The digitization of the game industry also screwed them over. Sadly even the point of physical console games is fading because they all try to make you install a 100 GB day one patch as soon as you put it in the drive.
With PC games, I don't even know if the physical media contains game files anymore or if it's just a portal to EA Play or some other abomination.
PC gaming was the first to go really. I remember Gamestop even during its peak in like 2008 having a comically small PC gaming section, and it was usually all Blizzard gamechests anyway. I doubt they've had discs with the game on them for over a decade.
And yeah, its usually pointless to go physical because its 99% of the time the same price but requires twice the effort and all the possible positives aren't provided because its incomplete on the cart/disc anyway.
Mario Tennis and Mario Golf on the Switch, with patches that were supposed to “flesh out” the game, which both launched with laughably shit single player experiences left such a bad taste in my mouth that I gave up all interest in physical and modern game “collecting”.
That’s the kind of thing that isn’t noticed till 5 years down the line when Nintendo looks around and wonders where the customers went.
You get a plastic scratch-off card with an activation code on Steam or the Epic Game Store™. It used to be a DVD case with a paper card inside, but even that's too expensive nowadays.
The digitization of the game industry also screwed them over. Sadly even the point of physical console games is fading because they all try to make you install a 100 GB day one patch as soon as you put it in the drive.
With PC games, I don't even know if the physical media contains game files anymore or if it's just a portal to EA Play or some other abomination.
PC gaming was the first to go really. I remember Gamestop even during its peak in like 2008 having a comically small PC gaming section, and it was usually all Blizzard gamechests anyway. I doubt they've had discs with the game on them for over a decade.
And yeah, its usually pointless to go physical because its 99% of the time the same price but requires twice the effort and all the possible positives aren't provided because its incomplete on the cart/disc anyway.
Mario Tennis and Mario Golf on the Switch, with patches that were supposed to “flesh out” the game, which both launched with laughably shit single player experiences left such a bad taste in my mouth that I gave up all interest in physical and modern game “collecting”.
That’s the kind of thing that isn’t noticed till 5 years down the line when Nintendo looks around and wonders where the customers went.
You get a plastic scratch-off card with an activation code on Steam or the Epic Game Store™. It used to be a DVD case with a paper card inside, but even that's too expensive nowadays.