AgentxofxChaos
Agent of [H] Chaos
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2002
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- 4,212
Yeah I'm aware. I did it with Quantum Break, it took a while but still not nearly as long as having to download Doom, or BF1.
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Why Are Physical Software Sales Still a Thing?
- Thread starter Megalith
- Start date
Yeah I'm aware. I did it with Quantum Break, it took a while but still not nearly as long as having to download Doom, or BF1.
Hagrid
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2006
- Messages
- 9,163
I have not bought a physical piece of software in a long time. That is so archaic!! Just like me.
Yeah, unless you get disc rot and it goes bad (which has happened to me multiple times on store-bought stamped disc copies). The bottom line is the only way to ensure your stuff stays preserved is to have more than one copy of it
I used to buy physical because it's faster for someone who don't have a credit card, and it's faster for "at the whim" purchases.
My most recent "at the whim" purchase was C&C3 Kane's Edition, and I still have the key for it too.
Unfortunately I moved out, and it's basically impossible for me to find any Physical English games, and we don't do refunds for opened CD/DVD's so I have to use Steam/GoG/etc for it, not to mention that stores don't always carry games that are old, AND Ironically it's often cheaper on Steam than physical.
Plus, one of the biggest merits of digital distribution is that you can redownload them at anytime without thinking twice. I don't delete stuff unless I know I have an alternative access to it (disc images for example) somewhere else, the older the game gets, the more PITA it is to get them back. Physical copies require manual maintainence (having the CD/DVD's imaged and stored in a safe location for example), so I usually just keep the code, since that's pretty much the proof of ownership.
I also don't sell games, ever. I buy games to keep, so lack of a physical copy doesn't bother me too much.
My most recent "at the whim" purchase was C&C3 Kane's Edition, and I still have the key for it too.
Unfortunately I moved out, and it's basically impossible for me to find any Physical English games, and we don't do refunds for opened CD/DVD's so I have to use Steam/GoG/etc for it, not to mention that stores don't always carry games that are old, AND Ironically it's often cheaper on Steam than physical.
Plus, one of the biggest merits of digital distribution is that you can redownload them at anytime without thinking twice. I don't delete stuff unless I know I have an alternative access to it (disc images for example) somewhere else, the older the game gets, the more PITA it is to get them back. Physical copies require manual maintainence (having the CD/DVD's imaged and stored in a safe location for example), so I usually just keep the code, since that's pretty much the proof of ownership.
I also don't sell games, ever. I buy games to keep, so lack of a physical copy doesn't bother me too much.
Krixon
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 21, 2015
- Messages
- 371
The only software I've bought physically in the past 5+ years is a copy of Windows 10 - and that's only because an MS-branded store in Canada was selling them on promotion for about $40~.
I have the luxury of being in an area where my internet connection is both relatively cheap (about $55/m), fast (105mb), and uncapped, so downloads are never really a problem for me. BUT, as much as I enjoy downloading purchases on steam at blazing fast speeds, there's always a nagging fear in the back of my mind that I may, for one reason or another, lose access to my steam account and, thus, thousands of dollars in software. There used to be a certain comfort knowing that I could re-install any piece of software as long as I had my disk and cd-key.
I have the luxury of being in an area where my internet connection is both relatively cheap (about $55/m), fast (105mb), and uncapped, so downloads are never really a problem for me. BUT, as much as I enjoy downloading purchases on steam at blazing fast speeds, there's always a nagging fear in the back of my mind that I may, for one reason or another, lose access to my steam account and, thus, thousands of dollars in software. There used to be a certain comfort knowing that I could re-install any piece of software as long as I had my disk and cd-key.
That used to be my thinking, until one of the discs I really wanted to replay decided to rot enough that I lost access to it, and I could not find the ISO anywhere on the net.
Which leaves me to actually prefer digital copies, rather than physical ones. With every physical media I have bought in the past few years, the very first thing I do is make an image of them ASAP, and keep the discs well kept. Where physical copies are demanded, I burn a disposable duplicate and use that only.
You could say that my original physical is now my very first backup version.
Tiburon1186
Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2007
- Messages
- 624
Well I'm comfortable now with buying PC games digitally because Steam is behind them. It's a good interface and has a library that EASILY shows what games and dlc you have in your library. Consoles do not have a library function so it's so easy to forget that you bought a game or dlc. Xbox One started having that "Ready to Install" which is a step forward but it's still no Steam library. Also digital versions of games typically do not decrease in price like physical media does. (Whodve thought, digital media with no packaging or printing costs yet it's STILL HIGHER PRICED???? - Screw that. I'll take all the extra money it took you money grubbing bastards to print the disc and box). And the physical resale market is still better than never getting ANY money back for your game.
At some point the program won't run on Windows without a ton of hassle. Then you're left with a GOG or Steam updated version which will be download only.
I went download only because of Digital/Steam Sales. Wish there were more Digital retailers, but people are lemmings. I went with D2D whenever I could. I don't want to promote Publisher direct digital too much as I can see at some point, I will not have anyone who will stand up for my ownership rights who has any clout. A digital retailer will have some. Physical can never price match digital distribution until retailers are looking to toss them out.
Well I just converted the discs to image files. Hell, GOG doesn't get around to half the stuff I own.
I'm with you on actual ownership. Too many people are still in the past where they think physical = run whenever you want and digital = have to authenticate / no guarantee. The reality is the lines have been completely blurred from all sides so physical and digital can mean anything as far as running your program. The only real test is: can you run your program 10 years from now, guaranteed? Plenty of physical copy games that's not true, plenty of digital copies it is. GOG you're always good, Steam ranges from being completely safe to no guarantee whatsoever. It's all a free for all.
You have to wait for the big sales. If you can wait a year or two for games you want, then only buy during sales, almost everything gets stupid cheap for digital. Typically cheaper than the total money spent going physical and reselling even. Brand new games though, not a huge difference.
TripleAgent77
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2016
- Messages
- 291
I refuse to buy music digitally. I actually want to own it. For software, I really appreciated real instruction manuals. That's probably never happening again. It can be a real pain navigating a poorly designed PDF though, smh.
burton14e7
Weaksauce
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2015
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- 91
Don't you need a physical copy of your OS or am I the only person who reformats once a year?
You do, but those can be distributed digitally if needed, it only needs physical copy to actually install onto your system.
Basically the exact opposite of every other program.
I have found Win 10 to work better than win 7 in this regard, backwards compatibility. I haven't been able to get an over a decade old game working on 7, but worked without even trying on Win 10 for some reason.
Also, another way I see digital copies is this:
If you own physical copies of the games, if the discs rot, you should still be able to torrent the ISO's for them, because you legally own the game. Problem is that even for torrent, access to the ISO's are not guarenteed.
Digital distribution platform is one such way to ensure guarenteed access, at least for the duration of the existence of the service. Essentially I am paying them for online storage space for the backup copies of my games.
I'd love to hear more details, it's been my experience the game compatibility on older games is ALWAYS worse on a newer OS, without fail. I could run less older games on XP than I could on Win98, I could run less on Windows 7 than I could on WinXP. It's usually a semi-small percentage, but it inevitably hits a title I'm interested in. Yours would be the first case I've ever heard of the reverse being true, since I've already heard of a few titles not running on 10.
EDIT:
I actually was referring to something else in what I said earlier. What I meant was assume your system doesn't change. Can you still run the game 10 years from now? If it depends on an online server to run, you have no guarantee. If it doesn't, sure, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to run it.
If you buy a copy of Destiny or The Division, you can't be assured you'll run that game in 10 years, physical or not. If you buy a copy of The Witcher 3, sure, you should be able to run that in 10 years, digital or not.
Again, physical v. digital has becoming meaningless. If I buy a physical copy of the game where it's required to be connected to a central server in order to run, my disc copy is little more than client files, not resembling a backup in any form. It's not any different for digital. Sure, it guarantees you access via Steam, unless the game company itself shuts the servers down, then it's equally worthless, even if Steam is still up.
In modern times, pretty much the ONLY significant distinction between the two is as somebody mentioned earlier, if you have difficulty with having access to a lot of bandwidth. If you're on dial-up or have aggressive bandwidth caps, a 45GB disc makes a pretty huge difference. Everything else has become a case-by-case basis. Either one can become worthless or backed up forever, there's nothing inherit about the distribution itself anymore.
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Comixbooks
Fully [H]
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2008
- Messages
- 22,019
Physical is best along with a Strategy guide if the game is complex it almost needs one like Pillars of Eternity.
Diablo and WOW have been selling Hard copies for like 2 decades or Diablo has anyway.
Diablo and WOW have been selling Hard copies for like 2 decades or Diablo has anyway.
Todd Walter
Gawd
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- May 10, 2016
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- 634
1 BDXL disc could hold that. What's the market penetration of BluRay?
Armenius
Extremely [H]
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2014
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- 42,114
They need to switch to USB drives like Microsoft does now for retail copies of Windows.
Close to zip since no one on PC buys optical drives anymore. I keep one around to rip my Blu-ray movies and audio CDs, though.
the_servicer
2[H]4U
- Joined
- Aug 16, 2013
- Messages
- 2,094
Which would I choose? A physical copy that is mine to use however I please, or an online product that requires yet another online account and internet connection to install and activate?
What makes you think a physical copy of a game won't also require those things? Too many people here don't understand the difference between "physical" and "offline."
If I just want to play the single player campaign of Destiny, Need For Speed, The Division, The Crew, and many, many others and I buy the physical copy of the game, I have no control whatsoever. If I lose my internet connection, I can't play the single player. If my account gets hacked, I can't play the game. If the company shuts down the servers in a couple years, the disc becomes a toaster. Again, physical copies are MEANINGLESS now. What matters is if another company controls whether or not you can run your game / software
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westrock2000
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2005
- Messages
- 9,433
I put all the contents of disc 2-7 on a dual layer bluray and just use the initial install disc.
Still takes longer then 30 minutes (a bluray can read at about 15MB/s?)....especially factoring in the 10GB patch afterwards.
MrCaffeineX
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2011
- Messages
- 1,604
The packing slip / invoice being in a separate box doesn't make sense, but having recently dealt with setting up the UPS software at work, I learned that there is an optimal box size (volume) for us to ship in. Regardless of how much (weight) we put in that box it is within a dollar +/- to ship it. As a result, all of our shipments for smaller quantities will go out in larger boxes than necessary because they are cheaper for the same weight than the smaller boxes...
swatbat
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2001
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- 13,052
Depends on what it is. Software for business? I prefer physical copies that I can throw in a filing cabinet. Makes it easy to keep track of.
I've switched most of my movie and tv showing buying to digital. Still in many cases it is far cheaper to buy the physical copy so I do. I wanted to watch an episode of married with children the other day. It was 20 bucks a season to buy digitally or like 27 bucks for the entire 10 seasons or whatever it was on dvd. Umm ok I'll buy the dvds.
Steam or xbox live(on the console) work well and I don't have a problem buying digital games. Nintendo on the other hand has a policy to tell you to fuck off with every digital purchase. Their digital purchases are tied to a console and not an online account, you'd be stupid to buy digital from them in most cases. With the xbox if your console dies you sign into a new one and redownload your stuff. With nintendo if the console dies you have to send it to them for repair so they can transfer your games.
That being said digital prices in many cases are set by publishers instead of retailers and the prices can be higher in many cases. I know a few months ago I bought my brother a physical copy of the division as it was 15 bucks vs like 50 for the digital copy.
I've switched most of my movie and tv showing buying to digital. Still in many cases it is far cheaper to buy the physical copy so I do. I wanted to watch an episode of married with children the other day. It was 20 bucks a season to buy digitally or like 27 bucks for the entire 10 seasons or whatever it was on dvd. Umm ok I'll buy the dvds.
Steam or xbox live(on the console) work well and I don't have a problem buying digital games. Nintendo on the other hand has a policy to tell you to fuck off with every digital purchase. Their digital purchases are tied to a console and not an online account, you'd be stupid to buy digital from them in most cases. With the xbox if your console dies you sign into a new one and redownload your stuff. With nintendo if the console dies you have to send it to them for repair so they can transfer your games.
That being said digital prices in many cases are set by publishers instead of retailers and the prices can be higher in many cases. I know a few months ago I bought my brother a physical copy of the division as it was 15 bucks vs like 50 for the digital copy.
There isn't more details to add except for the fact that my statement is comparing a win 7 install vs a win 10 install without changing any of its hardware. I was initially as surprised as you were, since I was installing Win 10 more on a curiosity than actual necessity (it eventually turned into one when I got GoW4), but one of my old games, which refused to run on win 7 even when installing a virtual machine, ran without a hitch on Win 10.
I think people are actually comparing the Physical games of the old days and comparing to the digital versions of the newer games, when physical games already were on that path anyway.
My case in point was Fallout 3 and Red Alert 3, but eventually Red Alert 3 had its install lock reverted by a patch. Digital distribution has, at the very least, no installation limit because the ability to play the game was bound by account anyway so there is no need for an even more invasive from of DRM.
Physical medium, when DRM hits, can sometimes get the worst end of the stick, like way back when music CDs could decrease the life of a CD-player or install 3rd party DRM software that compromised your computer's security? At least Digital distribution platform has less need of it.
Sure, if you lose access to your account, you lose all your games or music, hence why I have double redundancy on my Steam account, double authentication on Steam via the App, and double authentication on my recovery email with phone number (with the app and text message not being reliant on each other to function).
What game(s) were running on 10 that didn't run on 7? I'm really curious now. I'm not trying to refute what you're saying, it's anecdotal afterall, I just literally have never heard of that happening before. I'd love to see if I can recreate it for myself.
And as for your examples, again, there's no consistency anymore. You say if your account is hacked, you lose all your games. Well if you have a GOG account and already downloaded them all, you don't lose ANY of your games. Even Steam that can hold true some of the time, depending on the game. It varies from losing them completely to none at all, it all depends on the DRM measure. I really wish we had better terminology for the difference. In my eyes, it's "Are you guaranteed to be able to run your game in 10 years, assuming your system still works?" There are games / software that can answer "yes" and there are ones that can't. To me, that's the only distinction. There's no trend at all anymore for physical / digital copies as to whether your software is safe or not.
Legend of the Sacred Stone. It's a Taiwanese game that is old enough to use DirectMedia. I tried using VM emulating older version of windows, down to even 98, but none of them worked as DX refused to install on them.
Win 10, as soon as I installed it, and tried that game, BAM, worked, at least when I tried it.
HeavensCloud
Oswego, not shitty as Buffalo
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2008
- Messages
- 7,674
I have a 300/20 connection with no data cap so I prefer to download, people without this luxury like my family that lives in the boonies aren't so lucky. I get boxed games from Amazon for the discount like some other people here, I always just grab the code and download it from the appropriate platform.