I usually do physical but I decided to do digital for Diablo 3: UEE. I slowly came to regret it for a number of reasons.
For one thing, I didn't really do the math on how much space it takes up. 29 GB. Of the 500GB my PS4 came with. Diablo is a relatively small game. It's short, partially randomly generated, and has lot of reused textures, sounds, and models that aren't exactly super high res. The size is extra ridiculous considering it's only around 15GB on PC. I realize there's probably some weird lack of compression and the fact that the PC version might even offload some of that size to online assets somehow but come on. Almost double the size?
I can only imagine what bigger games will be on the PS4 in the future. If they average around 50GB, you're looking at 10 games (and nothing else) before it's HDD upgrade time or you start deleting titles that very well may not be downloadable in the future.
Which brings me to the next concern: What happens when you can't download these games again down the line in the event you need to? I guess you'll still be able to go out and buy a physical copy somewhere in the case of Diablo, but if you're trying to plead a case for an all digital future, that's the biggest barrier for me.
Lastly, after playing D3 again for a while I couldn't help but to start thinking, "You know what, I could just go back to playing this on PC." The direct control couch play aspect is cool and all, but the friends I was supposed to play with are hardly ever on, the game is behind on updates (and Blizz is being cagey about future support, questionably griping about console update woes), and I already have all these characters back on PC I could just progress with instead.
At that point, normally I'd start looking at trade in values or maybe asking friends if they want to buy my copy. But nah. It's digital. That's just $70 I'll never get back because I thought I'd be more into this console version.
'Caveat emptor,' I suppose.
And I will beware. Because I don't think I'll be buying any more digital games.
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