There ought to be a law that a physical release of a game sold in a box has to include some kind of physical media that contains a version of the game.
Yes, I get that a multi-gig Day 1 Patch is inevitable, but as someone that had to rely on a craptastic mobile broadband connection for a solid year or two, this is a travesty.
If you wanna just sell a code for a digital version in retail stores, just sell code cards without the plastic disk-like box. It wastes less resources, and makes it more clear what it is.
Boxes should come with branded USB sticks (who even has a disc drive these days?), and if the physical version isn’t a box why even bother. Random swag is the point.
Well, my previous PC still had disc drives – two in fact, a DVD reader and a CD-RW. Only because I didn’t get a new case and didn’t have any replacement front panels, though, they were never connected because PATA doesn’t work well on a SATA-only board. Also still had a 3.5" floppy drive, also not connected, for the same reason.
Now my case doesn’t even have a bay to put a drive into.
Well, the PS5 and XBOX Series X still use disks as their physical media… but yeah, the Series XBOXes in particular could switch over to those storage modules you can slam into the back of the consoles. At least for exclusives - the XBOne has no port for those.
But for PC… I reckon most people buy games on Steam there anyway.
And while I would appreciate swag… I think most developers would only go with cheap non-brandname USB sticks with the logo of the game printed on it, that’s built just good enough to not spontaneously combust if you look at it funny.
No, they would spend way too much money on custom USB drives. There would be 20 different kinds, with the super premium gold edition* only being available as a preorder bonus that costs $20 extra.
There ought to be a law that a physical release of a game sold in a box has to include some kind of physical media that contains a version of the game. Yes, I get that a multi-gig Day 1 Patch is inevitable, but as someone that had to rely on a craptastic mobile broadband connection for a solid year or two, this is a travesty.
If you wanna just sell a code for a digital version in retail stores, just sell code cards without the plastic disk-like box. It wastes less resources, and makes it more clear what it is.
Boxes should come with branded USB sticks (who even has a disc drive these days?), and if the physical version isn’t a box why even bother. Random swag is the point.
deleted by creator
Well, my previous PC still had disc drives – two in fact, a DVD reader and a CD-RW. Only because I didn’t get a new case and didn’t have any replacement front panels, though, they were never connected because PATA doesn’t work well on a SATA-only board. Also still had a 3.5" floppy drive, also not connected, for the same reason.
Now my case doesn’t even have a bay to put a drive into.
Well, the PS5 and XBOX Series X still use disks as their physical media… but yeah, the Series XBOXes in particular could switch over to those storage modules you can slam into the back of the consoles. At least for exclusives - the XBOne has no port for those.
But for PC… I reckon most people buy games on Steam there anyway.
And while I would appreciate swag… I think most developers would only go with cheap non-brandname USB sticks with the logo of the game printed on it, that’s built just good enough to not spontaneously combust if you look at it funny.
No, they would spend way too much money on custom USB drives. There would be 20 different kinds, with the super premium gold edition* only being available as a preorder bonus that costs $20 extra.
*does not contain real gold
The stupid reason for the box is probably that people equate size with value, and stores have a harder time charging $90 for a slip of paper.
Easy fix: Print the install size on the slip of paper in big letters.
In Bytes if need be.
More than 1 billion bytes per dollar!