Is The End of Video Game Discs A Sure Thing? For instance, I love the fact that both the Elder Scrolls Anthology and The Elder Scrolls Online boxed sets are designed with the collector in mind, and it would be a shame if these games had been distributed strictly by digital means. My copies of Skyrim, Fallout, and Dishonored stand with the rest of their brethren in neat rows on my gaming shelf, complete with artwork, maps, etc. But a physical game disc is tangible - something that I can see and touch. A downloaded, digital game is stored away on my computer’s hard drive, never to be handled - never to be possessed. With that said, when given the option this month to pre-order either the digital or retail version of The Elder Scrolls Online, I opted for the retail version.įor games that I care about, there’s something reassuring about having physical discs in my possession. Yes, I’m both a console and a PC gamer, and it’s true that I already download most of my video games to play on PC. If Warman is correct, we very well may not see an Elder Scrolls VI disc when Skyrim’s successor is released sometime in the future. Peter Warman, president of Newzoo (a market research and consulting firm focused on the games industry), is quoted within the article as saying:ĭisc-based games will disappear completely, or be decimated, within the next five years to a level we currently see with music. The article makes some valid points regarding the growth of smartphone and tablet games, and I suppose it’s not too hard to imagine a world where digitally downloaded games are truly the norm (you can read the article in its entirety here).

I read an interesting article on the CNN/Money website that insists disc-based gaming will soon be extinct.

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