Pre-ordering video games used to mean securing your disc at a retailer before they sold out on launch night. Now it means paying full price (or more) for a p...
Honestly, if the idea of no trials don’t bother you, there are plenty more reminders why YOU shouldn’t preorder.
In the indie and even A/B (as opposed to AA/AAA) space, it is a lot cheaper. And we have a lot more games that would have never managed to even secure a physical release. Before The Rise of Steam, the idea of a game launching at 30 dollars meant it had to be on the level of “Berenstein Bears teach you Math” shovelware. Now? It is very normal and plenty of games outright launch at 20 USD.
I call shenanigans on diablo 4 (as blizzard basically print money with their other IPs), but the real reason we are seeing the 70 mark is because games are expensive as hell to make (at that fidelity). We are looking at years of work by O(hundred) people. And that is very much something that probably should have gone up years ago (remember when THQ died?). Also… I very much question the value of more than one or two companies bothering to do AAA games, but that is a different discussion.
And the other aspect is that people still cling to their e-waste discs. Which mean that publishers either say “You are fucking stupid for shopping at best buy in 2023” or prices are kept relatively the same between digital and physical… for consoles. For PC, there is absolutely a “Why would you buy a box?” tax (and sometimes insane deals when newegg buys too many copies of Prey).
Having something tangible can have perks. Steam bans you. Thousands lost. Online service shuts down. Games lost. I can still fire up this here super Nintendo… And nobody can tell me when it’s going to shut down and stop working.
One of the reasons I prefer to buy on gog. I can just save all my purchases to an external hard drive
As for the idea that physical games are protecting you: They really aren’t. Even in the 00s, the 1.0/Gold that was on the disc needed a LOT of patches to even be playable, let alone what you remember (remember the debacle that was Tribes 2?). And that has only gotten worse. Hell, the Souls youtubers regularly will do a “And let’s look at what was in 1.0 to decipher some lore” videos.
And that also ignores that console hardware fails. We are basically at the point where speedrunners and “purists” will knife each other over working NES parts (maybe also SNES?) because of failures. Let alone bit rot on discs, failing batteries on cartridges, etc. And PC wise? There is a reason GoG got popular as “We figured out how to play those older games on a modern version of Windows”. My favorite example is still Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate (the old one) where, if memory serves, it worked in 9x, failed in 2k and vista, worked in 7, and I stopped caring about even trying anymore by 8.
And that isn’t even getting into online services and DLC. And for people who think DLC was an invention of the 00s/10s: When I was a whee lad, I mowed every fricking lawn in the neighborhood to make enough money to send some random dude a check so I could get access to his FTP server to download the secret missions pack (?) for Star Crusader.
If you like physical games: Cool. But that has nothing to do with game preservation and, arguably, never has. That is just the excuse people use to justify having midlife crises and buying games of their childhood (I say as I glance over at my shelf of every single Armored Core game…). And these days it is mostly a way to get some FOMO sales (although LRG are getting me a Tomba re-release so I am cool with all their e-waste now. Fuck the planet if it means more people will experience the weird that was Tomba).
Games preservation has always been: Re-releases and emulation (software or, increasingly, hardware). Which, ironically, is easier with digital since you can more easily pull a snapshot.
In the indie and even A/B (as opposed to AA/AAA) space, it is a lot cheaper. And we have a lot more games that would have never managed to even secure a physical release. Before The Rise of Steam, the idea of a game launching at 30 dollars meant it had to be on the level of “Berenstein Bears teach you Math” shovelware. Now? It is very normal and plenty of games outright launch at 20 USD.
I call shenanigans on diablo 4 (as blizzard basically print money with their other IPs), but the real reason we are seeing the 70 mark is because games are expensive as hell to make (at that fidelity). We are looking at years of work by O(hundred) people. And that is very much something that probably should have gone up years ago (remember when THQ died?). Also… I very much question the value of more than one or two companies bothering to do AAA games, but that is a different discussion.
And the other aspect is that people still cling to their e-waste discs. Which mean that publishers either say “You are fucking stupid for shopping at best buy in 2023” or prices are kept relatively the same between digital and physical… for consoles. For PC, there is absolutely a “Why would you buy a box?” tax (and sometimes insane deals when newegg buys too many copies of Prey).
Having something tangible can have perks. Steam bans you. Thousands lost. Online service shuts down. Games lost. I can still fire up this here super Nintendo… And nobody can tell me when it’s going to shut down and stop working.
One of the reasons I prefer to buy on gog. I can just save all my purchases to an external hard drive
GoG is nice and I am a big supporter.
As for the idea that physical games are protecting you: They really aren’t. Even in the 00s, the 1.0/Gold that was on the disc needed a LOT of patches to even be playable, let alone what you remember (remember the debacle that was Tribes 2?). And that has only gotten worse. Hell, the Souls youtubers regularly will do a “And let’s look at what was in 1.0 to decipher some lore” videos.
And that also ignores that console hardware fails. We are basically at the point where speedrunners and “purists” will knife each other over working NES parts (maybe also SNES?) because of failures. Let alone bit rot on discs, failing batteries on cartridges, etc. And PC wise? There is a reason GoG got popular as “We figured out how to play those older games on a modern version of Windows”. My favorite example is still Warhammer 40k Chaos Gate (the old one) where, if memory serves, it worked in 9x, failed in 2k and vista, worked in 7, and I stopped caring about even trying anymore by 8.
And that isn’t even getting into online services and DLC. And for people who think DLC was an invention of the 00s/10s: When I was a whee lad, I mowed every fricking lawn in the neighborhood to make enough money to send some random dude a check so I could get access to his FTP server to download the secret missions pack (?) for Star Crusader.
If you like physical games: Cool. But that has nothing to do with game preservation and, arguably, never has. That is just the excuse people use to justify having midlife crises and buying games of their childhood (I say as I glance over at my shelf of every single Armored Core game…). And these days it is mostly a way to get some FOMO sales (although LRG are getting me a Tomba re-release so I am cool with all their e-waste now. Fuck the planet if it means more people will experience the weird that was Tomba).
Games preservation has always been: Re-releases and emulation (software or, increasingly, hardware). Which, ironically, is easier with digital since you can more easily pull a snapshot.