This means you can’t pass the game around to your friends or sell it afterwards, which completely ruins the purpose of physical media imo. I mostly play PC these days so this doesn’t affect me, but it’s a disappointing direction for console games. At least they could’ve used an empty disc that has proof of ownership.

  • SophismaCognoscente@lemmy.worldEnglish
    211·
    2 years ago

    I’m a huge proponent of physical media, but this is entirely unsurprising given Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda. Compared to Switch and especially Playstation, the Xbox has a much higher rate of digital game sales.

    If Starfield were on PS5, it would get a disc release for sure, and Xbox would probably get one too for the sake of parity. But discs aren’t terribly important to the Xbox crowd, and that goes double for PC gamers.

    Moreover, digital games are good for the publisher’s bottom line, so physical media is only going to exist as long as customers demand it. And PC and Xbox gamers simply don’t.

    • InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      17·
      2 years ago

      What I don’t get is why even release a physical edition if it doesn’t have the physical media.
      I own a lot of digital games through Steam, but releasing a physical copy of a game that only has a key in it is just weird.
      Might as well be a gift card.

      • hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
        6·
        2 years ago

        yeah that’s that part that sounds almost like fraud

        like wtf this sounds like they are trying to sell this edition for a marked up price to ppl who thought they’d buy a physical disk. That’s fraud 101: deceiving customers. On the list of scummy things it’s somewhere between macrotransactions and Nigerian prince.