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0:00 Have you ever wondered what the common theme between these three physical games are? The answer is they are not physical games at all. They're physical products and there is a difference. In other words, we're talking about a piece of plastic that contains some form of entitlement for us, the customer, to be granted a license to download and play these games. But that entitlement can be revoked at any time. Now, of course, it's unlikely that would ever happen to most games, but it does happen. We have seen games get revoked. And how do I know this? Well, let's take a look at another physical game that I own, Concord. You can't play this anymore. Sony decided it would just be best to abandon the game rather than to spend the time and money to fix it and make it a better game. And this is the thing
0:46 that I want to talk about today, guys. Physical games are dying, and we have to start being serious about what's going on in the industry. Now, these so-called physical products that are pretty much nothing but an entitlement to download and play these games is a worrying trend. And unfortunately, it's not anything that is going away or it's a fad. It's something that's going to continue to get worse over time. And I'm here to tell you guys, I am not a fan of this trend at all. In fact, I've been very much against this type of, you know, release pretty much since the beginning. I can think about the days of HalfLife 2 releasing on Steam when people bought HalfLife 2 were not unable to play the game. They couldn't play HalfLife 2 because they had to connect
1:32 to the internet in order to download the remaining proportion of the game. And even though Halflife 2 came on six CDs, in fact, I have my version right here. I was unable to play the game unless I had an internet connection and back in those days required a modem connection in order to download the Valve Steam launcher and various other parts of the game in order to play it. And this was really my first kind of, you know, irritation when it came to all things related to DRM. Now, unfortunately, it's 2025 and we have to come to the realization that physical games are almost dead. And I hate to say it because I'm someone that has been a big fan of physical media for many years, but what I'm seeing in the industry right now with the various kind of ways
2:18 that publishers are offering up a physical product of something which is not physical at all other than a piece of plastic with some type of entitlement for you to download this game off their servers is almost something that I would consider disingenuous. And I think it's really no different than just downloading these games digitally because in some instances it's easier just to have a digital download of a game because it's at least tied to your account. And as long as the hardware maker is in business and they're continuing to provide hardware and you have an account that is tied to that hardware, then in theory, for all intents and purposes, your game should carry forward with you. And we have definitely seen that with the Nintendo Switch 2 with your Nintendo account.
3:03 We've seen that with Sony PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. And we've seen it with Xbox. Now, although you could say this is a good thing that these hardware makers are providing you with, this is really something that they have to do. They have to offer you a way to play your existing library on your current hardware. And this is obviously what Xbox is trying to do with their push into handhelds. Sony is doing obviously with the PS4 and the PS5 and the Nintendo Switch one and Nintendo Switch 2. But where does that leave physical games? And that is the kind of part that I want to talk about. Physical games as I mentioned are slowly dying off. Of course, there are outliers. There are exceptions. Companies like CD Project Red, which incidentally own GOG GOG,
3:49 which is very big on game preservation, which is not a coincidence. It's something that they are very much interested in preserving their entire library of games and as much as they possibly can. It's no coincidence that they offer Cyberpunk 2077 on two discs on the Xbox as the complete version. This is something that not even Microsoft themselves offer up. They don't offer physical games for their products and they haven't since Gears of War 5, I believe in 2019. If you take a look at Microsoft or Xbox's releases since then, I don't believe there is any game that they've released that has the full game on disc. And trust me, I own them. I own Indiana Jones. This game released at the end of last year. It's
4:35 not the full game on disc. It requires a mandatory download. In fact, I believe it's only a small portion of the game on disc. And they are very clear in the fine print about what you need to do in order to play this game. a game such as Starfield, which I enjoyed my time with Starfield, I own the Collector's Edition. That's a code in a box. Even though the collector's edition itself was kind of cool, it doesn't come with the full game. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, another game that I'm a big fan of. I totally get into dad mode when I play Flight Simulator. Big fan of that game, does not come with a physical version. And this is obviously very well documented as it needs to stream its assets off the cloud. Another game, The Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remastered that released earlier in 2025, does not even have a physical version available. Doom:
5:23 The Dark Ages on the PlayStation 5 is not the complete version on disc. Microsoft has seemingly abandoned physical games in favor of digital downloads and Game Pass. And when we think about the Xbox, we think about Game Pass. And I think that's what Microsoft and Xbox want you to think about. But unfortunately for those people that have been a fan of Xbox physical games over the years, you know, going back to the OG days, 360 days, Xbox One days, you're all of a sudden finding yourself in a situation where Xbox doesn't provide those games for you anymore. The only way that you can is to kind of buy a fake physical product and kind of just kind of go through the motions of having a physical game, but at the end of the day, you're just getting an entitlement to play these
6:09 games. Now on the PlayStation 5, things are definitely better. And I think it's because Sony does kind of recognize that in some countries and in some markets, it's a better option to provide physical games for those countries because not everyone has good internet in various parts of the world. Not only this, some countries in the world such as Japan have more of a favor to physical games rather than digital games. So having the option for a physical game and most of the time providing the full game on disc is very much welcome. But Sony still has its own issues. The first thing obviously is offering up an additional Blu-ray drive that requires an internet connection. Aside we're slowly starting to see other publishers that don't have the complete editions on disc. Ubisoft
6:55 is a great example. Just this year, Assassin's Creed Shadows was famously criticized for not having the complete game on disc that required a mandatory internet download in order to complete its installation. Last year, I picked up Star Wars Outlaws again on the back of the box and on the front. It is required to have an internet connection to download and complete the installation and play the game. Now, you may be wondering, well, what about the Blu-ray limitations of these games? Do they exceed the capacity? Well, in some instances that could be true, but in the case of a game such as Star Wars Outlaws, which is a 54 GB download, the capacity of a Blu-ray disc on the Sony PlayStation 5 is 100 GB. So, there's really no excuse as to why the full game
7:40 could not be on disc. If you took the time to press the disc and put a portion of the game on disc, I can't see any good reason why you couldn't put the entire game on disc and offer it up to your, you know, customers. But here we are. Of course, on the Nintendo Switch 2, things are a little more complicated with the game key cards, and this is obviously something that is causing a lot of outrage amongst various people in the community. Look, at the end of the day, if you're someone that buys physical products, you may not even realize what you're getting when you pick up a Switch 2 key card game versus a regular physical game. But when it comes to game key cards, not only do you require a pretty large download, you also will most likely require a micro SD expansion card because a lot of these
8:27 games exceed the maximum capacity that Nintendo has offered with their game cards, which is 64 GB. But this is not always true, and this is where I think a lot of the frustration is currently at. It's unlikely that Nintendo is offering any other game cards outside of 64 GB. And this has been reported by various outlets. And in the situation where there are third parties that are providing games that are far less than that 64 GB size capacity, it means in order to reduce cost, they've resorted to using a game key card, which has confused a lot of people. And although game key cards do offer you the ability to resell those games if you would choose to do so, it still means this is not a physical game in any capacity. It's essentially just a physical product. And this is what's causing a
9:13 lot of the frustration and a lot of the confusion around what Nintendo is doing for the Switch 2. Game sizes are getting much larger. And if we're at the point now where at launch we're seeing games that already exceed that 64 GB capacity, then we can only assume in 2 years from now when we're kind of, you know, in the first third or halfway through the Switch 2's life cycle, it's going to be a lot larger. Games that could potentially exceed 100 GB may be possible. We've heard about games such as Call of Duty making their way to the Nintendo Switch 2. You can be rest assured that that is going to be a massive download and it just seems like that hardware makers and publishers cannot keep up with the size capacities of the games that are being developed right now. They're doing their best to
9:59 try to mitigate it as much as they can, but ultimately I think they're fighting a losing battle. And for me, it's a very sad thing to see physical media slowly starting to die out. Of course, there's going to be companies out there that continue to make physical games. I certainly work for one of them, CD Project Red. You know, they're going to always kind of push physical games that they are, you know, making themselves and things like GOG. So, physical games are definitely on the way out. And it's a very sad thing. You know, I've grown up playing video games all my life. I've I've collected video games for many, many years. Those that collect video games are probably wondering, you know, what they're going to be doing in the future. And think of it this way, like we talk about retro video games, games from like 25 years ago, right? Or 30 years ago. You go to conventions, you go
10:45 to secondhand stores, you see all these old video games on the shelves. What's the market going to look like 25 to 30 years from now? A lot of these games will not be available for you. Some of them will be partial downloads. Hopefully, they'll still be available to, you know, you to download and install onto your PlayStation 6, 7, 8, 9, whatever's available at that time. But these games could also be lost to time forever. And that's really, really the sad part. I do wonder what the retro video game market is going to look like many, many years from now. But one thing is for sure, I'm not a fan of these physical products. I've never liked them. I don't like game key cards. I don't like codes in a box. And I don't like games that have, you know, half the
11:30 game on disc and the rest requires a download. I think it's just a lazy practice. And unless, you know, it's because of storage limits of the hardware itself or the capacity of, you know, the the larger storage capacity that's available, it's something that I feel like publishers and hardware makers can really work harder on to do a better job on. But those are just my thoughts and opinions. Let me know what you think about the death of physical games in the comments below. As always, if you like this episode, please don't forget to leave me a like and I'll catch you guys in the next one. Bye for now.
