Interesting Article on Return to Physical Collecting

[Scrobins 1,594]

I was just reading this Gizmodo article about physical game collecting. The title is clickbaity (though the title when you hover the cursor over the tab is a little more fitting), but it considers an interesting concern: despite the convenience and affordability of digital game collecting, you won't always be able to hold onto it indefinitely. Sometimes you're just an OS update away from being unable to play a cherished game. I'm not concerned that this will necessarily cause people to pursue cart collecting who weren't already, but it's a sort of validation of physical collecting and pushes back against the notion that digital is always better.

https://gizmodo.com/you-should-hoard-physical-copies-of-the-video-games-you-1841164715

Edited January 24, 2020 by Scrobins

[Link 2,455]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/opinion/future-dvds-streaming.html

We Should Have Bought the DVDs

It’s 2022. I don’t know if I’ll ever own a house, but I can own my favorite television shows in their entirety.

 

[VegHead 127]

Both articles were interesting, although there is some amount of fear-mongering in the gizmodo article.  While iOS Tetris is going away, Tetris itself is available in myriad forms, and whoever the new developer is, their approach could end up being better than EA's.  Still, I see the point and agree.  Ever since the PS3/Xbox 360 era, games have totally changed.  Day 1 updates, DLC, required internet connections; these factors make the future of game collecting dubious, at best.  

My approach is to current gen "collecting" is that my console is, essentially, a self-contained, personalized collectible.  For instance, my PS4 has a copy of PT on it.  That's a game I will never be able to redownload, and so my console, by extension, now becomes the collectible.  It's different than current collecting, and certainly less reliable or ideal, but it's something to hold on to in this shiny new world of "you own nothing"!

[zeppelin03 314]

I'm going to stick to digital media with backups.  There ar3 plenty of virtual machines, patches, mods, etc to keep things up and running.  Even my physical stuff has needed work to keep it working and running on newer TVs.  No perfect solution to this aging tech.

Edited January 25, 2020 by zeppelin03

[The Count 475]

Like most people here, I'll always maintain vintage gaming systems and games. My only fears as time progresses, is bit rot on discs and battery leaks in cartridges (which could be rectified if provided a list of battery backup carts).

[Gloves 11,180]

14 hours ago, epiclotus said:

Both articles were interesting, although there is some amount of fear-mongering in the gizmodo article.  While iOS Tetris is going away, Tetris itself is available in myriad forms, and whoever the new developer is, their approach could end up being better than EA's.  Still, I see the point and agree.  Ever since the PS3/Xbox 360 era, games have totally changed.  Day 1 updates, DLC, required internet connections; these factors make the future of game collecting dubious, at best.  

My approach is to current gen "collecting" is that my console is, essentially, a self-contained, personalized collectible.  For instance, my PS4 has a copy of PT on it.  That's a game I will never be able to redownload, and so my console, by extension, now becomes the collectible.  It's different than current collecting, and certainly less reliable or ideal, but it's something to hold on to in this shiny new world of "you own nothing"!

My ps4 has PT on it as well and I look forward to the day when I can sell it for bank because of it (likely never). 

[NierAutomata 23]

People will just custom firmware their stuff and use roms later on. Probably consoles will be worth more I guess. 

[zeppelin03 314]

3 hours ago, NierAutomata said:

People will just custom firmware their stuff and use roms later on. Probably consoles will be worth more I guess. 

I've been doing this for a couple years now. It's great! Backup my saves, use custom themes, and backup my carts right to an SD card.

[portabello 95]

Upgrading the original hardware to be HD compatible (ie, FrameMeister/RGB modded consoles and UltraHDMI N64) is keeping me pretty satisfied in this current period of technology. I enjoy original hardware and media but I also like to keep it simple, for example owning an original GameBoy and maybe a handful of various nostalgic systems  and peripherals like the NES with zapper or original Sega Genesis CIBs. I like having the real deal but frankly I don’t miss lugging CRTs around and all sorts of composite cables and old tech junking up the place. Worst case scenario, with products like the NES/SNES classic, those games will be preserved in an acceptable format no matter what happens.

[Bearcat-Doug 5,041]

20 hours ago, zeppelin03 said:

I've been doing this for a couple years now. It's great! Backup my saves, use custom themes, and backup my carts right to an SD card.

Same here. I've got all of my game files backed up so if my SD card or Everdrive goes bad, I can replace it then copy and paste everything right back to where it was. I still like having physical copies of certain games that I had as a kid, but I enjoy the convenience of having the entire NES library on a single cartridge.

[Inzoreno 102]

I stick to physical-only with a few exceptions simply because, at the end of the day, I can liquidate the collection if the need arises. I've had to do that already and had it been all digital games, it's unlikely I would have managed to get anywhere near what I did end up getting for it. 

[billybob884 57]

On 1/25/2020 at 10:17 AM, The Count said:

My only fears as time progresses, is bit rot on discs and battery leaks in cartridges (which could be rectified if provided a list of battery backup carts).

Just out of curiosity, has anyone here actually seen/had this happen? I remember a discussion about it on segaages a while back, but so far as I was aware, this is exceptionally rare for coin cell batteries.

[zeppelin03 314]

10 minutes ago, billybob884 said:

Just out of curiosity, has anyone here actually seen/had this happen? I remember a discussion about it on segaages a while back, but so far as I was aware, this is exceptionally rare for coin cell batteries.

I've had batteries fail and lose saves.  No discrot yet but systems have lost the ability to read some discs.  Cleaning etc didn't resolve the issue.  It's happening and frequency will increase over time.

[billybob884 57]

25 minutes ago, zeppelin03 said:

I've had batteries fail and lose saves.  No discrot yet but systems have lost the ability to read some discs.  Cleaning etc didn't resolve the issue.  It's happening and frequency will increase over time.

Failed batteries and lost saves, absolutely, I've had this happen to tons of carts. My question was specifically leaking batteries that could damage the board

[Tanooki 4,892]

Huh I didn't know the plug was being pulled on Tetris, that sucks.  I never liked what EA did with it but many did.  Falling Light Bricks I discovered and started using that and it can even use a gamepad, and best of all themes so I applied the 100% clone copy of NES Tetris theme which makes it just perfect.

Physical is the right way about stuff, you can't have a Tetris pulled and get denied what you paid for because they say so.  I've had it happen in the past with me on mobile, my old phone broke, Sony pulled an EA(Tetris) and removed stuff I bought (Loco Roco mobile being one of them) and they refused to restore my purchases I had made less than a year earlier.  I don't trust digital for this reason and won't pay more than a small amount for any of it because of that.  I'll pay to rent, a rent level fee, but I won't pay a console price free for an anytime, any place revocable rental.   Even today I'll buy CDs for music, then use CDEX and make MP3s to stuff on my phone.   Not going to pay Apple like $3 a tune when I can get an entire disc for that more or less and make my own.

[Nugfish 602]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

Huh I didn't know the plug was being pulled on Tetris, that sucks.  I never liked what EA did with it but many did.

EA just sucks all the way around. I was just thinking today about their crumby takeovers of smaller companies that they then dissolved...RIP Westwood Studios...

That's not even mentioning their track record of pay-to-win DLC...Man, they suck...

[Tanooki 4,892]

On 1/28/2020 at 2:08 AM, Nugfish said:

EA just sucks all the way around. I was just thinking today about their crumby takeovers of smaller companies that they then dissolved...RIP Westwood Studios...

That's not even mentioning their track record of pay-to-win DLC...Man, they suck...

Well if that pissed you off I got one that impacted my old employer Midway when I was working there a couple of years.  Remember NHL HItz by any chance?  If not, it was this reduced in size teams on the ice virtually no rules hockey game, so it was more blades of steel with fists than legit but carried all the full NHL licensing etc.  When it came out with Hitz 2002 it basically beat out EA and embarrassed them pretty nicely because people flocked to the lack of nitpicking, the fun mini games, and the fact you could beat the crap out of someone like in reality.  So EA being the big mature and thoughtful company they are decided to do something about it.  No, they didn't make EA NHL Hockey 03 a better game, didn't make a new engine or routines, just their usual roster swap mostly.  No, they went to blackbox games who was contracted to make the games for Midway while they were finishing up on the 03 release and tried to negotiate with them, and in the end, instead of working with them, they hostile took them over.  They fired most the staff outright, then forced/demanded the ones they kept to either pick up and immediately move away to their EA Canada facilities, or, they can be fired too.  They wanted to punish them and Midway for crossing them, and destroyed a good company in the process.

[Nugfish 602]

10 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Well if that pissed you off I got one that impacted my old employer Midway when I was working there a couple of years.  Remember NHL HItz by any chance?  If not, it was this reduced in size teams on the ice virtually no rules hockey game, so it was more blades of steel with fists than legit but carried all the full NHL licensing etc.  When it came out with Hitz 2002 it basically beat out EA and embarrassed them pretty nicely because people flocked to the lack of nitpicking, the fun mini games, and the fact you could beat the crap out of someone like in reality.  So EA being the big mature and thoughtful company they are decided to do something about it.  No, they didn't make EA NHL Hockey 03 a better game, didn't make a new engine or routines, just their usual roster swap mostly.  No, they went to blackbox games who was contracted to make the games for Midway while they were finishing up on the 03 release and tried to negotiate with them, and in the end, instead of working with them, they hostile took them over.  They fired most the staff outright, then forced/demanded the ones they kept to either pick up and immediately move away to their EA Canada facilities, or, they can be fired too.  They wanted to punish them and Midway for crossing them, and destroyed a good company in the process.

What trash! I am confident that kind of garbage is behind most of their takeovers. Otherwise what point? Besides, perhaps, LucasArts, the money they pay can't just be for the IPs and most (or all of the staff) gets canned in every other account I have read about. 

[Tanooki 4,892]

EA was (is?) known for a couple types of takeover.  Harvesting the best talent, or just taking out a competitor and in both cases spreading the majority of people they didn't care about into the wind. They've had very deep pockets for decades now so they can easily get rid of someone they're not wanting to deal with anymore or rid of their influence by bringing them in.  It's partly why they have such an awful reputation outside of the truths of ea wife and their full price roster spamming minimally updated sports releases.

[AstralSoul 485]

I mean this is exactly why collecting was appealing to me. Physical games will eventually fail but probably not in our lifetime, but digital games are out of our control. Not to mention limited hard drive space means we can't have every game we own loaded on a console. 

[Link 2,455]

On 1/27/2020 at 11:36 PM, Tanooki said:

Even today I'll buy CDs for music, then use CDEX and make MP3s to stuff on my phone.   Not going to pay Apple like $3 a tune when I can get an entire disc for that more or less and make my own.

I only buy CDs as well, but itunes songs are 99¢ to $1.29 each, and albums are usually 9.99.

[Yelir 11]

This thread brings back pretty bad memories after the XBLA titles mostly going offline. I'll always be the physical collector but don't mind the odd digital game when they're discounted over 60%.