PC games sold in physical format, that is, not on digital platforms, but in traditional game stores, there are fewer and fewer of them and it is a clearly marginal way to acquire titles for PC today. Meanwhile, there has been a trend in consoles to champion this form of traditional game distribution, especially by PlayStation fans due to Xbox’s push for the Game Pass service. Is the box format still worth it on computers? Why has it almost disappeared?
The main reason why the distribution of games on the Internet has replaced the sale of boxed titles is due to several factors. The main one is technical, since the networks are already fast enough to assign you a game. Which is ideal if you live in a rural area. The other reason is specific offers that a physical store cannot cater to. However, there is a technical element that has led to the demise of boxed games on PC.
Why are physical PC games no longer being sold?
Well the answer to that is very simple and boils down to the fact that Blu-Ray is too slow it’s a great format to play movies but continuous random data searches in any software is disastrous . Not in vain SONY at the time of the PS3 was forced to put a hard drive on its console due to the limitations of the format, as for the PC, it was never standardized as a format, neither for games nor for apps.
However, the digitization process was not just because the physical format was no longer sufficient, as publishers turned to selling download codes. This has led many users to download Steam or similar platforms to be able to buy their games. Only to find out later that it was not necessary to go to the store to acquire the game.
Farewell to big boxes was a huge mistake
Even if what no one comments on, and basically it’s sad, is the disappearance of the large PC cases, which once brought a lot of extras outside the game. Which was an incentive to buy this version. To this day, these versions continue to exist, but with a scandalous overprice, in limited series and, to top it off, on consoles.
Although it seems incredible today, games in physical format do not only come with the game discs and the sheet explaining how to install it. If you acquired another game through GOG, you will see how many of them bring a series of extras. Well, these are scans of the games of the extras in the games of yesteryear. If these were still in games sold in physical format, then many people would be incentivized to buy from physical stores, despite the disappearance of the physical format.
The real right, only reason why the physical format is justified
By this we mean that the large number of games you can play on your PC are a usufruct, but you do not have the right to buy and sell them. Precisely, the second-hand market is a headache for game publishers, since they do not make money from it. On the other hand, it is an indicator that a game is really bad and has not been liked. We have often seen how titles for PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo end up in used carts in a short time because they do not meet the expectations of the user.
