As many will know, Microsoft has sealed a long-awaited deal for Activision Blizzard, and it’s paid $69bn for the privilege.
It’s obviously a vast amount of money for the company, but regular gamers are worried about how this will affect them in the future.
The switch means that libraries are heading more towards a ‘digital library’ as opposed to physical copies. The way it’ll work is almost like Netflix or Amazon Prime, where games will all be available at the drop of a hat on your console.
Sounds great right? Well, not for those who enjoy collecting digital copies. Some don’t want to lose that magic of going to the store to pick up your favorite title.
Ubisoft chief speaks up on the future of hard-copy games
With the worry growing thanks to the Microsoft announcement, some are now speaking up with their thoughts on what could happen to the physical gaming market.
Ubisoft Exec admitted to IGN that physical sales will get even lower, but it won’t be completely eradicated as there’s definitely still a market there.
“There’s a collector edition market,” he begins. “There’s the aspect of gifting physical items and allowing access for people to be able to easily purchase a game in a store and gift them to their friends or family.
“Some people will always want to own the physical disk. I just don’t think it’s going away. Do I think physical sales might get lower over time? Sure, but will it ever completely go away? I don’t think so.”
Is it such a big deal?
As technology advances, the need for certain inconveniences disperses… surely this is what’s going to happen with physical copies.
One disadvantage we can see here, is some players like to buy a game, complete it and then sell it. Getting rid of all hard copies would mean this is no longer possible.
Shops would also go out of business, games would be a lot more expensive (no pre-owned) and storage space would need to be acquired unless some sort of cloud storage was implemented.
It has pros and cons, we can’t lie. It’ll be interesting to see how everything pans out.