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10 months agoIt’s not. Even the disk these days is just a physical license to download the game on your console. You literally can’t play most games right out of the box unless it’s a Switch title (that I’m aware of). This has already been happening for well over a decade on PC. Everyone else is just now catching up. Besides, less plastic/paper waste is undoubtedly a good thing.
I understand your sentiments, but here’s the crux of the problem:
The majority of all physical disk are really just download licenses. They don’t actually amount to anything more than a game key you buy on a card. Why? Because the majority of games can’t even fit on a single disk to begin with. Unless disk technology has changed significantly since blue-ray (I don’t keep up with it), even the largest disk only hold about 25gb of data. That means you’d need technically 6 blue-ray disk just to install Starfield… now think about that on a supply-chain level. Games would cost even more than ever if they had to fit the entire games worth of data in the box.
They’d save more money selling USB drives with the game art slapped onto them. In fact, if we think about the future of physical media, it isn’t CDs, it’s game cartridges. The Switch is ahead of the game on this. The problem though, is that even if that is doable, there’s the very real fact that releasing physical media cost money, and these days, that is an un-necessary cost. The only reason all of these indie developers are thriving is because they can readily release their games without worrying about physical release. We’re in a golden age of indie video game development and its entirely driven by digital downloads.
So instead of worrying about physical releases, what we should be focusing on is DRM-free media. You can get DRM-free games on GOG.com, for example. It’s always better to buy your game there instead of on Steam for this reason. DRM-free is essentially the ownership you’re looking for.