Certainly not unprecedented. This would be a good reason not to buy a physical copy. In fact, my favorite thing about digital game downloads is not needing a CD/DVD in my disc drive all the time.
Quite correct but there are those rare occasions when a disk can be handy if the game is somewhat large and your internet speed is not. I bought GTA V on disk and in the box were 7 disks. Good for reinstalls but since registering the game there is a digital downloader so I used that the last time I had to install the game and saved a copy of the whole game folder. This saved hours of time as you don't have to download everything again when you want to run the game. So yes I can see real value in going all digital but for that first install the disks did save me a hell of a lot of time.
The problem with physical discs is that those games still end up having large patches later. I remember when I bought Dragon Age: Inquisition on disc, installed it, and then it still had to download something like a 4GB patch on launch day. This is just the world we live in now.
Yeah I know...... But if they abandoned disks what would game stores sell? Would we even need physical stores? You'd be putting people out of work. Oh yeah they would still sell hardware and other junk but still it would hurt their bottom line a bit.
Seems reasonable. Maybe they should have released it as a standalone game, but given the nature of the bundle I'd expect you'd have to insert the physical disc to play either game. Otherwise you'd have people buying the game just for the remastered version, installing it, then selling/trading in the disc and flooding the market with used copies of the new game. It's the same reason I have to insert the physical disc in my XBOX, that way I don't just buy a game, install it and return it. As for the bundling, it's been going on in other media for quite some time. How many times have bands released 1-2 new songs or outtakes and bundled them with a greatest hits to get people to buy a bunch of songs they probably already own? Or a new "better" edition of a movie released just because they included a few more special features? This is a case of the company knowing they have something the fans really want so they bundled it with their newest game (at what looks like a pretty decent price for 2 games) to bolster sales. And yes gaming stores do appear to be doing worse, around here at least, and I've seen several close down recently. It's similar to what happened to all the music stores in the 2000's, although piracy also had a hand in that. But Amazon and digital downloads would have finished them off anyways. With video games being available for digital download or physical copies being cheaper on Amazon and Walmart, game stores are becoming obsolete. I think the second-hand market is the only thing keeping them afloat right now.
But digital downloads would be fine if they were all available everywhere at the same time, but some games are region locked like with DVDs and Blurays. They only release them in other regions when and if they feel like it. That puts me off going full digital.
I'm not into digital downloads either. Whether it's games, music or films I like to have the physical product. Well with music I'm somewhat digital. Since you can just pick whatever songs you want instead of buying albums that are often mostly filler. But I still buy the albums for my favorite bands.
It took me some time to warm up to digital distribution but at this point I'm perfectly happy with it. I frankly would not have room for physical media for all the games I have.
I still buy physical games for my 3DS and Wii U due to Nintendo believing it's still the early 2000's when it comes to the internet, but I've switched to digital distribution for everything else. It's so much more convenient.
You don't have to stick physical media in your computer. Suppose you want to install it on a computer that didn't come with an optical drive--this is fairly common now. Digital distribution means you can just download it. Platforms like Steam handle patches automatically and transparently--no more need to hunt them down. (Less of an issue in this age where most games auto-update, admittedly.) No need to store physical media. A big help if one has relatively limited physical space. A lot of indie games simply never get physical releases, so the only way to play them is via digital download. It's obviously down to personal preference for most people, but digital distribution dominates the market, with 92% of all video game sales (as of 2014) being digital downloads.
I see. Well I don't game on my PC, I have a console, so most of those don't really apply to me so that's why I probably didn't realize. And storage doesn't really apply because I don't have that many games and if I did I could easily store them. But as far as "easier to buy" I don't find it that hard to pick up a copy of something I want, but that's probably different on PC especially with the Indie titles Robert mentioned. Just about any X1 game I can grab while I'm buying groceries at Walmart/Target or something. I don't really understand why console players would be so hot on the idea, but I know many are. I could see some circumstances, like maybe they don't drive or don't want to wait for shipping, though I've never personally come across a game I couldn't wait a few days to play. And since I do drive if there were I'd just go pick up a copy the day it came out. Then there's the storage issue, but those games don't take up much space.
I do most of my gaming on PC, with portable gaming on my 3DS and Vita. For PC, I'm almost 100% digital, whereas I tend to buy physical for the portables (with exceptions). So I don't really stick to digital at all times!
6. After a few years, older games are still available to buy digitally and for vastly reduced prices. You don't have to spend $100 to buy a loose disc or rely on emulation to play them. Earthbound SNES Cart - around $200 Earthbound on Wii U or 3DS VC - $9.99
Indeed. As digital platforms go, I try to give GOG my money when possible because they don't DRM their shit. Steam's DRM is relatively thin but it's still DRM, which means one day Valve could just take all our toys away. With GOG, you can always download a totally standalone program archive that never needs to even know GOG exists. I appreciate that.