In a time before the Internet as we now know it even existed, video games were mainly bought from brick and motor stores just like everything else. I was a boy who was introduced to video games via the PC, arcades, and the third and fourth generation consoles around that time. It was also in those days that my older brother who, with support from our father, would buy and install games the PC and rent Sega Genesis games from a nearby Blockbuster rental store before I even understood the fundamentals of shopping. Now that I'm a more active gamer, I would occasionally order games via Amazon (if I find the price right) and purchase them via the PlayStation Network Store, Xbox Live, and the Wii Shop Channel as downloadable titles on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii in addition to shopping at a local Gamestop. Since I keep an eye out for games of the best quality and have a limited budget, I make a mental list as to which games to buy based on their reputation since their original release, the uniqueness of the game mechanics, and, of course, the asking price. Sometimes I ask myself: do I go for a physical copy or a digital copy?
You would think that digital distribution of video games would render the use of physical copies obsolete given the latest in computer and Internet technology. But that would be a naive way of thinking how digital distribution works as opposed to physical distribution. There are many factors to take into account when considering a purchase of a digital copy of a video game. The first and most obvious factor to consider is the price of the game you plan to purchase. The most common average price of any new video game, physical or digital, is $60. When a used physical copy game gets traded in at a store like Gamestop, the price of that game generally goes down to $50, $30, and sometimes even less than $10. When a video game made, say, 20 or 30 years ago never gets sold in a store and is left in pristine condition, the price goes up to around $100 and even a collector's price of more than $1,000, sometimes more than $10,000. That is not usually the case for digital copies of video games. The prices of digital video games made for the previous and current generations of consoles go down overtime. Digital versions of games made prior to the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii are generally cheaper than the digital versions of games made specifically for those consoles as well as the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Wii U. For example, digital copies of NES and SNES games available on the Wii Shop Channel are respectively priced at $8 and $16. As another example, digital copies of PlayStation 1 and 2 games available on the PlayStation Network Store cost around $5 and $10 dollars, respectively.
If you consider buying a digital copy of a video game, an important factor to consider besides the price tag is the amount of space is required to be installed on a PC or console.The average amount of data on a PlayStation 1 game, for instance, is 500 MB or less. The average amount of data for a PlayStation 2 game is around 5 GB or less. The data contained in a PlayStation 3 game is generally twice that of data in a PlayStation 2 game and there is no doubt that a PlayStation 4 game contains a lot more data than a PlayStation 3 game; games made for the PlayStation 4 contain 20 to 40 GB of data. Depending on how many games you want to buy from the PlayStation Network Store, Xbox Live, the Wii Shop Channel, Steam, and/or GOG, it is going to take up space on your hard drive when installing those games directly on a console and PC. The amount of hard drive space available on any game console or any PC largely depends on the model. In my case, I own two PCs with around 1 TB of storage space each (my first PC initially had two internal hard drives having 144 GB before I bought my second one and upgraded the former more than a year ago), a PlayStation 3 with a 140 GB internal hard drive, and an Xbox 360 with a 250 MB internal hard drive and three external hard drives for that console with 20 GB, 60 GB, and 120 GB of space. So I have to be rather picky as to which games I would like to buy digitally for those systems.
If you have a specific title in mind, it is especially important to know as to whether that title is available in physical form (a cartridge, a disk, a Blu-Ray), in digital form (online program), or both. As illustrations of this point, most titles for the Super Mario Bros. franchise are available in their cartridge form for the first three Nintendo consoles as well as the Wii Shop Channel; the first titles for the Final Fantasy franchise still exist in as Nintendo cartridges and on the Wii Shop Channel. Likewise, some Final Fantasy titles made for the PlayStation 1 can still be found on disks sold in any video game specialty store and Amazon while the digital versions of those titles are still available on the PlayStation Network Store. Of course, that's referring to some of the most popular video game titles. Cult classics like Shadowrun for the SNES and Sega Genesis can still be found in specialty stores and Amazon but are not available on the Wii Shop Channel. Other titles like Fez, Braid, Super Meat Boy, and Hotline Miami exist in digital form only and can only be bought on Steam, Xbox Live, and the Playstation Network Store. Let's suppose you've just happened to hear and/or read about a game that is of good to excellent quality that did not much publicity, rendering it a hidden gem. Depending on your resources, like money and computer hard drive space, it would be best to get it as soon as possible if it suits your fancy. Some cult classics ended up becoming an expensive collector's items that would cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
So which is better, I hear you ask? Physical or digital? The answer to that question largely depends on what sort of games you enjoy, what consoles you have, how much space you have on your hard drives, and how much money you have. Unless you're a die hard collector, you can't get every single game on the entire planet. As a gamer and aspiring game designer with limited resources, I'm picky about which games I buy at Gamestop, Steam, or Amazon based on my personal preference, what makes some hidden gems stand out from their more popular contemporaries when they catch my interest, if they are available in a cartridge, disk, or digital format, and if they are at a decent price. For the most part, it has worked out for me.
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