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GTA 6 Physical Copies Won't Include a Disc, Will Just Be a Code in a Box

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Re: GTA 6 Physical Copies Won't Include a Disc, Will Just Be a Code in a Box

#21
post #13

This is bad for many reasons: - Externalizes the costs of distribution to consumers. DVDs and Blu Rays cost a pittance compared to the $100 MSRP that GTA 6 is rumoured to retail under. GTA 6 will likely break records for the highest single day gross of a media release of all time. They can't allocate some of that top line to providing a physical token that gamers can collect? - Sets a bad precedent for future AAA rel…

"At 200GB I don't know how anybody can justify valuable space in their SSD for a single game." What game plays off the disc itself? Most games copy to the ssd and then just download a new full copy of the game from the cloud the second the copy from the disc is done.

Yeah it was the Ps4/Xbox 1 generation where it became mandatory. That said some games would allow you to boot the game half way through the install and use both the HDD data and Blu Ray data at the same time, this was generally pretty slow as it was still trying to install at the same time.

That is if there isn't a patch, otherwise it will just download most of it again like you said.

Re: GTA 6 Physical Copies Won't Include a Disc, Will Just Be a Code in a Box

#23
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At 200GB I don't know how anybody can justify valuable space in their SSD for a single game." What game plays off the disc itself? Most games copy to the ssd and then just download a new full copy of the game from the cloud the second the copy from the disc is done.

Yeah it was the Ps4/Xbox 1 generation where it became mandatory. That said some games would allow you to boot the game half way through the install and use both the HDD data and Blu Ray data at the same time, this was generally pretty slow as it was still trying to install at the same time. That is if there isn't a patch, otherwise it will just download most of it again like you said.

It's mandatory for literally all (native) PS5/XSX games; because that means the games can rely on SSD speeds and not worry about supporting fetching data from the spinning disks.

Re: GTA 6 Physical Copies Won't Include a Disc, Will Just Be a Code in a Box

#24

This is bad for many reasons: - Externalizes the costs of distribution to consumers. DVDs and Blu Rays cost a pittance compared to the $100 MSRP that GTA 6 is rumoured to retail under. GTA 6 will likely break records for the highest single day gross of a media release of all time. They can't allocate some of that top line to providing a physical token that gamers can collect? - Sets a bad precedent for future AAA rel…

This likely has little bearing on install size. Maybe you would save some download size but I kind of doubt it.

Day 1 patches have been a thing for years. This honestly is not new.

Re: GTA 6 Physical Copies Won't Include a Disc, Will Just Be a Code in a Box

#26
post #8

In my opinion, disc based games have been a ridiculous way to sell modern games because they are physically incapable of storing the amount of game data required for modern AAA games. I understand that they still exist because of the resale value, but solid state storage similar to Nintendo Switch cards makes more sense to me. On an even more personal note, very few modern games, if any, are worth purchasing for my o…

A PS5 Bluray can hold 100GB of data, sure some AAA titles are in excess of 100GB, although that is still 100GB that the player doesn't have to download, plus they enable re-sell-ability and partially maintain the status quo of "owning" a title.

It's weird to say this, but BD (including 4K UHD BD) is actually really old tech. Sony was talking about quad-layer discs back before they deleted the mandatory disc caddy from the draft BD spec! OK, practically speaking nobody had their hands on a quad-layer disc until BDXL in the mid-2010s, but even then that's still old.

As for why nobody's made a higher-capacity disc... well, they did. It was even an industry standard. You just never heard about it because it was exclusively intended to be a replacement for tape libraries. I guess rolling out this tech to consumers was just too impractically expensive?

You can absolutely do resale rights with solid-state media, too. On the other hand, the Switch library is littered with games that require downloading an update in order to play. Switch 2 went further and had games that shipped as a pure license key with no data storage. The underlying economics of game distribution are actually really unfavorable to any amount of overhead. Hell, the reason why physical games even still exist AT ALL is because we can press BDXLs for pennies.

Going back to the stagnation in optical media, the read performance hit a wall a while back, too. You basically can't stream anything off these discs anymore. Hell, some Internet connections might actually be faster than an install from optical media! So that's not really the advantage people think anymore either.

The resale ability is basically the only reason to keep physical media around, though - and I'm surprised we haven't seen a renewed attempt to kill physical. I mean, with movies, most stores have already removed their BD sections; you basically can only buy those online or at some Barnes & Noble stores.

Re: GTA 6 Physical Copies Won't Include a Disc, Will Just Be a Code in a Box

#27

In my opinion, disc based games have been a ridiculous way to sell modern games because they are physically incapable of storing the amount of game data required for modern AAA games. I understand that they still exist because of the resale value, but solid state storage similar to Nintendo Switch cards makes more sense to me. On an even more personal note, very few modern games, if any, are worth purchasing for my o…

>very few modern games, if any, are worth purchasing for my own enjoyment

Side question, do you happen to play games that don't have a gun or a ball in it? I always hear people say these things about modern games and it's almost always turns out to be people who play call of duty , sports games and maybe they have played something like assassin's creed or a racing game once in a while, and have never played any indie or non AAA games or anything that isn't made in USA or Japan. I agree there's a lot of dreadful about the gaming industry right now, but there are so many games worth playing that it's just sad to read stuff like this

Re: GTA 6 Physical Copies Won't Include a Disc, Will Just Be a Code in a Box

#28
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but solid state storage similar to Nintendo Switch cards makes more sense to me These likely degrade in 5-10 years, and have you seen the price of NAND lately? AAA gaming is going to get to be out-of-reach because of storage costs.

I don't know what the degradation for NAND storage is, but another aspect that I didn't mention in my original comment is the fragility of disc based media. In terms of scratches and other damage.

You have to treat a blu ray very badly to get a scratch in it. It might look like a DVD or CD but it's not. It is much more resistant to scratches as it has a protective coating called Durabis from TDK. Sony uses their own proprietary coating.

Re: GTA 6 Physical Copies Won't Include a Disc, Will Just Be a Code in a Box

#29

In my opinion, disc based games have been a ridiculous way to sell modern games because they are physically incapable of storing the amount of game data required for modern AAA games. I understand that they still exist because of the resale value, but solid state storage similar to Nintendo Switch cards makes more sense to me. On an even more personal note, very few modern games, if any, are worth purchasing for my o…

While this is true, it is a sign of the customer losing control over their purchases. When the servers go dark, the game does too.

Yes there are some practicality issues with physical media but they are kind of trivial to the costs of just handing over all control to the publishers.

Re: GTA 6 Physical Copies Won't Include a Disc, Will Just Be a Code in a Box

#30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it was the Ps4/Xbox 1 generation where it became mandatory. That said some games would allow you to boot the game half way through the install and use both the HDD data and Blu Ray data at the same time, this was generally pretty slow as it was still trying to install at the same time. That is if there isn't a patch, otherwise it will just download most of it again like you said.

It's mandatory for literally all (native) PS5/XSX games; because that means the games can rely on SSD speeds and not worry about supporting fetching data from the spinning disks.

I thought as much but wasn't 100% certain.
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