This means you can’t pass the game around to your friends or sell it afterwards, which completely ruins the purpose of physical media imo. I mostly play PC these days so this doesn’t affect me, but it’s a disappointing direction for console games. At least they could’ve used an empty disc that has proof of ownership.

EDIT: Bethesda has confirmed that only the PC version won’t include a disc. Physical versions of Xbox will include a disc. Whew.

  • @impulse@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    I honestly don’t get the obsession with physical media. That’s a thing of the past, my PC doesn’t even have a drive anymore.

    The only benefit I see is a reduced download size, but with day one patches sometimes being 40+ GB that’s also not always the case.

    It’s not like you own the game, just because you have a physical copy of it. Once the licensing servers are shut down that disk becomes a paper weight, and that is if it doesn’t require a constant connection to begin with.

    On the other side you could argue that it’s better for the environment if we finally get rid of all disks. Is it a huge impact compared to everything else? Probably not, but it is a step in the right direction.

    • @the_vale@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      I honestly don’t get the obsession

      Selling the game after you’re done is the biggest one I heard. If you’re playing a single player game that you don’t expect to want to do another run of, you can recoup some of the money. Similarly, some people prefer to buy somebody’s copy for 80% of the price they would pay on the digital version.

      • @lightstream@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        “Selling the game after you’re done”

        I don’t think that’s been possible for years, has it? Games had activation codes since long before downloading games became the norm, and I thought that meant you couldn’t resell them?

        • @NoTimeEnglish
          4•1 year ago

          Sure it is, just Google “pre-owned games” and you’ll probably have hits from whatever the main game supplier is in your country (GameStop, GAME etc.).

            • @NoTimeEnglish
              1•1 year ago

              Ah, hadn’t realised you were on about PC gaming.

              Physical editions for PC gaming for me died a long time ago as I pretty much exclusively use Steam.

              Consoles however I always try and get physical where possible.

      • @impulse@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        But just you then just buy a worthless piece of plastic nowadays, because the license key was already added to Steam, GoG or whatever?

        • @the_vale@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          I mean, sure, but the discussion isn’t only about PCs, the question in the screenshot was about the series X. You can find pre-owned discs for consoles sold on gamestop, for example.

          • @impulse@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1•1 year ago

            Ah, I get it now. I was so locked into PC gaming that I wasn’t aware we are talking consoles.

            Yeah, the argument gets a lot better on consoles, but I guess physical console games are a dying breed as well.

    • @thoro@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      For Playstation, I believe you can play the vast majority of games from disc without an Internet connection. It would just be the 1.0 version unless you’ve previously patched.

    • @MrBubbles96@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      I honestly don’t get the obsession with physical media

      Pretty straightfoward. And understanable IMO.

      If I have a physical disk of something, I can put it in a compatable system and play/watch it regardless of whether my internet is out or just shitty in general, even years down the line (as far as I’m aware, the devs/company have yet to be able to register/tie disks to devices, and they’re not gonna break into my place and take my media away. So while I don’t own the thing, my copy is my copy to do with as I please so long as I’m not passing it around for others to download). It’s also not tied to any account, so my use of the thing doesn’t hang on whether i have a Steam account or a Netflix account or whathaveyou. There’s also media preservation, and just the fact that some people like to have something tangible that they can say “this is mine”.

      Discrot and failing hardware is a problem…but personally, as long as I have a receipt or proof of purchase for it, I’m not gonna lose sleep over getting it from alternative sources if i can’t rip the data off the thing myself. It’s simple: the company gets my money, they give me a copy of the software, and that’s it. What they do with that cash is not my business and what I do with that copy (unless I’m either illegally distributing it or reverse engineering it for my own profit) is not thiers.