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    PlayStation 4

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    PlayStation 4 is Sony's fourth home video game console, released on November 15, 2013 in North America, and November 29, 2013 in Europe. On November 10 2016, Sony released the Playstation 4 Pro, an updated version of the console targeting 4K gaming.

    Digital or Disc?

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    Avatar image for nightriff
    nightriff

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    Edited By nightriff

    Poll Digital or Disc? (193 votes)

    Only Digital Purchases 11%
    Only Disc Purchases 26%
    Mix of Both 62%

    Which are you going to favor with these consoles?

    I would like to do all digital this generation like Steam but seeing the file sizes and hearing that the download process isn't as "seamless" as they have made it out to be, I'm starting to lean towards getting all discs again (which is ok but not ideal, means I'll need another box to but all the cases). I'm a little OCD and don't want to mix unless a game is really cheap compared to the other format but even then I would rather have all digital or all discs.

    Have you guys decided? What factors into your decision?

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    lKennedyl

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    Digital. Fuck the past.

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    BRich

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    #52  Edited By BRich

    No more space for discs, so I'm going to try to recreate Microsoft's original vision and have my entire library be digital and accessible from any X1/PS4 (minus those aboard nuclear submarines).

    I may even let friends login and game share just cause they removed that feature. Sharing discs is not practical at all post-high school/college.

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    Bane122

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    Physical. If it's a game I really enjoy, I like adding it to The Collection and if it's not I like to resell it. I have nothing against digital really, just want to collect games as long as I can. Which I suspect will only be one more generation.

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    handlas

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    #54  Edited By handlas

    Was digital until I saw the sizes of the games. I don't see how anyone can go only digital. The downloads will take forever and you will have enough room for like what...3 games? Sucks because I enjoyed having all my PS3 games on the hard drive.

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    darbish

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    I like digital for handheld consoles, but for home consoles there needs to be a noticeable discount on the digital version for me to consider buying it since I give up the option of reselling it at a later date. If brick-and-mortar stores disappeared and digital was the only option the price point wouldn't be such a sticky wicket for me, but I'd definitely buy and play fewer new games as a result.

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    Verendus

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    Games that I look forward to or buy day one on disc. Then the sudden "Well this looks nice, I'll try it out" purchases as digital.

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    tonnous24

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    I want to go digital only, but even a 2TB drive seems too small with game and patch sizes.

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    strainedeyes

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    #58  Edited By strainedeyes

    @handlas said:

    Was digital until I saw the sizes of the games. I don't see how anyone can go only digital. The downloads will take forever and you will have enough room for like what...3 games? Sucks because I enjoyed having all my PS3 games on the hard drive.

    You can fit around 10 full retail games at a time with the standard HD (if they keep being around 40GB). Also, disc games install entirely to the HD (COD disc requires a minimum of 49GB free space) as well so either way you'll be deleting game data to make room for more games.

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    Andorski

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    I still think it's smarter to go physical on consoles. Both Sony and MS have shown that they are willing to cut compatibility of their games when going from one generation to the next. With physical games you can at least sell them and get some money back. The only way digital on console becomes appealing to me is if Sony and MS do some sales as steep and as frequent as Steam.

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    sonicrift

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    Sometimes you know a game is for you, and that you're going to want to go back to it lots. These are the games I'll buy digitally. Super Mario 3D World? Totally! It's a sure thing. Something where I know I'm going to get sucked into the multiplayer for months, like The Last of Us, might have been a good digital purchase, since it had me doing a lot of disc switching. I've bought Killzone: Shadow Fall digitally, since I spent a good 100 hours playing Killzone 3 before The Last of Us dethroned it. I'm not going to want to trade it in until another Killzone takes its, and by then, disc copies won't be worth much at all.

    Some types of games, I'll buy and play through in a few days, and want to keep forever, but I might not pop it back in for a few years. This is a good physical purchase. Assassin's Creed, Final Fantasy, Batman: Arkham,

    Annualized franchises make no sense to buy digitally, in my mind. I'll be buying a physical copy of NHL 16.

    The last time I had someone over to play plastic instrument rhythm games (2010?), I wished I'd had the option to purchase those digitally. We switched discs for different songs 6 times, back and forth, based on a setlist printout of all my songs across 4 different games.

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    Belegorm

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    Both. I'd really like to go all digital but there's just not going to be enough hard drive space, fairly quickly. This won't be too big of an issue if they can ensure that their download speeds are decent.

    Also PSN really needs to get up to speed with lowering the prices of digital games; I'm not saying they have to go to the level of steam, but they really need to lower the prices on games after they've been out quite a while, and have meaningful sales from time to time, like steam does.

    Also after having been mostly a PC only gamer for the last 5 or so years, having to bother with discs feels rather backward and old-fashioned.

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    yevinorion

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    Mostly digital for me. Being in The Bahamas brings with it shipping costs and customs duties, so if I can just spend the straight $59.99 and download it that is preferable. Will likely have to upgrade my PS4 to something much larger though.

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    GERALTITUDE

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    Mostly disc. No time to download 50+ gig games.

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    corruptsaves

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    Of course it will be a mix but with Killzone at 40 gigs and was going to be around 240 gigs? Puts another stamp down for why I won't be getting one for awhile. Find out of much those hard drives are going to be. Hope it won't be some crazy vitaness again.

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    strainedeyes

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    #65  Edited By strainedeyes

    @corruptsaves said:

    Of course it will be a mix but with Killzone at 40 gigs and was going to be around 240 gigs? Puts another stamp down for why I won't be getting one for awhile. Find out of much those hard drives are going to be. Hope it won't be some crazy vitaness again.

    The hard drive is a standard laptop drive, so you can buy any one that fits their specifications, just like the PS3. It's not proprietary.

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    spraynardtatum

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    #66  Edited By spraynardtatum

    My question is...and I apologize in advance if this is a dum dum...but if PS4 only allows users to swap an internal harddrive (true?) how does one transfer their data from one harddrive to the next? Do you just have to swap harddrives and start fresh?

    Or would all your games be linked to your account so you would just need to redownload everything?

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    strainedeyes

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    My question is...and I apologize in advance if this is a dum dum...but if PS4 only allows users to swap an internal harddrive (true?) how does one transfer their data from one harddrive to the next? Do you just have to swap harddrives and start fresh?

    Or would all your games be linked to your account so you would just need to redownload everything?

    You can attach an external drive to back up before switching hard drives, the same as the PS3. It just can't be used as additional HD space for the console.

    Also, yeah, anything you download you could just re-download. With PS+ you can upload saves to the cloud to transfer those too.

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    SMTDante89

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    Absolutely both.

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