The "all digital" future isn't real 

When a purchase no longer guarantees ownership, piracy is no long theft, but preservation.

I put more into my bluray collection than my game collection because I find it harder to pin down certain films to watch than a game with all the great emulators and stuff available. Other than that I play on pc so Ive been mainly digital only for a while now, besides the random switch game. To me game and media preservation is ease of access and availability. Having hard copies mean very little if it was a limited supply and is just sitting on some dudes shelf or being sold on Ebay for $2000. I always think of Panzer Dragoon Saga. That game is being preserved better by being easily available online through emulation and without needing bespoke hard ware to run it.

Thanks for this! I had this same discussion in the late 90s pertaining to physical vs digital, when MP3s came out. I held on to all my cassette tapes, CDs, as well as movie VHS, and DVDs. Long story short, the same people (friends and family)that disagreed with me back then are the same people that still borrow my physical media, because they either can't find a particular song or movie the digital world! Anyways, I am a strong believer in anything physical. My Game Collection are all physical as well! Support Physical Media!

I also find it pretty funny is you can buy a PS5 digital and if you regret it you can buy a disc drive for it

Physical media will still be offered as an option, but many companies are finding ways to disincentivize getting physical copies. By either requiring an update or some sort of always online element tethered to it.

Limited run is now owned by one of the "big guys" Embracer group

So long as humanity continues to be cattle, the "all digital future", is right on track to take full form someday.

Thank You For The Hope & Faith..!!!!

I have a hard time being optimistic. Three of the main issues being overlooked are online integration and licensing and a requirement for piracy. Online integration and licensing are ruining games already, and we have seen many games fall into obscurity because of complicated ownership of ip. Indie publishers can't solve either of these. As for emulation hardware which I'm willing to make the leap of assuming it will fill the gaps, doesn't solve for the physical media and relies on piracy for people who can't afford the inflated used game market which will only get worse with scarcity. Yes, the future likely won't be 100% digital. 80% digital would be a huge loss. Especially if the games one prefers are part of the 80%. I think what's happening is tragic.

Bookmarking this video to revisit in 20yrs!

Ironically I feel like I’ve gone the opposite direction to most people. When I was younger I loved that I could buy old games cheap and hunt around for deals in second hand shops and things. Now youtubers have been hyping up these things as priceless relics for years, even games with huge print runs are priced like new triple A games. All for people to speculate on or add to a collection of stuff they don’t play. I just buy steam keys mostly now.

Why are you holding a cup for the whole video? Lol Good discussion topic. Hopefully we will find a way to preserve games on physical media rather than going all-digital.

I would add that besides Netflix. None of the Streaming services have been profitable. If gaming because becomes all digital and even worse mostly subscriber based streaming of games. Than hacking is going to become even more important.

Just bought a modded switch that downloads games directly onto a external sd.. not exactly physical but still better than the norm

Analogue is a mimic of real hardware anyway at least is good but never cannot be like real hardware experience

When Gabe Newell sells Valve, and he ultimately will, gamers are going to in for a scary future. The all-digital future is here when it comes to movies and TV. There are countless movies and TV shows not available in any streaming format, locked in some Hollywood vault. When the internet Archive gets taken down, and it ultimately will, many old PC games will also be lost forever.

Great perspective and facts, enjoyed your take on this topic - which is mostly presented in either in the fear mongering camp or the digital revolution one. Well done.

While physical games might continue to exist, update servers will shut down. This is already a problem with some PS3 Games where the originally shipped game was just completely broken before the Day 1 patch.

Myself my brother and now our nephew always buy physical media, I subscribe to no streaming service. We are the new historians of media.

I think this video make a noble attempt at nuance, but I think it fails to meaningfully address the actual concerns people have around the all digital future. People want Microsoft's/Sony's/Nintendo's future console to have some physical media component not because it'll help preserve older games that already have physical version, but because they want to make sure that the future games of that generation can be easily preserved or even just enjoyed offline. Saying "Well, actually the all digital future isn't real because physical retro sales will continue" is pedantically non-responsive. It is akin to saying that an all digital future of gaming isn't real because people will still make boardgames. While true, it doesn't matter. Even the comparison to music media doesn't hold up under scrutiny because music media wasn't generally platform locked the way games media is. If I bought a Sony Music CD, I could still reasonably expect it to play on my Philips CD Player without any issue. Games are the opposite, if I buy Sonic Frontiers on Xbox I can't take that same disk and play it on my PlayStation, even though the game was released on both platforms and both devices are able to read blue-rays just fine. Even the comparison to vinyl and the nostalgia for old storage media doesn't translate because the market isn't clamoring for Elden ring to be put into a genesis cartridge, and most efforts by the boutique collectible companies just press these games into whatever medium the latest generation of consoles is able to support. Software Emulation (as pointed to by the Steam Deck and Ayaneo Flip) is also a bizzarre non response because these devices cannot interface with physical media in any way, and none of the companies behind these devices are interested in adding specialized physical storage media for the games that they play. There are also real production hurdles to adding the ability to read physical media that I don't think we'll see it any time soon if at all. Software Emulation is great and a wonderful tool for accessibility and preservation, but the all digital future would make that more difficult, especially in the long run. I do think that pointing to Analogue's products and the rise of Boutique Collectable companies as an example of the continued existence of physical media is an interesting and novel perspective. While I don't think moving towards a collectable market is good or desirable, that is a different discussion to have than whether it renders the all digital future untrue. To that end, I think this argument has it a little backwards. Assuming that Hardware Emulation Manufacturers like Analogue are able to legally clone and sell every console that has any kind of physical media component, then a theoretical all digital future means that they'll eventually hit the limit of consoles they'll able to upsell to collectors because it's unlikely that they'd be given a license to access or replicate the server and operating system software necessary for those machines to function. The Boutique Collectable companies are in a similar boat with a potentially more dire circumstances. If the next console generation is digital only, then it wouldn't be feasible or even possible for them to provide physical media for that console generation. If they can't provide collectable games for that generation, then their market will quickly shrink to people who are mostly only interested in collecting older games for older consoles. Those companies will either have to adapt and continue catering to new consoles by providing digital codes (and ignoring older consoles because of their smaller market share) or die. There is no "winning" here, and you only have to look at the fact that most laptops and PCs no longer ship with CD players and the fact that it's increasingly difficult/impossible to get physical copies of PC games as proof that the All Digital Future is already partly here, it's just been coming to consoles more slowly.

Netflix were so preoccupied with whether or not they could replace discs with streaming, that they didn't stop to think if they should. They have destroyed an entire industry.

Awesome info, earned a sub, great vid!!!!!!!!

I've heard companies say people got used to all-digital with music, so they will get used to it with video games too. Except that you can still purchase cd albums directly from artists and download and burn your own copies. With video games, you can't do either one of those, and streaming will probably never work for videogames in whatever current gen people are in. I will always buy physical games and hope they don't go away.

i still have a ps3 that i still play and a Nintendo ds lite

Great points. I can sympathize with the sentiment but physical media will never completely go away.

Why am I just now seeing this video!?!

GOG and torrent mirrors and many other way to download DRM-free content are ways to make sure we will always be able to own the things we want to access. Flash cards and storage drives will also be able to preserve our digital content and can even be made into physical media

Hey dude, interesting video, just a note on your VO. Could you make it less like you’re talking over dramatic music? Or add dramatic music in? It feels very uneasy listening to the ‘serious documentary’ tone without any additional background music. If that’s the vibe you’re going for then by all means continue. No hate, just something I picked up.

If I find that a digital game I like or might buy is getting a physical release then I might buy it. I recently pre-ordered a physical Switch copy of Saa of stars. I also have a physical version of Metroidvania advanced collection for my switch.

I wouldn’t mind digital purchases so much if they’d let me back up the files onto a BD-R and play the game without having to connect to anything. Sure, maybe encrypt the disc with a key so that I’d have to unlock it while installing, but I’m sure there’s a cryptographic solution for that.

They can already yank your rights away on video games.... most game discs do NOT hold the full game on them. Just a small part of it that requires a much larger download or 'patch' and won't actually play unless you are hooked up to an internet connection that is good enough to download it. For a lot of AAA games the disk is really just a token

Sorry but il stick to physical movies.

Limited Run is fine but my main complaint with them is you better pray to god you can get your hands on their games while they're new because if you don't, you better be prepared to spend a pretty penny if you missed it. River City Girls is a phenomenal title and I tried it out when it had a free trial on the Switch and really wanted to own it, but when I looked up a physical, the only ones in America were out of print LRG copies selling for upwards of $300. A great game, but not a $300 game and so I had to do the only choice, buy it digitally. I'm not saying LRG is all bad, hell as a Persona fan I cannot WAIT until my collectors edition of Persona 3 Portable comes in but what I am saying is that I wish they'd do more reissues so that if you happen to miss a release you don't need to pay out the ass just to get a physical copy, which is their mission. Forever physical isn't very lucrative if you can't afford their games if you discover a game after they're selling it

I purchase nothing digital, so I'm not apart of it. This "all digital" trash hasn't scammed me.

This happened 15 years ago with music people stopped selling all physical music yet now vinyl and cds are selling great again nostalgia hits and brings everything back

Used to love LRG but some of the games they get are weird and far over priced.

physical forever! resist owning nothing.

I'm sorry, but retro game speculators, $300 collector's editions, and limited physical releases that sell out instantly mean jack shit. For the 99% of us who can't afford ebay scalper prices, the all-digital future _is_ real, whether we like it or not.

I didn't quite understand the last few points. Sure, we have some manufacturers making physical games now while they still are able to be made for the modern consoles, but what happens when the PS6 comes out digital only, or the next Xbox turns out not to exist and has been moved entirely to the "cloud"? The day you stop being able to buy new physical games and ripping them from hacked consoles will also be the day "legal" emulation dies - they'll just put a clause in their license that you have to agree to anyway to play the game on the console that makes you agree to not ripping it for emulation. FPGA and PC/Android handheld emulators are great, but will forever exist in a grey-market area that will never reach the heights that it once existed in. Steam as a platform is no better than the rest in theory, they still hold the rights to take away any of your games at any time, though they seem adamant on trying not to enforce that right while they are still in business. And when physical ownership not only becomes a decision between paying about the same for a digital game now or ordering online and waiting a week, but turns into having to wait a decade for emulation to catch up, only to find out you can legally copy a fraction of the PS5's library onto an emulator without voiding any laws, how bright is this future really?

1.25x speed. Trust me

Good luck getting these companies to make physical media when the future consoles dont even have a media drive. I said the same thing you are saying when CD's were dying out. Look where we are now? I live in a city of 400 000 people and we do not have 1 place to buy vinyl or CDs and next month our only dedicated Gaming store is closing down. The digital future isnt a future anymore... Its on our doorstep

Can you support your statement that the demand for physical games has never been higher? The base is larger than ever, but digital now makes up the majority of sales, so the base would have to be at least twice what it was. Demand for used games was much higher a couple years ago.

You no longer own anything and younger people did this. They did it when they agreed to pay Valve £50-100 for a digital download. I have games now that are 30+ years old and can still pop in the console and play. Games used to be a work of art, now it is the next disposable 1st person shooter and the like.

Who or what are you looking at? Look at the lens of the camera if youre talking to camera. Dont look at yourself on the screen your device has.

The big publishers that make games are going to stop making discs versions not if but when don't matter how u spin it. I belive 80%+ buys digital and that number will keep growing. The limited run companies are not dependable when they don't put enough games on disc's. Your just giving your subs false hope. All publishers will go digital at some point maybe not a week, month or year from now but its gonna start

Limited Run games is a joke of A company and they have their heads firmly shoved up their wallets. They're worse than EA regarding their business practices. The last thing they care about is preservation of physical media. I've ordered a few games from them and it was not worth saving myself from having to save a downloaded game onto an SD card and onto a second one as a backup. Especially since two of the games were sold on store shelves and they billed them as physical from them only. Waiting 10 months to recieve and play a game you've paid for that is sitting on a shelf at Walmart is infuriating. Don't even get me started on day 1 patch download issues and dead on arrival carts. Also steam is a license rental platform. "Whoever invented steam sucks!" held true when it launched and kept me from playing halflife-2 for 4 years and it holds true today in many respects. Please don't be under any illusions your steam library won't disappear suddenly without warning one day. Because it just may or a random game might whenever licensing and character rights issues come up.

Like #69 hehe

2023 was one of the best years for gaming in a decade? Hahahahahahahaha

why. do. you talk. like. this

Over dramatized.

Just stopping by to "NOT WATCH" and reply to your title and leave a dislike. Also asked RU-vid to not recommend your channel to me. Btw, all digital future is absolutely going to happen even if consumers don't want it to.