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

[DJOGamer PT]

The Switch has been doing very well
And the Wii was the most financially successful console of its generation (although it's merits can be debated...)

 

[Zarniwoop]

PC users never embraced Blu-ray drives. Didn't help that the copy-protection of movies was much more a pain in the balls than DVD. Screw having to install a modern AAA game with nine DVDs.

The fuck? The blu ray era was the golden age. Everyone had a bd writer for dem "legal" backups.

The adoption rate was tiny compared to DVD drives, practically nothing.

Only because they were on the market longer. Every laptop came with a BD-writer built in until like 2014.

For desktops, BD-RW drives were standard, unless you went out of your way to find a "combo drive" that could only read blu ray but write DVDs.

This was the standard until SSDs became popular, making HDD prices crash and allowing everyone to afford hueg multi terabyte hard drives, and online services like Steam showed up.

 

[Alex]

The Switch has been doing very well
And the Wii was the most financially successful console of its generation (although it's merits can be debated...)

Nevermind, I was mistaking "3rd party support" with "2nd party support".

 

[lycanwarrior]

PC users never embraced Blu-ray drives. Didn't help that the copy-protection of movies was much more a pain in the balls than DVD. Screw having to install a modern AAA game with nine DVDs.

Even with doing the configuration changes with VideoLAN player, being able to play Blu-Rays on my PC is still a crapshoot in terms of it actually working or not.

Serious pain in the ass.

 

[Derringer]

People actually bought BD drives that weren't just ripping movies? When I got a DVD drive all I did was burn game backups and dvd backups of movies someone in my family liked like Master and Commander.

 

[Ezekiel]

PC users never embraced Blu-ray drives. Didn't help that the copy-protection of movies was much more a pain in the balls than DVD. Screw having to install a modern AAA game with nine DVDs.

Even with doing the configuration changes with VideoLAN player, being able to play Blu-Rays on my PC is still a crapshoot in terms of it actually working or not.

Serious pain in the ass.

All I use mine for is ripping movies. If I need to check something in the menu, I use my player.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Games themselves are virtual nonsense, so this is a wierd question to ask. One of the main traits of modernity is this relentless push away from reality. Everything is abstraction, there is no objective or concrete reality anymore. Crypto too is just part of the same process as digital distribution.

 

[CHEMS]

I miss the instruction booklets that used to ship with physical copies

 

[The Decline]

PC users never embraced Blu-ray drives. Didn't help that the copy-protection of movies was much more a pain in the balls than DVD. Screw having to install a modern AAA game with nine DVDs.

Even with doing the configuration changes with VideoLAN player, being able to play Blu-Rays on my PC is still a crapshoot in terms of it actually working or not.

Serious pain in the ass.

All I use mine for is ripping movies. If I need to check something in the menu, I use my player.

That reminds me, last time I checked I have an LG Blu-Ray drive that can rip UHD discs with the proper decryption key.

 

[Hammer Of The Heretics]

It isn't so much abstraction as ephemeralization. We try to make things using less physical stuff. This applies almost across the board; it's hard to think of any product category that hasn't gotten less physically bulky over the decades.

The rise of the internet accelerated this process, because it's easier to ship electrons than atoms.

 

[Norfleet]

PC users never embraced Blu-ray drives. Didn't help that the copy-protection of movies was much more a pain in the balls than DVD. Screw having to install a modern AAA game with nine DVDs.

You know, I've never even owned any flavor of DVD drive. My computer still has an old CD drive that with a dead lazor and isn't connected to anything (unless I wanna power it up and use it as a cupholder), along with a rusted out floppy drive that also isn't connected to anything. I pretty much entirely missed the DVD era.

 

[Ezekiel]

PC users never embraced Blu-ray drives. Didn't help that the copy-protection of movies was much more a pain in the balls than DVD. Screw having to install a modern AAA game with nine DVDs.

Even with doing the configuration changes with VideoLAN player, being able to play Blu-Rays on my PC is still a crapshoot in terms of it actually working or not.

Serious pain in the ass.

All I use mine for is ripping movies. If I need to check something in the menu, I use my player.

That reminds me, last time I checked I have an LG Blu-Ray drive that can rip UHD discs with the proper decryption key.

I got my second LG BD drive (Broke the SATA or power plug on the first one.) in mid 2018 and only learned about two years later that it could rip UHD discs after flashing. Seems like the list of supported drives is wide and varied.

 

[Lucumo]

PC users never embraced Blu-ray drives. Didn't help that the copy-protection of movies was much more a pain in the balls than DVD. Screw having to install a modern AAA game with nine DVDs.

The fuck? The blu ray era was the golden age. Everyone had a bd writer for dem "legal" backups.

The adoption rate was tiny compared to DVD drives, practically nothing.

Only because they were on the market longer. Every laptop came with a BD-writer built in until like 2014.

For desktops, BD-RW drives were standard, unless you went out of your way to find a "combo drive" that could only read blu ray but write DVDs.

This was the standard until SSDs became popular, making HDD prices crash and allowing everyone to afford hueg multi terabyte hard drives, and online services like Steam showed up.

What? Where? My desktop (2012) didn't come with any BD drive. It came with a DVD writer and a cardreader.

Anyway, regarding physical media, I get my physical PC games from Japan. If Western developers/publishers don't want my money, I'm happy to spend it there instead.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Games themselves are virtual nonsense, so this is a wierd question to ask. One of the main traits of modernity is this relentless push away from reality. Everything is abstraction, there is no objective or concrete reality anymore. Crypto too is just part of the same process as digital distribution.

Baudrillardian nonsense. The illusion of games relies on them being self-contained worlds. Hence the detailed manuals, the maps, etc. In the old days, you started to play the game when you picked it up at the store, and it continued when you studied the manual and inspected the contents of the box or case. Digital distribution doesn't reflect any deeper essence of games as opposed to the traditional one where you physically interacted with them.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Mass storages are physical.

 

[jimster]

Didn't it have to do that BD drives and discs are proprietary and require paying for a license from Sony? So the drives and discs have always been relatively expensive. In addition to Steam of course.

 

[Ezekiel]

Mass storages are physical.

What word would you use then? Can't say "discs" because that would imply discs and downloads are the only options, when there are also SD card-likes. Anyway, the method of distribution in what you're describing is not physical.

 

[Ebonsword]

It isn't so much abstraction as ephemeralization. We try to make things using less physical stuff. This applies almost across the board; it's hard to think of any product category that hasn't gotten less physically bulky over the decades.

Cars and trucks are certainly going in the opposite direction, especially with electrification. Now a family sedan that would have weighed 3,000 lbs in the 80s weighs at least 1,000 lbs more.

 

[Jvegi]

Everything is abstraction, there is no objective or concrete reality anymore.

Yes. You're learning.

Games themselves are virtual nonsense

Lol, they are no more virtual than a book.

Honestly, other than manuals and design decisions forced by the lack of them, the digital distribution model is just fine, the only gripe being the obvious "what happens if the service goes down". It's not like bites on those disks were any different to the bites I download to my hard drive. And I can't scratch my steam account.

Perhaps my nostalgia isn't strong enough. I was only able to buy my own games in the early 00's, and those were usually cheap editions of older titles, with very little in terms of goodies or flashy packaging. And I don't think any of us are missing the "collector's" editions. Fuck those things.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Lol, they are no more virtual than a book.

Books are shit too. The rise of the novel in the 19th century was already part of the decline and part of the general flight from reality that marks modern western civilization.

 

[Zarniwoop]

PC users never embraced Blu-ray drives. Didn't help that the copy-protection of movies was much more a pain in the balls than DVD. Screw having to install a modern AAA game with nine DVDs.

The fuck? The blu ray era was the golden age. Everyone had a bd writer for dem "legal" backups.

The adoption rate was tiny compared to DVD drives, practically nothing.

Only because they were on the market longer. Every laptop came with a BD-writer built in until like 2014.

For desktops, BD-RW drives were standard, unless you went out of your way to find a "combo drive" that could only read blu ray but write DVDs.

This was the standard until SSDs became popular, making HDD prices crash and allowing everyone to afford hueg multi terabyte hard drives, and online services like Steam showed up.

What? Where? My desktop (2012) didn't come with any BD drive. It came with a DVD writer and a cardreader.

Anyway, regarding physical media, I get my physical PC games from Japan. If Western developers/publishers don't want my money, I'm happy to spend it there instead.

It f it was a pre built system, it was probably one of those combo drives.

 

[jimster]

Books are shit too. The rise of the novel in the 19th century was already part of the decline and part of the general flight from reality that marks modern western civilization.

Converting to Islam

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I don't miss physical boxes that much. Obviously the experience of going to a store, picking up the box, looking at the art on the cover and looking at the blurbs on the back, going home, and inserting the disc into the console/computer makes you a little more excited to play the game, but I almost never looked at the boxes after that. Threw some of mine out a few months ago. The only really good boxes in of themselves were Blizzard's boxes. The boxes were made of thicker, more durable cardboard, and had raised textures on the surface, and you flipped them open to see big dioramas with art by Glenn Rane and Wei Wang and so on. That's how I got into Blizzard games in the first place: going to Walmart and flipping open those boxes and taking everything in. If more games released special boxes like that, I'd be more inclined to get physical.

 

[jimster]

I like collecting PC games because they can be pretty cheap compared to old console games

 

[rusty_shackleford]

People who think there is some magical difference between the bits on a disk and the bits on your internal storage are very strange, the codex seems to have a lot of them.