It's only outdated to the rich families who can afford brand new games for their kids. Excluding discs is a great way to force many out of the market.

With how games work these days, having just the disk is pretty much useless if the publisher decides to delist or discontinue the game from platform, because:

• patches and updates don't come with disk form anymore.
• many games that requires online authentication to play won't be available to keep playing if their account service is down.
• games go on sale with steady rate most of the time(except nintendo), for bargain bin deals you would probably find the game on humble bundle or gog.
• you often have the good games that release "better" remake version over and over anyway. Note, I know people sometimes prefer the original version, but not everyone is on the same page and it hugely depending on the dev/publisher for the newer version.

Now let's describe the cons:

• in many countries, breaking DRM is illegal. So even if all you want to do archive, you can't make a decrypted copy. That's why homebrew etc provides the key/dumper for you to do such at your own risk. IMO, it's safer(INAL) to download pirated iso/rom compare to doing your own dump. And, archiver actually tried to keep a post patch version before store is closed down(see wiiu store close example), the disk version is not a viable option anymore for archiver.
• storage up keep, physical things require storage space. I still have like 3 large shipping box for my older gen(ps3/GC/Wii/X360 games) I will probably donate them to library or something and keep the only ones I wanted to keep.
• console part cost, the BD drives are often first point of failure, then HDMI connectors. Cause well, moving parts are easier to break and harder to QA. PS5's 2 versions gives a good example how the disk affects the look, weight, etc. Not to mention, they are a lot slower then SSD and you are required to install all that anyway.
• developer/publisher/platform see nothing for used game sales. It sounds like huge shill talk but let's be honest, they want to make a living, if you are not supporting your favorite developer they will have to offset the cost by doing shit you all won't like. ie, mtx, subscription service, selling analytic data, selling the studio to shit publisher that push worth practice, platform raise price to meet target projection. Buy/sell used game only helps that service owner(gamestop/ebgame/bestbuy, not the community.)
• did I mention switching disc just to play game is a PITA, and if your case is the modern garbage version, remember those plastic break down more easily and you would have to buy new case to hold your disc.
• environment waste for all the manufacturing, packaging and shipping. It's honestly not worth that in modern era if you give a fuck about how future generation will live.

That's not a bug, it's a feature. They want to sell you digital version specifically because you can't resell them. It could easily be solved by creating a digital marketplace, and even turn a profit for the publishers by taking a cut of resales.

This sounds like a console user problem. PCs haven't had disc drives for years and the games are far cheaper. Yes, there's no second-hand market, but with steam sales, humble bundles, and all the freebies I post in !freegames@feddit.uk it's not really become the corpo hellscape we feared.

Also technically you don't own games on disc either, it's just much harder for the publisher to come round your house and snap your copy!

Not to mention that as long as it’s a digital download, you don’t own the game - you lease it at a flat rate.

not true all the time. Plenty of games once you have the files are easily able to run. KSP is one such example. I can just copy the KSP folder to any computer and play the game.

Its the devs choice to require things like Steam to validate the game etc.

You don't need CDs for that, and CDs don't prevent that.

As the other user pointed out, most CDs don't even have a playable form of the game on them anymore. You usually need additional updates to actually play the game (or in the case of those steam installs, the CD doesn't even have a bare minimum on it)

Technically you can own a game as a digital install too, just they won't deliver it that way.

That's exactly why they don't want it!

I would have played so many less games in my youth if I weren't able to trade discs with friends. I would have missed Vice City, Morrowind and Final Fantasy VII to name a few memorable ones.

If only that was what he was saying. He doesn't care whether they're dependent on servers. The vast majority of physical games sold today are already nothing more than an entitlement and some of the game files, with the rest being downloaded after you insert the disc. He's only concerned with Gamestop getting their cut, both in new game sales and especially in their bread-and-butter trade-in market.

In the days of zero days patches and DRM requiring a check to the servers, a disc doesn't guarantee that at all.

If anything, disc just became dongles to prove ownership and download the full game.

You all hate discs until you have a library that you can rent games for free close to you.

It’s actually illegal where I live to rent out games. Thanks, Nintendo! (/^^)/⌒●~*

Xbox One announcement (E3 2013): "YOU CAN TAKE MY DISKS FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!

Current Year (2023): "Disks are outdated and dead, who needs em anyway?"

Y'all forget way too easily and they are starting to prey upon it.

Yes it is weird. I get people preferring digital copies but I dont get having hostility toward physical media.

I remember after I got a 3DS I went to GameStop to trade in my DSi and they offered me $5 or a gift card.

"i LiKe ThE sToCk"

They do. sorta. It's definitely possible to put something like Starfield on a dual layer BDROM, probably even uncompressed! But then load times would be fucking crazy because BD is an order of magnitude slower than an SSD.

Distributing install files for a day 1 version of a game and using the disc as an auth key, (which is what they did last gen iirc) is still possible.

What needs to happen is regulation. Pro-consumer governing bodies (which don't exist in the US, but the EU has been on a roll) mandating the right to transfer a digital license.

As for the stores, Xbox offers GameStop a small percentage of the revenue from every digital game purchased on a console sold by GameStop. That feels like a healthy compromise for an all-digital business model.

It's obviously in GameStop's interest.

He's only saying this about disc drives because six months ago he was saying "You'll be buying all your games as NFTs from GameStop!" (notice he didn't give one fuck about physical media six months ago?) and then when that went tits up and they closed their cryptocoin and NFT wallets, they need another way to get people to keep buying stocks. They've got those Gamestonk idiots still in a frenzy and they haven't yet woken up to being taken for a ride since the NFT dream turned bust.