if they went all-digital they would eliminate a whole entire fanbase and maybe even the bigger fan base.