Unless they change in the future I will only collect physical games on the switch.

Even some collectors editions of Sony titles seem to not come with the game anymore.

I dont want to deal with physical media. I get the worry that we don't actually own this stuff we buy digitally but it's almost worth it to me.

That’s a fair point. I have a significant other that plays games too so it’s cost effective for me to buy digital and us play for $60/70 rather than buying two copies. I typically only buy physical for ps3/360 and below.

It's going to horribly impact game collecting.

The transition to digital only is the endgame here. You're witnessing the last console generation that will even use discs.

Companies, for decades now, have loathed the concept of "consumer ownership" and have been frothing at the mouth for the tech to catch up and allow their dream of digital-only, fully-controlled SaaS garbage.

The WB-Discovery merger has brought light to a lot of fears that those of us against pure digital landscapes have been warning everyone about for 15+ years now...they want the ability to remove whatever titles they see fit. They want to be able to erase them entirely should they choose.

That kind of control, the ability to add and remove content (and monetize all of it in between) has been their wet dream since the days of Betamax. Only now does the infrastructure allow it to be commercially viable.

I personally am buying whatever titles I want in disc form while they're still putting full games on them. Because that shit with the barebones installer being put on the disc is where they're going at a rapid pace.

I've also restarted collecting blu-ray and 4k discs, since they're making it quite clear that they have no qualms about removing titles from digital availability whenever it suits their objectives.

I haven't bought a physical game since 2013 other than a couple ds games. Waste of space imo. I get the arguments for physical media though.

Yes, and it scares me as well. Just an example was when Ubisoft was going to pull liberation from steam libraries.

A lot of AAA?

Where are you getting this? Because most of my physical games (AAA or not) have most of the game on disc, the only thing missing of course is post-launch data.

I mean mw2 is one of the most recent ones, halo is another that I can remember off hand. Granted both are FPS games, a lot of other companies will surely follow suit and discs will essentially be coasters. Buy how you want, it was only a question, and I didn’t give a concrete number. It was a mere observation.

My guess is that with Halo, they mostly wanted people on their MP component (which is why it was free to play) to generate the most money.

I don’t really see games outside of MP focused games doing it much and the only BIG example of an SP focused AAA doing it was Horizon Forbidden West if you got the collectors edition of it and Sony did get a massive amount of backlash on that.

Unless game devs start deliberately making nothing but 100gb+ games AND so long as people buy physical, there will be a market need for a physical release. This is personally why I do encourage to buy physical when people can if it’s right to ownership offsets it’s lack of convenience

Fair and valid point.

I think its pretty clear we are headed for a mostly digital future where physical releases are increasingly treated as niche, collector items. Personally, I moved on from having physical copies of retro stuff that can be played via emulation. To me, there's no difference in having an emulation setup with roms versus having the hardware and carts/CDs. Neither setup is at risk of being disabled or taken from me, and since space is valuable, I've chosen to go with roms and emulation.

I do have about 50-60 PS3 games, another 40 or so PS4/PS5 games, and about 70 Switch games. Those are the ones I'll be keeping since they're all at risk of disappearing one day, and emulation for them isn't readily available the same way it is for everything from the prior generations. I basically buy physical whenever possible for Switch, and for PS4/PS5, I will buy the odd game here and there on disc when I know it doesn't depend on a day one download or something like that to function. I'll even track down a disc if its a game I bought digitally and realized I care a lot about it and would like to be able to play again in 20 years from now. That's kind of where my mind is at on this stuff now.

What AAA games have not come out on Disc???

Pretty much all the PS5 AAA games are buyable on Disc.

Even the example you used, MW2, can be bought on Disc on PS5 (it’s on Amazon).

MW2 is on Disc on PS5

It’s 70MB the game is not on the disc you have to download the game. The disc is essentially a token. That’s my entire point.

Still there are people prefer the physical version even though it acts more like a key.

So physical version are not really going away.

I actually think the Disc version of the PS5 is selling better than the Digital only one.

And that’s great.