You’ve probably already read articles about the death of DVD and Blu-ray movies, and you may have thought ‘who cares? I stream all my movies anyway.’
But the point is, the death of movie discs matters and those most affected by it are actually gamers. If Blu-ray disappears, it means an end to the rule of the optical disc. Nothing is likely to take its place, and games everywhere will be download only, like on PC.
Unfortunately, we’ll all soon be paying the same (or more) for less, and it will also inevitably mean the end of the second-hand market, which is vital for gamers on a budget.
Blu-ray only extended the inevitable…
Blu-ray is great, a great upgrade over DVD, and the journey from DVD to Blu-ray to 4K Blu-ray has enabled the survival of physical games.
However, you can find articles over ten years old proclaim that physical media is dead in much the same way you can point to people who think that “3D is the future‘ and that ‘single player games are dying out‘ if you’re looking for it. As time has shown us, these folks were wrong, because 3D isn’t much these days, and single player games are still some of the hottest, biggest games out there.
Unfortunately, these people weren’t wrong when it came to physical media. It may take longer to die out than many people expected, but today there is honestly no way to watch video games and not think that physical media is dead now or will be soon. Sure, you can still buy games on Blu-rays, but you don’t actually own the games you buy. More often than not you don’t even get the game on the disc.
Since the release of the PS3 and Xbox 360, games on discs have become increasingly incomplete. During the PlayStation 2 era, you bought a game, put it in your console, and played the game. That was it. You could still do this with a PS3 or 360, more or less, but if you wanted to play online and/or wouldn’t be forced to deal with bugs and glitches fixed by patches, well, you’d need an internet connection have to download some data.
As time went on, games got bigger and the disc problem got worse, even if the jump to Blu-ray starting with the PS3 increased storage capacity. What were once patches that had to be downloaded are now games so big they won’t fit on discs at all, so a lot of the data has to be downloaded from a server in order to even play.
At this point, you may be wondering why it has to be this way. After all, 8K TVs exist, so surely a new format like 8K Blu-ray must come with more storage space than ever? Then you could get anything but new patches from the disk. Problem solved, right?
Unfortunately not. It all comes down to dollars. Back when PlayStation Network and Xbox Live were relatively new things, game companies first started pushing for digital purchases. I mean, if you could cut out the middleman and sell your games directly to your customers, why not?
And because you don’t have to invest in discs and distribution, you can charge less for your games and still earn Lake money than before. This was a big selling point that companies were pushing back then: the idea that if we all bought games digitally, well, games would be cheaper.
Spoiler alert: they are not cheaper.
Companies quickly realized that since everyone was used to paying a certain price for games, they could just charge the same price digitally.
If people are willing to download their games, or at least have the option, why invest in a fancy new Blu-ray specification with more expensive discs? Why even bother putting multiple Blu-ray discs in a case, increasing the cost? If we wanted to solve these problems, we could sell games on cartridges or flash drives or SSDs that can even hold giant games and their updates, but it’s not about solving problems, it’s about money.
…and Blu-ray can’t bring any of it back to life
The PlayStation 3 used Blu-ray, while the Xbox 360 used traditional DVDs, with an HD DVD attachment that quickly went out of style. Back then, a Blu-ray could have 25 GB or 50 GB (with dual-layer discs) of storage, while your average dual-layer DVD could have 9 GB of storage. However, Blu-rays were new at the time of the PS3 and 360, so they were much more expensive than DVDs, making it cost-effective to just use multiple DVDs for games when needed, like the 360 did.
Importantly, though, Blu-ray support was also a compelling media feature, making the PlayStation 3 one of the best Blu-ray players on the market at launch. In addition, the cost of Blu-ray would inevitably come down. So Sony not only supported the superior format but also got a new feature out of it and could realistically expect the cost to come down over time. All things considered, Blu-ray was a huge win for everyone, allowing physical games to keep coming.
Today things are very different. Blu-rays can hold up to 100GB, and both Xbox and PlayStation rely on Blu-rays, while PC has almost completely eliminated the tradition of selling physical games. However, games are much bigger than they were on PS3 and 360. On PC these days a game like Call Of Duty: Warzone can take up more than 250 GB of storage space.
Whether we could further increase the capacity of a Blu-ray with a next-generation 8K Blu-ray is unlikely to be economically viable. It will be costly and it will not fix the storage problem permanently but just help it down the road. All things considered, we’re not likely to see higher capacity media Blu-rays anytime soon, if ever.
Plus, we can return to the tradition of packing multiple drives into physical games for now when we need access to more storage, but how long would that make sense? If 8K Blu-rays aren’t on the horizon, we might be able to make two discs or three discs, but what happens when PS6 has games larger than 500GB? And how many discs would it take before games become too expensive for the average gamer?
Soon we will even reach the theoretical limits of Blu-ray as a format, and the only option will be the exceedingly expensive method of selling games on SSDs or flash drives with hundreds of gigabytes of storage, and that’s just never going to happen, not when companies just eliminate drives altogether and charge the same, if not more. It just doesn’t make any business sense.
Say goodbye to second-hand games
At the moment, second-hand games are in a bad place. You can’t really trade PC games because it’s all digital now and it’s a no-starter for mobile games. If we’re talking about Nintendo, you’re good to go without major problems, but this is less the case when it comes to Xbox and PlayStation these days.
You can trade physical console games, but there may be restrictions on this. Some parts of a game may be associated with a code associated with your account, and it’s likely that you won’t be able to just pop the disc into an offline console and play.
We already have the digital PS5 and Xbox Series S, so when the next-gen versions of these consoles launch and they’re all discless, the second-hand market will die. Now look at used PC games: *tumbleweed*. There is nothing. Second-hand PC games don’t really exist, physically no more
Sure, there’s the ability to trade, buy and sell accounts (or even share accounts) that can and will create a sort of ‘digital second-hand’ marketplace, but it’s very niche, poses security concerns and isn’t a great replacement for trading physical games.
But the second-hand market isn’t just about access, it’s also about saving. Buying used games and trading in games you’ve played has been an essential way to get some of the money lost when buying new games. If you’re not very lucky, you probably can’t afford every new blockbuster game at launch.
We need a bigger hard drive
But the demise of the pre-owned games market isn’t the only way the disappearance of Blu-ray will affect gamers.
As we move into this glittering, all-digital future, storage is actually still a major concern, and internet speeds are also becoming a major issue. In terms of storage, if a single game requires hundreds of gigabytes of space, you can only store a few games on your console at a time. You either need to buy more storage or buy a more expensive console with more space that may need to be upgraded in the future.
Then you need a good internet connection. Not just a connection capable of streaming video or playing a game online, but a fast, stable connection capable of regularly downloading hundreds of gigabytes without waiting too long. This may not sound like a big question if you live in Silicon Valley and work in technology, but this is actually a huge question for many parts of the world. Those lucky enough to have ultra-fast broadband won’t feel the effects, but for those who don’t, downloading the latest and greatest games can become a chore.
If you can’t rely on buying used, have slow internet, and can’t easily afford to spend more on storage, you’re out of luck in a way that people with more to spend never will.
So buy physical games while you still can
Fortunately, depending on the kind of gamer you are, physical media isn’t quite dead yet. In terms of Xbox and PlayStation, a healthy share of sales is still physical, and if you’re a Nintendo fan, you probably have a few more generations before games get big enough to leave physical copies.
In addition, buying old games on checkers will of course continue until the stock of a particular game is exhausted. However, if a game relies on a server for multiplayer or to access patches, it can and will cause problems.
However, it’s hard to imagine being able to walk into a games store in 10 years and see racks upon racks upon racks of the latest, newest titles on discs. It’s more likely that we’ll continue the tradition of selling plastic cases with artwork on them, and instead of a disc, there’ll be a code inside that you can use to download the game. This is more or less what a physical copy of a PC game is these days.
When Blu-ray takes its last breath, now is the time to load up on physical discs, as the PS5 and Series X generation of consoles may be the last where physical games are widely accessible.
LAKE:
Here are the top 8 reasons why you should keep buying 4K Blu-rays
Our choice of the best Dolby Atmos movie scenes
Just like the best music documentaries
0 Comments