Why the hell don't games come on physical media anymore?!?

[Lucumo]

You can't just shove unfinished releases down people's throats like you can on the PC.

Your info is nearly two decades out of date.

It's also a closed platform, meaning publishers already have a lot of control, so there is a lot less value in shifting to digital, apart from the manufacturing cost and the monetization (DLC/gacha) business (in the psychological sense).

Why wouldn't they want to remove the middleman and sell directly through the Sony/Microsoft store? With the move to Steam, they just traded one middleman for another, Valve still takes its cut. Some attempt to sell games through their own stores (EA, Ubisoft) but they're nowhere near as popular as Steam.

PC gamers weren't given a choice regarding the status quo.

Sure they were. The vast majority chose Steam. Germans held out the longest, which is why they kept making boxed copies for that one specific country but nowhere else.

I mean the "early access" stuff and things in eternal development. Also, don't forget what I wrote before that. Taking sentences out of context in a discussion is pretty pointless.

Why are you mixing console manufacturers and their dealings with publishers, Steam and publishers in general? I only talked about the first. And since the manufacturers give the publishers a lot of control on their closed platforms, it's a lot less valuable, as I already said. That doesn't mean they wouldn't ideally have everything be digital but it's not as much of importance as other things. And, after all, there have already been steps taken against physical in the form of subscriptions which are digital. The end goal is, obviously, streaming. And while some companies have tried it and failed, unsurprisingly, the time will come when it happens and players won't have a choice.
As an aside, we all know this isn't just happening in the gaming sector but basically everywhere where it's possible (specifically entertainment but also education for instance). The move towards vinyl was a counter-trend to that (and the general, brainless mass-consumption of music specifically) in the music sector.

"Eat it or die!" Great choice. No clue where you got the "vast majority" from? People did a lot of things* but they did definitely not willingly jump towards Steam, as seen by their pitiful numbers around 2010 and very early 10s. What really helped Steam was the indoctrination of the young generation via Steam codes in gaming magazines, publishers forcing people to Steam via codes in boxes and more specifically, the release of DotA 2 and later PubG (especially concerning the Chinese market).
You are wrong. Japanese are "holding out" the longest. But that's because they have quite a different market which is also a lot more mature (funny, considering how desktop-illiterate the Japanese have become).

* Just quitting like I said a lot of my friends did, switching to retro games, switching to consoles (yuck), sticking to evergreens (MMOs and stuff like League of Legends, World of Tanks) or only buying physical DRM-free releases which existed and still exist.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

You understand supply and demand right? Physical media for PC ended because the demand stopped. Vast majority of people would prefer to buy a game on their PC and play right away as soon as it finishes downloading than go out to a store and get it or buy it online and wait days/a week for it to arrive and then have to install it.

Greatly helped along by publishers releasing absolutely shit releases towards the end. Why yes, I want to buy a DVD case with a irrelevant piece of paper and maybe a DVD with a Steam code on it. Acting like people had a choice either means you're 10 or you're being intentionally stupid. No one is going to buy anything when the only advantages that version has are completely stripped away. (which one might argue, had already begun when you had to install shit like Steam or Origin to use those discs)

 

[Roguey]

You understand supply and demand right? Physical media for PC ended because the demand stopped. Vast majority of people would prefer to buy a game on their PC and play right away as soon as it finishes downloading than go out to a store and get it or buy it online and wait days/a week for it to arrive and then have to install it.

Greatly helped along by publishers releasing absolutely shit releases towards the end. Why yes, I want to buy a DVD case with a irrelevant piece of paper and maybe a DVD with a Steam code on it. Acting like people had a choice either means you're 10 or you're being intentionally stupid. No one is going to buy anything when the only advantages that version has are completely stripped away. (which one might argue, had already begun when you had to install shit like Steam or Origin to use those discs)

Obsidian and inXile offered DRM-free discs as Kickstarter rewards. Hardly anyone bought them. For Wasteland 3, inXile didn't even bother to include a disc. You guys who care so much about owning games on discs are outliers (you can also still make your own backups if you care so much about the possibility of losing something)

 

[dreughjiggers]

I can't remember the last new game I wanted on physical media. What's the point? Unless you're a streamer, passing as a pseud, there isn't one.

 

[Ravielsk]

Obsidian and inXile offered DRM-free discs as Kickstarter rewards. Hardly anyone bought them. For Wasteland 3, inXile didn't even bother to include a disc. You guys who care so much about owning games on discs are outliers (you can also still make your own backups if you care so much about the possibility of losing something)

And the boxed copy was just a option you could choose when making a donation or was it a higher tier that costed more?

 

[Roguey]

Obsidian and inXile offered DRM-free discs as Kickstarter rewards. Hardly anyone bought them. For Wasteland 3, inXile didn't even bother to include a disc. You guys who care so much about owning games on discs are outliers (you can also still make your own backups if you care so much about the possibility of losing something)

And the boxed copy was just a option you could choose when making a donation or was it a higher tier that costed more?

Manufacturing adds additional costs, of course it cost more, but it was a regular game price more or less.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

You understand supply and demand right? Physical media for PC ended because the demand stopped. Vast majority of people would prefer to buy a game on their PC and play right away as soon as it finishes downloading than go out to a store and get it or buy it online and wait days/a week for it to arrive and then have to install it.

Greatly helped along by publishers releasing absolutely shit releases towards the end. Why yes, I want to buy a DVD case with a irrelevant piece of paper and maybe a DVD with a Steam code on it. Acting like people had a choice either means you're 10 or you're being intentionally stupid. No one is going to buy anything when the only advantages that version has are completely stripped away. (which one might argue, had already begun when you had to install shit like Steam or Origin to use those discs)

Obsidian and inXile offered DRM-free discs as Kickstarter rewards. Hardly anyone bought them. For Wasteland 3, inXile didn't even bother to include a disc. You guys who care so much about owning games on discs are outliers (you can also still make your own backups if you care so much about the possibility of losing something)

Which were tied into the Kickstarter campaign, which you had to be aware of and know they were offering physical versions of. Granted, it was a pretty big campaign at the time, but people can and have avoided hearing about a lot bigger.

 

[janior]

This thread gives new meaning to cargo cult

 

[Roguey]

Which were tied into the Kickstarter campaign, which you had to be aware of and know they were offering physical versions of. Granted, it was a pretty big campaign at the time, but people can and have avoided hearing about a lot bigger.

It's a demographic more likely to buy physical copies and they weren't biting. Most people are casual gamers who don't even finish the games they have.

 

[Pound Meat]

Never had disc rot with PS1 or Saturn games, either. I've had a couple audio CDs with minor imperfections in playback and that seem to be getting worse, but still not enough to discourage me from collecting. Cartridges are even more durable. I also have floppies and ZX Spectrum tapes but no way to test them anymore. I still like to own them.

Honestly I get the impression that disc rot is something that happens when the disc was already messed up at the manufacturing stage and it just takes a while to manifest. If it was even half as prevalent as blackpillers like to claim then the 5th gen games should have effectively roted away by 2010 and all the SEGA CD and other early CD games should be dust by now.

I haven't gone through my whole collection recently but as of 2018 all my PSX games going back to 1995 still worked perfectly fine unless they were scratched. My Spiceworld CD finally started skipping after 25 years of wear and tear but that's about it.

The only rot I've encountered was on the Superman Returns DVD (the second disc refuses to play despite no scratches) and that shitty Jim Carrey movie The Number 23. Seems like it's a movie-only thing.

 

[jimster]

Obsidian and inXile offered DRM-free discs as Kickstarter rewards. Hardly anyone bought them. For Wasteland 3, inXile didn't even bother to include a disc. You guys who care so much about owning games on discs are outliers (you can also still make your own backups if you care so much about the possibility of losing something)

Like a preorder?

The only rot I've encountered was on the Superman Returns DVD (the second disc refuses to play despite no scratches) and that shitty Jim Carrey movie The Number 23. Seems like it's a movie-only thing.

Maybe this:

Many HD-DVDs, especially those produced by Warner Bros. between 2006 and 2008 developed disc rot not long after production. Disc rot was also more common on double-sided HD-DVDs than on single-sided HD-DVDs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot#HD-DVD_rot

 

[Ravielsk]

Manufacturing adds additional costs, of course it cost more, but it was a regular game price more or less.

And there is lies the problem. Even if its within range of a regular game it being on kickstarter automatically makes people reluctant to dish out even 10 bucks more because by the time Wasteland 3 was being made the populace already caught onto the fact that kickstarters tend to go tits up more often than not. Even when coming from an already established studio any donation made on kickstarter has to be treated as potentially lost money.
Not just because the game may never come out but also because it might turn out to be shit(which again happens more often than not). So any extra spending if not strictly necessary is going to be curtailed.