I wasn’t 100% sympathetic to your concerns about digital releases, but when I saw that indie developers are more willing to put out cheap Chinese made toys than they are to simply make a physical release of a game, I changed my perspective a bit. Why exactly are these devs more willing to make amiibo? Amiibo are without a doubt more expensive to produce and they take up far more retail space than any cart case (cart cases take up very little space, especially in stores like Gamestop where most of the stock is locked behind the counter).
I’m actually reminded of Sonic Mania as well. This game does not have a physical release, but for some reason Sega decided to make some obnoxious ‘collector’s edition’ which comes with tons of useless crap, and still only contains a key for a digital license*. At least with that game there are rumors of a physical copy.
Why is it that these companies are so unwilling to put out physical copies? I understand when it’s a company that makes games for some really niche tastes or if it’s some tiny indie dev, but a game that’s been proven to be a success digitally should honestly get a physical copy at some point. Minecraft and Rocket League followed that path, and it’s worked out really well for them. What is the explanation for the hesitation here?
*I say the word ‘license’ because that’s what it is, by the way, not that you are not aware. When you buy digital, you are never buying a ‘copy’, you are buying a license to play a game. You technically are only buying a license when you buy physical as well, but game companies have limited means of actually enforcing the ‘terms’ of that license when you buy physical or DRM-free. It annoys me when people say they bought a ‘copy’ of a game off of Steam or something.
For the entire existence of the industry, games have been on physical releases, and the game industry keeps growing. “But games might be resold! OMG!” But this has been done since the beginning of game sales.
You don’t have to put physical copies up at Wal-Mart or wherever. You can do mail order.
Above: Mail order only way to get US version of Magical Chase back in the day. It was worth buying too. Look at that resell price! Fuck yeah!
“They want to stop the scalpers and resellers, Malstrom.” So why doesn’t Nintendo just make more Mini Consoles then instead of their low amount?
This all stinks as if they are trying to remove all physical medium from gaming.
If they were serious about this, they would be using DRM free type digital downloads too like GOG offers. But no, they don’t want that either.
I’m really getting close to stop playing games for good. I have more than enough games out from today to generations ago for me to spend the rest of my life playing.
And fuck your amiibos, Yacht Games.
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