This is the end, the beautiful end my friend of AAA games for AAAspro. I can no longer be the gamer I want to be. I have not been able to play Call of Duty for three years now due to the large downloads. Bethesda is on my banned list, and their first person shooters and RPG's have been an important part of my gaming life. But Doom 2 (2020) was a complete cluster when it came to actually trying to play the game.
A couple of days ago I bought Rage 2 from Amazon, because I like games that didn't quite make it into the cool kids bus. As reflected in the forums, I then realized it's a Bethesda game, so the physical copy I just bought, which used to mean I owned the game and could play it off the disc, but now means I essentially bought the right to download the game, and then patch it. This is not an optional patch, nor is it small, it's 27 gigabytes and the game will not start without it. Forget the fact that I'll never use it's online features. If I just wanted to play it on my console (which I think I still own, I have not read the EULA updates from Microsoft) and enjoy the game with the launch glitches or other foibles I can't.
In no other medium would this be acceptable. Imagine buying a Blu Ray disc and it not allowing you watch it until it patched. If not for the demise of physical media, I'm sure we would get to that point the other day.
My daughter was holding a wooden block the other day as if it were a Gameboy. I asked her waht she was doing, she said she was playing a "bideo game" which prompted me to ask, "Which one?" She replied, "Rocket League, but it's still uptaking (updating)". I hope they figure it out by the time she wants to be a gamer, because for me right now, other than indy games and games from Japan (which somehow amazingly can be made well enough the first time that they don;t need constant updates) are my only choice.
The only modern game company I still buy physical media for is Nintendo. And I'm not sure how long they will hold out.
Another side effect of this is the cost of game storage now. A 500 GB hard drive wouldn't hold a quarter of my PS4 collection. One of these days I'm going to have to drop zone money for a new hard drive to ensure that I'll have access to these games for at least a few years.
Thanks for your comments guys. Just to give Bethesda a fair trial I turned off my internet and put the disc in. It got further, sure to a menu that snidely pointed out that I was offline, and how "alone" I would be and how "left out" I would be while my friends touted all the fun they were having online.
And guess what. All the buttons to advance were disabled. No way to play the game.
What a bunch of assholes.
In this, and many other regards the switch has been primo. Long live the switch!
That's incredible. Does it clearly say on the box that there is a mandatory download?
And long it will live. Nintendo spoke out last week about how they expect the Switch to live on for many more years to come.
I'm tempted to see how many of my physical PS4 games will run with a disk install-only. John with Digital Foundry made a statement recently in one of their QA videos that most modern games are still fully playable solely from a disk install but I was skeptical; even more so now with Aspro's experiance.
in the 360/PS3 days, I would often wait for the GOTY edition to have a more complete disk copy. Those don't seem as common anymore.
Of course not. And that's why, if I could bother I think the consumer rights agency of our government down here would throw the book at these guys. Our consumer rights agency is kick-ass, they've been bugging the hell out of Steam and other game companies for years.
https://gameunder.net/gameunderhome/2017/1/3/valve-fined-3-million-for-breaching-australian-consumer-laws?rq=accc
I was amazed the other day when I put in a copy of Homefront for PS3 and there was no update! It was also amazing how fast one got to the actual game compared to these days. We've gone backwards, guys. Hell, I'm not saying we need to get to the SNES cartridge time-to-game, hell, I'd settle for PS2 and PS3 era standards. But these days the thing that puts me off console gaming is the ramp-up time and the high likelihood that I'll have to install an update in the 20-30 minute window I have to game.
I have to say, another area in which the Switch is superior. From the time you click on a game to when you are playing is responsive on a level of PS2 era games.
I think Switch games have it on the box if there's a mandatory download. I seem to recall some basketball game even mentionning it on the front of the box.
I'm the same. I have some Xbone games I'd like to play, but by the time they've booted up and loaded, my enthousiasm has faded. I only put up with BL3 because we're playing it co-op over the internet.
Yeah it really sucks with a lot of these games these days needing these huge patches.