This is the big "one" for me. I prefer buying physical because on launch day or launch week, I can jump on ebay or whatever other reseller site, and grab the game for ~20% off. 3 months later that game, physical version, will be 1/2 price on newegg or amazon or ebay. With digital, that price reduction isn't coming for 6 months or a year unless the product underperforms.
All purpose Sales and Sales Rumours and Anecdotes [2020 Edition]
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Like a lot of people I'm working from home but not travelling (I used to walk four miles to and from work) has given me a couple of extra hours a day, much of which is just spent with my family but I've also had more time to get some gaming in. When you're discouraged from going into actual outside, outside in a virtual world is a partial substitute.
I just restarted a Skyrim playthrough, Must not play as a stealth archer, must not play as a stealth archer. Oooh.. that's a nice bow.
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Like a lot of people I'm working from home but not travelling (I used to walk four miles to and from work) has given me a couple of extra hours a day, much of which is just spent with my family but I've also had more time to get some gaming in. When you're discouraged from going into actual outside, outside in a virtual world is a partial substitute.
I just restarted a Skyrim playthrough, Must not play as a stealth archer, must not play as a stealth archer. Oooh.. that's a nice bow.
I would like to play Skyrim but... FUCK SPIDERS. Seriously, I hate them, and I hate headcrabs, I will never be able to play alyx.
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On PC there are a bunch of mod options to remove spiders. On Xbox you can replace them with giant foxes! No doubt there are other options as well.
EA says that 49% of full game sales across PS4 and Xbox One were via digital download in the last quarter. Worth noting that at the beginning of this gen, digital download only accounted for around 5-10% on average. We are going into next gen with 50% digital to start with.
When you factor in Indie games at 100% download, total game sales must be notably over 50% download. If you chuck in things like PS+/GWG and measure hours played, the vast majority must be on downloaded titles.
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Data skewed on many levels, at the start of a gen there's no sales - now they're giving away titles. Also we're in lockdown so again, digital is a better way to buy day one and it wouldn't surprise me if people are buying more games as well...
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I haven't bought a retail box in 5 years and I doubt I will buy another.
Anyway you slice it, digital sales are continuing to grow. With 5G here/coming that's only going to continue. The pandemic may have increased digital sales, but I expect a lot of those people will stay digital.
I haven't bought a retail box in 5 years and I doubt I will buy another.
None of what I said is dependent on lockdown.
Indie games rely on download only, and people have been playing download games from PS+ and GWG for years.
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The last stat I saw had digital sales approaching the half-way mark. It doesn't feel like COVID-19 lockdown measures were in enough places prior to 31 March to impact EA's stat anything more than marginally.
However whether increasingly digital adoption will last into nextgen is another question. As I've said before, as somebody who still buys some games on disc because my internet options are slow DSL only (no fibre), my download speed maxes out around 7-8Gb/hour so for big games I can get any a PS4 Blu-ray game delivered same-day Amazon prime delivery quicker than downloading it. Or just walk to the shop which is 10 minutes away - when they re-open.
Then I look at the SSD sizes on Series X (1Tb) and PS5 (825Gb IIRC) and wonder how many games I will be able to store on it before I need to start deleting stuff then it becomes an issue of how quick I can re-install them again. I hope nextgen consoles will allow you to 'archive' installed games to an attached HDD then transfer them back to the SSD later rather than re-installing from scratch. If not, I guess I'm still buying a bunch of games on disc.
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hopefully it's the latter as you suggested. I almost want to say I read that XSX will do it that way, but I am probably wrong.
I'm hoping we can at least juggle installation files onto normal external HDDs and copy to SSD when playing for NextGen games. I know we can play current-gen games off external HDDs on SeriesX and it seems a reasonable thing for Sony to do as well.
None of what I said is dependent on lockdown.
Don't forget EA Access which has 5 million subscribers.
We already know BC games will be directly playable from an external HDD in both systems. I think the archiving system hasn't being confirmed for either. But I think both will have one.
Every single one of us is thinking it should happen. There's no way either company wouldn't have thought of it. If we cant see any technical reason to stop it happening, it should be a given.
It’s seems relatively straightforward and simple; but the consoles have failed me at surprisingly simple things at times.
I just don’t think it’s as clear cut as the figures show, I’d be more interested to see figures on release titles or figures on full price games at the very least.
sorry, I was agreeing with you and adding more layers that skew the dataNone of what I said is dependent on lockdown.
I totally agree, regarding PS5 we know it will allow partial deletion and installation so a story based game only installing the chapters you’re on would be pretty good.
Yep, and people ‘buy’ every game on PS+ and XBL Gold even if they’re not going to play it...or even just to try. Also PC gaming is pretty much completely digital these days.
Yes, actual digital purchase numbers are undoubtedly much higher than 50% when you look past just EA on consoles.
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