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How do?

So I’ve got a question for folk, and it’s in the title. But let me explain.

Soon as I can, I’m getting myself a shiny new PS5. And there are of course two models.

The discless version is notably cheaper. Argos has it (or rather will have it) for £359.99, and the disc version for £449.00. That of course is a fairly substantial £90.00 difference.

Or at least....it is to start with. See, with games on disc, one can get them from multiple outlets. Whilst on release, those will all be much of a muchness in terms of price - certainly I wouldn’t expect much more than £10 difference. Yet, over the life of the console? That’s where bargain bins and second hand sources start coming in.

With the purely digital console? Yeah not so much. I’m then solely tied to the PS Store, which still charges full whack for some older PS4 games, years after their initial release.

Sure. The PS store does drop prices. Eventually. And holds sales. Occasionally. But they’re still Single Source. I’m not necessarily knocking Sony for that as such. But it does seem the digital only version is veering well into false economy.

What do you reckon?

I'm not sure what you mean by 'false economy.'

Maybe its not true on consoles, but digital games go on sale a lot.

Physical games baffle me at this point. I don't see the point of the manufacturing costs to the companies, as well as the environmental costs. I was a late adopter to the digital push and the last physical game I bought was probably 2007. Its just a dead format to me.

The only reason I could see buying a console with a drive is playing old music CDs and movie DVDs. Assuming that is even compatible anymore. But even that's pointless since a simple usb player is maybe $20-$30.

Sorry, assumed it was a common term. Guess not!

False economy - a saving which is not a saving.

Examples would be a 500ml bottle of Coke discounted from £1.50 to £1.20, when a 1.25 litre bottle is £1.40.

Basically deceptive value.

If I got one I'd get one with a disk player

1) You can play DVD/Blueray (if its got that) disks so you can buy a film and play it on your console or pc or whatever

2) You can hit the bargin bins

3) Because the games have to install it means you can speed up the install and download time for many by having the game on disk and installing from there instead of having to go by the download store.
I don't know if they do partial installs off disk and can thus take up less space too (heck I've been out of consoles so long the last ones I used didn't even install the games !)




In the end disk gives you more options and you lose nothing from the digital side. Heck I recall when one big thing with consoles was a friend coming over and bringing their game with them (though I'd wager with keys and accounts and all the other stuff we have today that might be out or more tricky than it once was)

Ah. A bad deal.

When I hear the term 'economy,' I'm looking for large systems at a national or international level. Maybe regional like a scalping network, or something similar.

I get the Coke bottle example though. Here, that's basically the drug store model: the 'discounted' half sized bottle on convenient display (which I usually only see in drug stores) while the normal litre bottles are towards the back for roughly the same price. Because they know a lot of their customers won't take the extra 30 steps.

I almost exclusively purchased on disk, and I still have all my ps3 games.

Difference is if you want to buy them, or to "long rent" them

I prefer to have stuff in physical formats, because they can't be arbitrarily taken from you as long as the hardware works. But that is probably just some sort of hoarder instinct.

That said, I do have a bunch of digital games on Steam!

On PC, Steam does have lots of sales which had made buying physical media obsolete, but I think that’s partly because Steam has competition. If you’re forced into buying from only the PS Store maybe you’ll be stuck with higher prices for longer.

The way patches are released these days it seems often if you buy physical games you’ll often still need to download big chunks of it to play.

I'm an X-Box guy, so have the option for both on my X-Box One. I rarely buy disks, anymore. For me, it's almost always cheaper to buy a digital version, and I just wait for things to go on sale. I have a loose guide...

$5 or less? I'll buy it if I think I'll get a few hours entertainment. Or if it looks odd, or otherwise interesting to me. I've bought a couple of games out of curiosity at this price point, just to see.

$5 to $10? I'll buy it if I was interested at the date of release. I'll buy it if I've played a similar game and liked it. I'm willing to take a chance on something that really grabs my interest but know nothing about.

$10 to $15? In general, if I even considered paying full price for this at release, I'll buy it here. I think I bought Doom 2016 at $15, and consider it some of the best money I've ever spent on video games

$15 to $40? It would need to be a situation where I want it very badly, and it rarely if ever goes on sale. I can wait years before spending this kind of money on a video game.

$40 (or more?) I have to have planned this purchase. In the last year, I bought Doom Eternal and Civilization 6 (Both "Birthday Presents") at about $40 each, on sale. In both cases, I planned to get them on or after my birthday once they went on sale. Technically, Doom Eternal was 30% off a couple of days before my birthday, so I bought it then, and CIV 6 was a week or two after my birthday. I'm very glad I did, and have enjoyed both for well over $40 worth of entertainment.


Mostly, with young boys that play games too, I like not having to physically change the disk to play... which means my kids don't wind up putting peanut butter on my game disks when they're swapping them around. I would personally go for the savings and go without a disk player, as I have a seperate DVD / Blueray player we bought years ago for like, $30.

I'd say you want to balance that with stuff like the Playstation Plus, or Xbox live service, and their slow but steady accumulation of games. If you're only going to play new releases, then there's probably no difference in game price between digital or disc these days. If you want to buy used or bargain bin games, you may acquire them as part of your yearly subscription fee already. This month was one of the better ones, to be sure, but PS plus would have given your discless PS5 Maneater, Greedfall, and Shadow of the tombraider.

This article's good food for thought. https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/22/22173606/playstation-plus-free-games-2020-analysis-cost-list

Personally, I buy discounted, and bargain bin games as impulses or afterthoughts- anything I sincerely want I've usually preordered or buy before there'd be any reasonable expectation of it going on sale. Most of my bargain impulses are sated by the steady drip of digital content throughout the year.

Know thyself, and what sort of shopper you are.

Disc version all the way.
It's not about economics though, it's about when something gets pulled from the store.
P.T. fans know what i'm talking about.

If we really want to get into economics, there's two on the go; money and time.
What's your internet like and how long will it take to re-download a game when your SSD is getting full or breaks?

Take your hourly wage and divide the 90 by that - will you lose that number of hours due to your download speed over the life of the console?

That's my thinking anyway.

Counter-angle: putting a disc in the machine is a 'loading time' which the ps5 was designed to remove

I have an Xbox one and just use game pass, or buy digitally when on sale. Ihave literally no use for a disk drive anymore.

 SirDonlad wrote:

If we really want to get into economics, there's two on the go; money and time.
What's your internet like and how long will it take to re-download a game when your SSD is getting full or breaks?

Take your hourly wage and divide the 90 by that - will you lose that number of hours due to your download speed over the life of the console?

I'm not following this. Download time isn't a dedicated thing where you have to sit and do something to make sure it happens. Its a background process, you can literally do anything else: eat, shower, go out with friends, go to work, start laundry, clean, etc.
I've 'lost' literally zero hours to downloads (beyond playing the actual game, which I don't really count as lost). I rarely have a day where there aren't five other things demanding my attention or at least around to do while bits and bytes are chugging along.

Counter-angle: putting a disc in the machine is a 'loading time' which the ps5 was designed to remove

Don't most modern games involve a hefty download anyway, to get the day one patch, finished version of the game and etc?
I can remember one or two that were basically just the installer or even just a code in the box, and you had to download everything anyway.

I had a flaw with the ps4 where it would randomly eject discs. This time around I got the ps5 digital edition (mostly cause it was the only available one left and I jumped on the chance). And it's silent as a mouse, no whirring disc drive sounds like the ps4 had. I haven't bought a physical disc game since 2015-2016 though. For me I feel like the bigger difference i'll feel is being unable to play blu ray discs, but as a gaming and streaming machine the digital ps5 is just fine so far.

I will say though had I been unable to buy cyberpunk before it was pulled and then ended up being unable to play it...i'd be livid right now.

There is simply no point in owning physical console CDs anymore for me, since i cant trade or sell them anylonger in my city.

We had two storechains in my capital city, Game and Gamestop, both shut down during prev decade(not that they offered mutch in return on the games ayways). So now electronic store chains sells games, but if you factor in the price of fuel/public transport ticket, or mail postage, the end price is nearly equal to the prices that PSN opperates with, so there is 0 reasons to own physical games for me anymore. last discbased game i bought was GTA5 on ps4 on its release day....

So yea, my ps5 will be discless when its back instore during the summer,(yea we wont get any ps5 or xbox before that....) cus there is no logical reasons to own a physical game product anymore. (collectabilitys not included in this statment)

 Da Boss wrote:
I prefer to have stuff in physical formats, because they can't be arbitrarily taken from you as long as the hardware works. But that is probably just some sort of hoarder instinct.

It does run into the problem these days of games with a hundred gigs of updates, making the physical copy just as prone to sudden obselecence as digital copies outside of the original base content.

GTA perhaps being a good example with all the music being pulled with each update as the licences run out.

Physical discs are containing less and less of actual game nowadays.
I don't think still being able to play after the apocalypse erases all network platforms is particularly realistic.

I would still go with the disc version - you've got the 4k Blu-Ray player as well which would normally cost at least that difference for a separate one.

Also I am still of the mind that DL store games go on sale so much partly because they have to stay as a competitive price with the used physical game market (which is still massive).
I dare say that the moment physical sales stop, we would suddenly see prices go up of digital content across the board or at least be on sale for a lot less of the time.
Buying physical discs and players means that manufacturers have to continue to cater to that audience demographic, so hopefully it should still continue for some time.

I'm staying with physical media as long as possible. Games are expensive as feth nowadays, it's great to be able to get back some of your money by trading it in or selling it privately.