Does This Mark THE END Of Physical Media?
Yo, yo, yo! Best Buy recently announced they’re pulling all physical media from their shelves. Now, this isn’t exactly news. If you’ve been to a mall in the last decade, you’ve probably noticed physical media aisles and stores shrinking as streaming services have risen for video, music, and even games. The writing’s been on the wall as we upgrade our internet to stream better quality at faster speeds. We all kind of opted for this future, spending less on physical media over time. Who can blame us?
Fifteen bucks a month to access almost any music, anytime, on any device with a few bars versus paying twenty bucks for a single album seems obvious. Twenty dollars to access hundreds of games a month versus eighty for a single release is cheaper than renting at Blockbuster. Maybe streaming games versus movies versus audio isn’t all the same, but something’s missing.
Streaming, for the most part, simplified life and made access convenient, almost making torrenting seem complicated. Lately, I’ve been feeling some type of way about physical media, even though I’ve opted for digital. Maybe it’s not the missing physical stuff that has me in my feels. Instead, it’s that we no longer own anything and are being ushered into this content-as-a-service future where we pay for the experience but are at the whim of gatekeepers. Once servers shut off, the content we thought we owned disappears.
We saw this with Sony when they removed access to Discovery films users had bought, raising the question: if buying isn’t owning, does that mean piracy isn’t stealing? It used to be simple. You bought movies, games, and music, and as long as you had the device, you were good. You could trade, buy, sell, and collect, and these mediums held value. But with everything moving towards digital leases and less about ownership, what happens when the lights go out? What happens to our virtual game collections if Gabe Newell decides to pull the plug? Steam seems to be doing okay and making money to operate, but the point remains: what happens when servers turn off? How are collections passed on, preserved, experienced, and relived?
With more games relying on hosted servers to even run, what happens to all those Apex skins and heirlooms if Respawn decides to shut down? What value do the millions spent on V-bucks hold when Epic retires Fortnite? You can’t download and run them locally or bring over consoles to create a LAN party. Ubisoft, to their credit, has been honest, saying gamers need to get comfortable not owning their games.
In the physical game era, online multiplayer might have ended, but you could still set up everything to run things in-house, or at least on a PC. Before everything got hosted in the cloud, it was still possible to run your own gaming servers for you and your community. Physical media also has limitations. What’s a VHS collection worth when the media decays or requires antiquated hardware? What good are DVDs when we all moved to 4K TVs and Blu-rays? Was the expectation that we re-up the newer versions of the same content every era? How is an evolving free mass multiplayer gaming experience, even one riddled with cosmetic microtransactions, worse than paying upwards of $100 yearly for incremental game upgrades when the worlds continue to grow?
I’ve always had a weird relationship with physical media, feeling like so much of it was wasteful. Digital leases have convenient perks, offering us more for less. Yet, I have an affinity for my CD collection that I can’t play anymore and the ability to share an experience playing games in person without needing to be online with friends on a local setup, where no connection to the broader world was needed. I want to collect old copies of classic games with the consoles so I can revisit them with my kids, even if they are just 8 and 16 bit pixelated messes. Maybe digital hoarding and emulation are the true preservation, or maybe it’s just a reflection that everything is temporary and should be enjoyed in the era it lives in.
I probably have more questions than answers, but it seems like the future is one where everything is just borrowed, and that feels a bit more hollow. It’s just one power outage away from ceasing to exist. Anyway, that’s what’s been on my mind. What do y’all think? Do you miss physical media? How much of your life has gone digital-only and subscription-only? Let me know in the comments. I read everything and reply as best as I can. Also, if you’ve made it this far, drop a like and consider subscribing. It really helps with pushing this video out to more people. Till next time, peace!
View On: