TOL - The Decline of Physical Games

Hey it's Tarrmu and welcome to Thinking Out Loud and in today's video we'll be talking about the slow decline of physical video games, and the changes it has had on our ever growing industry of video games. As we move closer to a digital only landscape, we begin to accept the notion or idea that moving to a more digital model means that we will never truly own our games, it sparks a level of concern and controversy that just doesn't sit right with many.

As someone who personally loves amassing a collection of physical games over the years there is something to me that is special about being able to buy a game, have a physical copy of the game that you can just slot into the disk tray and play. As we moved into the era of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, we started to see that move towards needing to install our games, and simply owning a disk would not be enough to fully be able to experience the game, with things such as Day one patches, and updates that would instill the philosophy that broken games could be fixed with updates post-launch.

In recent years there has been a push towards a more digital only release of many different video games, and whilst this may be a common practice for the Indie scene, it started to have its effects and impacts on the Triple A space also with last year alone seeing games such as Alan Wake 2 and HiFi Rush release digitally, until a year later, seeing a physical version release.

I think that whilst the notion of having a digital library and freeing up the physical space in your home, may seem advantageous or a nice prospect.

There are recent comments that can without a doubt spark some concern with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot stating that "Gamers should get used to not owning their games" and more recently there was an updated disclaimer when making a purchase on Steam to indicate that you're purchasing the license to play the game, and you do not own the games purchased.

There are alternative sites that run physical copies such as limited run games or pix n love which will provide limited physical copies of a particular game, but more broadly on a consumer level there has been a decline in terms of physical games, and overall I do think that this trend is only going to get worse over the next few years.

There is one area of importance which I do believe needs to be further explored and that is the world of video game preservation, and with the countless level of ROM sites being struck down and on top of that

I do believe that this won't be the end th