True advantages to going all digital against boxed titles?

Well I have the day one edition with fifa 14 pre ordered and also a copy of battlefield 4 as well which is a boxed copy, fifa 14 is a digital download...

Now is there any clear advantage to go all digital or all boxed retail? I know the boxed retail has to be installed to the HDD when inserted anyways but did I read somewhere that you can't do the fast switching on a game that has been installed from a disc? Only available on downloaded games?

Even in the year we are now I love having the games I own on the shelf even though the concept on buying a game the day it comes out on the console is pretty cool, I am the sort of person where having some games only digitally downloaded and some on my shelf to be untidy....

But anyways, the question is what are the advantages to getting one to the other... Or both?

You can't use snap between games because we still have to deal with switching the dumb discs (Thanks for that guys!)

I'm going all digital specifically for this reason. Also, if you ever play games on other Xbox ones with friends your entire library comes along with you just by logging in. I had a 360 at home and at school and choosing which specific boxes to fill up a bag with and haul home was always a problem.

The only big advantage I can think of right now is being able to just start a game without having to find the disc and put it in the system.

I think this is just about it, and on the next gen consoles it probably helps load times? Either way I've been suckered in to buying all my games digitally recently, mostly because of price but partially because discs are a pain.

Can't scratch or lose a digital download. Also that pesky friend that wants to borrow everything is out of luck.

People who have been testing various HD types within the PS4 have showed that load times are definitely better for digital only vs. disc.

The only real advantage that physical has is that you can sell it and it will be quicker to go from no game to playing with a disc than with digital. Popping the disc in and installing is obviously quicker than downloading, especially based on your internet, and since we'll all be juggling HD space this generation it's something to consider.

All digital is just a nice way to have your game collection all at the push of a button. I for one, enjoy having a physical game collection. Download only games I don't mind, but if I can but a retail copy, I will. I always fear that if I build up a digital collection and something happens to my system, I'd have to download all of them again. Physical copies are something I prefer.

@brich: So true....wish it was like they had talked about before...

@neptunepirate: By that same token, something could happen to your disks. Theft, fire, what ever. And then you are SOL :D

When the EMP hits, all your games are fried. My DVDs will be safe and sound inside their lead shielded faraday caged safe.

My main motivation. I tend to buy a lot of games and my friends sometimes treat me like a Blockbuster without the late fees.

i prefer boxed titles...u know games getting bigger ever year buying the disk version saves the downloading time which takes hours maybe days now...especially for users with limited internet capacity like me xD

No sales tax.

Anyone reconsidering the "benefits" of digital after the storage portion of the bombcast this week?

The idea that the machine will dump an old game when it need the space and you'll need to re download it (it may save a portion however) only seems like a good idea if you have blazing fast net or disks.

I was already sticking with physical due to my awesomely bad net speeds but even if mine were faster I think id hesitate.

I guess I still like having a physical copy on my hands, even if I've actively sold/traded away most of my PS3 games...I think I'm also more motivated to play a physical game, instead of when looking at a hella long list of digital games and trying to decide between those.

...but I think my liking towards preferring digital games might change quite a bit, when I move to a new appartment with a connection, that'll download every a million times faster than my current one.

Retail is generally cheaper, which is the biggest advantage to me.

Switching between games without disks. But some people, including me, like disks. Especially blue rays which don't scratch easy. Other than that all advantages go to retail.

For me it's just the fact that as it stands, there are far too many unknowns when it comes to digital. Discs feel like a more reliable alternative.

Considering the hard drive size, if you plan on getting a good collection of games having them on disc means it will be somewhat quicker to put in the disc rather than downloading a game you don't have installed. So it sorta depends on your gaming habits. If you tend to buy new games play them once and forget them, all digital is great. However if you like to have a big collection and pop in old games fairly regularly you're probably better off with discs.

You don't need to have a giant shelf of games or storage space when you stop playing the console.

I can't be assed with discs anymore, it's so much more convenient to just download what you want with something like Steam. You just need to trust the company to guarantee you access to your games which I guess is the main issue. It will probably be fine though, at least for a few years.

I won't be going digital. Love me some boxes

@mattyftm: yeah, though sony has really stepped up their game saleswise so I hope microsoft does the same.

Yep pretty much this one.

Shame the internet cried and the DRM 180 happened. Physical to digital conversion for games was going to be so very good.

Not having to find or change a disc, worry about scratching the disc, or friends or roommates borrowing a game and misplacing it are the reason that I'm getting most of my games as digital. I don't really ever trade in a games and some games that I know that my friends and I are going to play a lot of, Titanfall, Destiny and The Division, I'm getting as digital so I can hop into them quickly. I was planning on getting a something like an external hard drive anyways for more storage.

A big one I don't think anyone mentioned is that with digital, you have access to your full library on any xbox without carrying discs around. I've had a few cases bored at someone's house and downloaded castle crashers with my account for something to do together.

Theres no advantage now, as you incur the costs of bigger/more hard drives with no savings on day one game pricing.

@mattyftm said:

It will be interesting to see how digital prices on next gen will work.

- Saves time going to the store.

- Cheaper sometimes?

- Pre-download ability allowing you to play the game the earliest.

- Less physical space in your home.

- Game discs breaks or doesn't work you're kinda screwed. You can probably re-download the game as many times as you want on your account.

- Game should run better and read faster compared to if it was on a disc. This is typically the case though I've seen some comparison videos of GTA V on ps3 where it running on a disc was far superior to the digital version running on the harddrive.

I'm going digital, though it seems like a bit of a pain at the moment hopefully in time it will be better with preloading and stuff.

do you really want to download 45 gb's at a time? It depends on the game and what you feel like.

If it works the way it does on the 360 (and my understanding is that it does)... for a household with two folks that like to play together (Borderlands, for example), you only need to buy one copy of the game for the family as it's tied to one console (where the person who didn't buy the game plays) and one account (where the person who did buy the game plays). Wife is happy, you're happy. It's love and flowers and bullets everywhere...

*Yes, yes, you have to have two consoles but I'm not a big fan of splitscreen...

Not having to swap discs is the main one I guess, but since the hard drive is relatively small you'll probably be deleting and re-downloading a lot the next 8 years, so... kind of a pick your poison there. If you want to revisit an older game it would likely be much faster to re-install it than to download it again.

Personally I am sticking with discs because I like to own my games. Who knows how long Microsoft will keep servers up for downloading and authenticating. They shut the original Xbox down a few years after the 360 came out.

@gonmog: Very true sir! I've never really thought about it that way. I guess I just think of it in a way where if I pay $60 for something, I want a physical copy that I can hold. :p

I wish that were true ;( Or at least that we'd notice it in the pricing. Here in Europe anyway.

But stores are trying to push the standard price to 70 euro's here so if digital stays at 60 then im making the switch to full digital.

Edit* I should mention that bandwith is no issue in most areas in the Netherlands so thats nice. I would imagine that would make it less appealing. Especially if you use ps+/Gold free games.

If they could achieve price parity between the two I would probably never buy disc games.

Buying digital games to stop your pesky friends from borrowing them seems like a treatment of the symptom rather than the disease... ;)

Personally I'm staying with physical media, I don't find the current terms of digital distribution that the big companies use very agreeable. That being said, the convenience of going digital is obviously very nice. Especially the fact that, barring some theorethical force majeure that destroys the business-side of the exchange, your purchases are pretty safe from theft, fire and friends...

WHY AREN'T DIGITAL GAMES CHEAPER!!!!?????!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

It's pretty hard to scratch a Blu-Ray unless you go at it with a screwdriver.

And I also like sharing with my friends.

These new consoles, especially the Xbox One, were clearly designed around the concept of an all-digital library. I want to embrace this new way of doing things because frankly I think discs will disappear from store shelves before these consoles do.

The ONLY reason I ever buy digital games is for the PC or for games that are no longer being sold.

Digital seems the way to go. No sale tax, don't have to leave the house, can buy/download a game from the app so by the time you get home it will be ready. Size? no a problem cuz most of us don't replay games and by the time size become an issue hard drives will be cheaper.

I can't believe that no one else has said this yet (because it's my main motivation for going with discs), but in 10 years all my disc games should still work, while I don't trust MS or Sony to still allow me to download them. MS has an awful habit of turning services off.

I have used a mix of digital and boxed copies of video game software since the 1990s, and I will continue to do so. I'll simply choose whichever suits my purposes best at the time of purchase/whatever is available to me at the time of purchase.

I doubt that. 50GB is a lot of data and most Americans have relatively crap internet. Also consoles are much more mainstream than Steam, and even on PC disc sales still outnumber downloads, according to the latest worldwide figures I read.

Yes most Americans seem to have relatively crap internet right now, but speeds will only increase in the coming years. I mean heck I think that I had something like a 1 Mb/s connection 10 years ago and now I get 50 times that at home and on my bloody phone!

I still don't understand why consumers aren't allowed to opt into binding their disc puchases to their accounts, if they wish to do so. Disc releases are still often cheaper than day 1 downloads, and I like to go with the best deal regardless, but I hate to swap discs and love Steam-like software libraries.

As long as there's an offline mode, I really don't see any downsides to such a thing, if it's optional. I never resell my games, so I don't care about all that jazz. I really hope Microsoft and Sony establish such an option soon. Disc-swappin' is so 1999.

This was almost exactly the original Xbox One plan which I loved but most people seemed to hate. The offline mode was only 24 hours, but that original plan with a three day offline mode for example would have been fantastic.

Only it wasn't optional. For some people, eliminating the second hand market outright is a deal breaker.

@seppli: You'r right. But I'm optimistic that we will be seeing download codes being sold at different retailers. If Microsoft and Sony really want to drag the disc-spinning masses from physical retail locations to their online store then using download codes which are just slightly less expensive than discs is a great way to achieve it. Shops are happy to still have inventory to sell, and the big two will introduce new people to the concept of digital ownership.