"Physical media is dying, eventually everything will be digital; it happened with music, it's happening with movies, and it'll happen to games."
As a game collector, how many times have you heard that? Happy Gamer here and I hear that all the time. Personally, I think physical games are here to stay, and the arguments for movies and music are apples and oranges when compared to games.
Before I start with why physical is here to stay, let me explain why it's important to me. I am a collector. I have SHELVES of games from pretty much every generation. I have 2nd gen, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and some 8th. I display my collection proudly. Given the choice between physical and digital, I will almost always chose physical because a full hard drive is nothing to look at, but a wall full of games is. I love physical.
OK, so why is physical media for games here to stay when music went digital years ago and I guess movies are currently too? I mean physical collectors will always be there but the vast majority of people just want the best experience for their dollar. And that's the reason right there, people want the best experience for their dollar. In general, you get more value from owning a physical disc than downloading a file, at least with gaming.
Here's the deal; before the digital revolution in music distribution, you had to buy an entire $20 15 track album if you wanted 1 song. It didn't matter if you wanted all 15 tracks or even cared about them, you had to pay $20. You might get lucky and they would release a single, but it would still set you back $3, and it would probably come with a remixed version or some "side b" you didn't care about. With the digital revolution of music distribution, you could buy individual songs for $1. It didn't matter if it was released as a single or an entire album, you could get that 1 song on it's own and not have to worry about unwanted songs. That is why digital distribution became the de facto way to buy music.
So what about games. Right now (and probably forever), you have to buy the full game regardless of physical or digital. You can't say "I only want this level, so I will only buy this level" when buying games, you have to buy "the full album." Additionally, it's the same price physical or digital. I know steam and GOG have sales where the games are significantly cheaper digital than with physical, but any game on PSN, XBLA, or eShop are all the same price. In fact, I frequently see games CHEAPER physical than digital in terms of consoles. At the time of writing this, I'm in the market for Smash 4 on Wii U. If I buy the game physically through BestBuy.com, it will cost me $50. If I buy the game digitally, it will cost me $60. That's not the only example. I see games on sale all the time physically but their digital counterpart is still full retail price all the time. It's typically around $5, but the fact that the version with all the production, transportation, and overhead cost is the same price or LESS THAN the version that is just a copy-paste of digital bits from a server is the primary reason that physical games are here to stay.
OK, lets say that the reverse is true. It rarely is, but lets say that the digital version is a couple bucks cheaper. I mean, when you buy a digital album it's typically a little cheaper than a physical album. Well...there's the second hand and sharing market. As I said, I am a collector. Even if I'm done with a game, I will not sell it, but many people do sell their games when they're done. I also hang out with my friends IRL and we play videogames and I bring the disc with me or they bring it with them, and so do many other people. It's currently impossible to sell stand alone digital games second hand without selling the entire console (the only time I know of that happening is with Silent Hill PT where people sold their PS4's with PT on it for like $1000). Similarly, it's very impractical to bring digital games with you to a friend's house, having to either bring your console with you or signing in and downloading it to their console. It was a little easy with the 360's removable hard drive, but that isn't true for the ps3, ps4, XBOXONE, Wii, or Wii U. However, with physical media you can sell your games once you're done and it's really easy to bring them with you to a friend's house or let your friend borrow it. With music you generally didn't sell your vinyl, cassettes, or CDs, so the second hand market wasn't really a thing. As for bringing it with you, it became much easier to transport digital because 1000 songs could be loaded onto and played off of a pocket MP3 player whereas 1000 songs on CD or cassette would take up like like 4 shoe boxes, even more if you're talking vinyl. With sharing, well legality comes into question, but lets just say it's very easy to "share" digital songs, and it's much more difficult to "share" digital games that way.
One aspect that can be cited with handhelds are portability, and that might be why digital is a little more attractive on 3DS and Vita, but not by much. Yeah, I remember the GameBoy days and having the carrying case with all my cartridges in it, and I still kind of do that with my 3DS on occasions, but most of the time I have the game I'm working on at the moment and I leave the rest at home. I don't really need to have all my games at my finger tips because I'm just playing short bursts. Most people I talk to are the same way; they have the 1 game in their game slot and that's all they're interested in playing at the moment. They might have some download only titles like Pokemon Shuffle, but most of the time it's physical. (This argument falls flat with consoles because they aren't supposed to be portable. If you're in your living room, chances are you have the space for physical games and space is not a concern).
Another possible argument is "it's more convenient to download a game than drive to the store to buy it." OK, lets be honest here. Unless you have google fiber, it's going to take an hour or more to download a full 20 gig game. It's going to take you less time to drive to the store, buy it, and drive back home. I live about 10 minutes from a gamestop. Round trip it'll take me about half an hour to get a game. Compare that to 1 and a half hours to download a game, and it's more convenient to get physical. I know that not everyone lives so close to a gamestore, but chances are the further you live from somewhere that sells videogames, the slower your internet speed is, so it typically will be more convenient to buy physical than digital (plus you get all the other benefits of physical listed above sooooo......)
So there you have it, physical media is here to stay with videogames. Maybe if all game manufacturers adopted the Steam and GOG mentality of "there's no overhead cost to digital, so lets pass that savings onto the consumer and sell even more games," digital would take off. I'm not saying digital is bad; it really opened the door to indi developers. However, I just don't see it going away any time soon, or in the near future. Will games go 100% digital, maybe 1 day, but I sure can't see it. Well this has been Happy Gamer, signing off, and physical ain't going anywhere.
PS: because it's always cited as an example of digital taking over, I want to address the whole "movies are going digital as well" argument. Personally I don't see that at all. People are still buying Blu-Ray movies, and I don't know anyone who actively chooses to buy movies digitally. This is mainly because digital movies are distributed through heavy DRM. Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, UltraViolet, flixter, etc. all "you must have this distribution app and it's locked to your account and out can only stream it or whatever." However, with a Blu-Ray or DVD you just put the disc in your player, whatever player it is, and play it. Maybe they're referring to rental. That's true, digital has replaced physical with rental since it's more convenient to say "Netflix I want to watch this with my $8/month subscription" than to drive to the video store, pay $1 for a movie, drive home, watch it, drive back, return it, and drive home. Sometimes I might find someone who has a season pass on iTunes for a TV series where they get the TV show a day after it airs, but that's more the exception than the norm. I'd say physical is still very relevant in terms of movies as well as games.
