Regrets about switching to all digital/almost all digital?

[Reprise]

I have a weird situation with digital-only media that I want to see if anyone else experiences. I've found that if I have something only digitally, I literally forget I have it. It just disappears from my mental landscape. I need to manifest it into something physical for it to stick in my mind.

I have the same problem, to be honest. Especially with games on the PS3 and PS4. Whenever I need to make more room on the hard drives (all the fucking time), I delete stuff to make room and never re-download them. I forget all about them. At least the PS4 has the easily accessible library browser, which keeps an image of all your games, but I still tend to forget about them.

To a lesser extent, the same does apply to music I buy digitally too. I'm a physical kinda guy to be honest. My house is absolutely packed with video games, books and CDs etc.

[Betagam7]

When the virtual console was first being mooted I remember thinking "well this seems like a good time to sell my SNES games and replace them with digital copies"

THIS WAS A GIGANTIC MISTAKE!

"Wow, I got £30 for a mint boxed complete copy of Zelda 3 with a sealed Sahasralas secrets book and map!There's no way this will shoot up to like 3 times the price now that the game is available digitally"

Wrong again!

Ultimately it's worth remembering that you always own a game. When you buy a digital release you own a license to play a game...a license that could be rescinded at any time and holds a resale value of nought.

[PartridgeSenpai]

All that said, games are their own thing. I always buy games physically if possible. There are a few reasons why, but the most important is resale. Games on average cost a lot more than books, movies, or music, so being able to recoup some of my investment on those is important to me. Also games are often linked to proprietary platforms which makes simply pirating/emulating them more complicated than other media... it's often easier to just play the legit real thing if it's sixth gen or above.

One last thought though while we're on the subject of emulation. At the turn of the century I got rid of all my 8 and 16 bit stuff, because I chose emulation for those gens. I've never regretted it. The emulation for 8 and 16 bit stuff is spot on great, and has been for a long assed time. I can feel your hate bros and I bathe in it.

This is more or less the way I've been going recently. I'm doing it slowly, but if it's 6th gen or newer (or N64 because it doesn't always emulate reliably) I buy the physical version. Anything older that I don't have sentimental value to I've been moving to the sell pile. Not much on the pile atm, but it's been helping pay for cheapie 360 and PS3 games a lot.

[Xeogred]

When the virtual console was first being mooted I remember thinking "well this seems like a good time to sell my SNES games and replace them with digital copies"

THIS WAS A GIGANTIC MISTAKE!

"Wow, I got £30 for a mint boxed complete copy of Zelda 3 with a sealed Sahasralas secrets book and map!There's no way this will shoot up to like 3 times the price now that the game is available digitally"

Wrong again!

Ultimately it's worth remembering that you always own a game. When you buy a digital release you own a license to play a game...a license that could be rescinded at any time and holds a resale value of nought.

Well what I think is worse is how hardcore the potential was utterly wasted here. I mean, I guess I was WAY too optimistic before the VC stuff launched for the Wii, but I was thinking "Wow maybe I'll get to play an official translated release of Seiken Densetsu 3 and own it!?", boy was I ever so wrong.

Don't get me wrong, when it comes to condensing things like this I'm a big fan. I've bought a lot of my SNES games over again on my Wii U simply for convenience and the ability to play them on an HDTV with nothing too fancy like a necessary upscaler whatever. But still, Nintendo has pretty much never capitalized on the potential here and has played it safe this entire time. Here's Mario 64, Super Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, etc games everyone probably already owns a few times over and can still be easily found. I think the original Wii had a grand total of like 10 N64 games for download, which is just utterly laughable.

I guess I'm contradicting myself a bit, but they really could have had my wallet buried in their pocket even deeper if the VC selection were a lot better and bigger.

Sony has a great lineup of PS1/PS2 titles on PSN though. But I don't really use it much since it's always been easy to keep playing discs on newer setups because the PS3 does PS1, and PS2 can at least do component or look decent through an HDMI adapter. But, at least they have a nice online library of the old stuff that's available.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Don't get me wrong, when it comes to condensing things like this I'm a big fan. I've bought a lot of my SNES games over again on my Wii U simply for convenience and the ability to play them on an HDTV with nothing too fancy like a necessary upscaler whatever. But still, Nintendo has pretty much never capitalized on the potential here and has played it safe this entire time. Here's Mario 64, Super Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, etc games everyone probably already owns a few times over and can still be easily found. I think the original Wii had a grand total of like 10 N64 games for download, which is just utterly laughable.

I guess I'm contradicting myself a bit, but they really could have had my wallet buried in their pocket even deeper if the VC selection were a lot better and bigger.

Sony has a great lineup of PS1/PS2 titles on PSN though. But I don't really use it much since it's always been easy to keep playing discs on newer setups because the PS3 does PS1, and PS2 can at least do component or look decent through an HDMI adapter. But, at least they have a nice online library of the old stuff that's available.

I'd imagine the shortage of N64 games probably has to do with the fact that it can be a very tricky console to emulate. That combined with just how large the file sizes are and what they could actually get licenses to, it was probably far more cost efficient to just port stuff everyone wants and plays (not to mention even common games like Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 are in the 30+ dollar range now, sadly).

[Xeogred]

They certainly could have put something better up in Yoshi's Story's place...

Something I was thinking about today that kind of relates to this topic, is that I wish I could sell or trade my Steam games (as in give them out for free). There is so much junk in there from the two Humble Bundles I did and then I don't even know how I get some games on there and I'm not that compulsive with the sales since I'm not a frequent PC gamer... but still, I don't know how so much junk got in there and I hate it. It's like if my physical shelf had no organization whatsoever and someone else put random games they didn't want in between my games, lol.

I guess you can delete games now? But that just feels kind of wastefully stupid? Even though I hate them?

Critical world problems for sure.

I guess I can easily see how being able to sell Steam games could open a huge can of worms, but yeah. I wish there was more solutions.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I will buy digital copies of games that I otherwise wouldn't be able to afford. Shantae, Twinkle Star Sprites, and so on. The old me would have wanted actual carts for "collection purposes" but I'm moved on past that way of thinking.

[Exhuminator]

but if it's 6th gen or newer (or N64 because it doesn't always emulate reliably) I buy the physical version

That's me yeah. If it's PS1 all the way back to NES or older even, emulation is good enough for me. PS2 era and up, I go with the real thing.

Yeah we've got decent GameCube emulation, but the PS2 emulation is still glitchy, and OG Xbox emulation doesn't really exist. Funny enough there are really great DS and PSP emulators now, but I still use the real things for those for the time being.

[PartridgeSenpai]

but if it's 6th gen or newer (or N64 because it doesn't always emulate reliably) I buy the physical version

That's me yeah. If it's PS1 all the way back to NES or older even, emulation is good enough for me. PS2 era and up, I go with the real thing.

Yeah we've got decent GameCube emulation, but the PS2 emulation is still glitchy, and OG Xbox emulation doesn't really exist. Funny enough there are really great DS and PSP emulators now, but I still use the real things for those for the time being.

I'm not sure why you'd want to emulate a portable game unless you're either: A. Doing it on a portable emulation machine (PSP, Dingoo, etc.) or B. It's some ungodly rare game. The concept of playing a DS game on my computer just seems so odd when the whole point of DS games is that you can bring them anywhere Xp

[Sarge]

I will buy digital copies of games that I otherwise wouldn't be able to afford. Shantae, Twinkle Star Sprites, and so on. The old me would have wanted actual carts for "collection purposes" but I'm moved on past that way of thinking.

I do this, too. I bought Shantae because, well, really expensive. I did the same for Ufouria (although the busted sound on that is really disappointing). If I didn't still have my copy of Suikoden II, I'd have snagged it when it finally got released. Sometimes, it's all about being pragmatic about these things. I mean, technically, I could own Panzer Dragoon Saga right now, but $350 is too rich for my blood. Hence the modded Saturn.

What I wouldn't do for even just a simple port of that game, though. More folks should experience it.