Publishers Badly Want to End Physical Copies

Publishers have been dreaming of the day when they could rid themselves of pesky physical copies, outside of PC. The attitude first manifested with the introduction of full games being downloadable through consoles like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and slightly more so with consoles like the PSP Go, a fuller test for how ready the market was for an all-digital alternative at the time. (They weren’t.) The same applied to the verbose Xbox One S All-Digital Edition, an end-of-the-generation experiment on Microsoft’s part.

The wishes for the all-digital future are now loudening, in so many words. The combination of existing all-digital current-generation consoles like the digital PlayStation 5 variant and Xbox Series S, alongside changing video game software purchase habits that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic which saw digital sales increase tremendously worldwide, has left publishers emboldened to push it even harder.

The largest recent example by far is Alan Wake 2 from developer and publisher duo Remedy Entertainment and Epic Games, respectively. The most surprising announcement outside the game itself was how it won’t have a physical release option at all, unheard of for a game with an evidently sizable budget.

Remedy first claimed this was happening because of the reduced purchasing price (see question #6). Games cost $69.99 on average now, but Alan Wake 2 will come at $59.99 on consoles and $49.99 on PC through the Epic Games Store. It sounds like a logical reason because of the money publishers can save by not having to pay for disc printing, distribution, and storage space for physical games. Not to mention, by their reasoning, the lack of “lost” sales with no pre-owned copies out there. (“Lost” because not everyone who would have purchased pre-owned versions will by digital versions instead.) Their reasoning is tough to swallow when the price won’t be that much lower.

To further justify the release method, creative director Sam Lake and game director Kyle Rowley claimed this distribution method will make polishing the final game easier. Rowley clarified that if the game were to ship on a disc, it would have to be playable without a patch, with the digital version having parity with it. But plenty of games ship in half-playable states before their day-one patches, making this another reason that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

It’s more likely reason here is that Epic Games is not interested in releasing physical versions of games when they’re all in on digital. There’s a chance that Alan Wake 2 could see a physical option down the line, through either Epic Games themselves or with the deal offered by THQ Nordic to print copies as they did for the first game being taken. (Assuming that deal is still good following the financial cuts THQ Nordic’s parent company, Embracer Group, has made plans for since then.) Before that possible point can be reached, this will be a test of how viable a digital-only AAA release can be that they’ll see to its end.

The Alan Wake 2 test is at least a more honest publisher push towards digital. The far more deceptive method has involved publishers shipping discs that are essentially activation keys with only minimal data, with the requirement that players download the remaining content. Halo Infinite’s disc, for example, contains only 14.7 GB of data, and is unplayable without an additional 20 GB download. Considering Xbox console discs hold about 50 GB of data, they damn well could have included all the launch content on it. It’s somewhat of an antithesis to a game like Redfall, which requires an additional download to work, but has a total size of around 77GB. Here, Microsoft wasn’t willing to include two discs, though it would have made for a nice meme.

Not to mention the current-generation games Microsoft has provided no physical releases for. Games like Pentiment, Hi-Fi Rush, and the Xbox port of Ghostwire: Tokyo are unlikely to receive the treatment with the company’s push, and there’s been little pressure on them to change their mind. More will follow.

Activision, in truth, beat Microsoft to the punch here, with games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (with only 72 MB of data on the disc) and even the Spyro Reignited Trilogy during the last generation of consoles requiring downloads. The latter at least received a second printing with all the data on disc, though players had to stumble upon this themselves and spread the word instead of Activision announcing anything. No wonder Microsoft wants to buy them.

The savings will be so good for publishers with digital going forward that the actions above could embolden more of them into releasing big budget games as digital-only products, with the chances of the individual games getting physical releases getting hazy. In the meantime, don’t be surprised to see more discs that essentially serve as unlock keys, which will lead to gamers wondering why they shouldn’t just buy the games digitally instead. This also applies to several third-party Switch games without all the data on the card, including two (see the last question) collections (scroll down to the “pre-order” section) coming this fall.

The battle to maintain physical games as an option for most titles may already be lost with the perpetual increase of digital adoption. In addition to companies like Limited Run Games (also owned by Embracer, goodness) sticking around for smaller print runs for niche and mid-tier games, perhaps a vinyl-style approach that involves people grabbing physical copies of games they want the most down the line will come to pass, with digital being the primary form of distribution. Following that, perhaps we’ll reach a time when people will miss having physical games and the stronger ownership that came with them, and they could become commonplace again. We’ll have to see what happens.