In a recent Twitter thread about the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 & 2 coming out on the Nintendo Switch, I asked a rhetorical question that I realized I have not covered here yet, and that is the personal preference between physical and digital games on the Nintendo Switch and why that is.  Now, I am not here to go over the benefits and disadvantages of buying a physical game over buying a digital version, or to talk about the differences in load times in games.  I do not have any of the metrics on those, this is all just a personal opinion.  So let us go that route.

OPINION

To Buy Physical or Digital?

When convenience conflicts with personal preferences.

By JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Opinion Columnist

The Nintendo Switch is the first video game system (console, handheld, PC) that I have bought a healthy mix of physical games and digital games.  Although I did purchase a number of digital games on the 3DS, but I do not think I paid over $20 for any digital 3DS games as I was still not convinced that I wanted to play digital games in that format.  On the PC though I had solidly moved over to a predominantly digital library once I started using Steam back in 2011.  The last physical PC game I bought was BioShock, but the biggest pull was that digital PC prices were far lower than that of digital games and I was not really playing any games that were just coming out and getting a physical release, mainly because the computer I was using then could not handle anything that was developed after 2006.

The cost of digital versus physical on the Nintendo Switch is oftentimes moot, with the price being around the same regardless of format (excluding sales from either the vendor or publisher).  If I wanted to buy Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury, I would be paying $59.99 (in US dollars) regardless if I bought a physical cart or digitally from Nintendo's eShop (or even digitally from Target).  The majority of the time, if I were wanting to buy Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury I would opt for the physical cart for a number of reasons.

First off, I grew up with the original NES, a VCR, and a state-of-the-art 5 disc CD changer.  There was no option to have anything digital, so having physical media is engrained in my brain.  My first MP3 was from me burning a copy of the Ravenous soundtrack onto my laptop because I could, and this was in 1999.  Secondly, having grown up with video game cartridges, I would often trade (temporarily) games with friends because that was what you did when you were 14 years old, you had no money and you wanted to play SimCity without having to go to the video store to rent it (with your parent's money).  So having a physical option when there is the option is very much engrained when it comes to media.

In recent years, there has also been the issue of digital video games being delisted or in some cases, the music license for older games has expired and the music is either removed entirely or replaced with new music.  In theory, having the physical copy of the game would protect you, especially in the latter, although I guess a developer/publisher could require that a patch be downloaded to fix a music licensing issue, but I have not read about that happening.

When it comes to physical cartridges versus digital games, the two primary factors comes down convenience, cost, and to a lesser degree, availability (which is often directly related to cost).  In the case of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS, I never picked it up because I was in the mindset that I will pick it up eventually, then my 3DS broke and I kept putting off trying to either get it professionally fixed or attempt to fix it myself.  During that time A Link Between Worlds became a Nintendo Select title and the price dropped to $19.99 for both versions of the game, but I was not about to buy a game for a system that I could not play.  Then when I received the New Nintendo 3DS from Mjku I was again in the market, but the physical game was no longer in production (or very low production) and the price jumped back upwards of $35 (at least on Amazon as I am a bit leary around eBay with video games because I have inadvertently purchased bootleg copies that I only realized years after the fact).

But I feel like a lot of my decision comes down to convenience.  Larger and longer games like The Witcher III: Wild Hunt and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim we have physical carts for partly to save space on the Switch harddrive because I do take a lot of pictures and videos for articles, and I do like to have a handful of games pre-downloaded games that are only available digitally (Fortnite, The Amnesia Collection, and Layers of Fear: Legacy) although granted there are some distributers like Limited Run Games, Special Reserve Games, and Fangamer who publish physical editions of games that are typically only available digitally.  I also find that I will usually only play one physical game at a time whereas with digital games, I will switch back and forth.  I might play Mario's Super Picross for 15-20 minutes after playing a couple of matches in Fortnite and then play another game that I received through #IndieSelect.  Physical carts will stay in the Switch for weeks at a time.  I will go through a month-long spurt of playing The Witcher III then swap it out for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity which has been in the Switch since I started playing it back in the end of December.

I just do not get to physical games as frequently as digital games and I still have a number of physical games that I have purchased that I have not even started yet, like The Outer Worlds, Call of Cthulhu, The Banner Saga Trilogy, and The Blair Witch (which I special ordered from Amazon Japan because that was the only way to get the physical cart that ended up being a special edition that came packaged with the soundtrack and I love the developer Bloober Team) and two of those games I have leant out to family/friends because I knew that I was not going to get to them as I was already playing a long physical game.

This rhetorical question about physical versus digital games came up specifically for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 because the Tony Hawk series is the type of game, especially when playing solo, that you can turn on, play a couple of stages, then move on to something else.  Being able to just close down a game, select Tony Hawk from the home menu and drop in to play a couple of stages, maybe a challenge I am working on, get frustrated and then go back to playing picross to decompress.

I still have not decided if I am going to pick up Tony Hawk as a physical cart or a digital purchase although I feel like I am leaning towards a physical purchase, because again, I have the mindset that physical media is better than a digital purchase because it is something tangible that I can hold.  And because I can loan them out to friends while I am working on another game.  So back to Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age I go, because I swapped it out earlier in the week when I was previously playing Age of Calamity.

Stage Select Start is committed to publishing a diversity of opinions from our writers, never trying to focusing on one particular mindset and actively engaging with differing opinions.  Unless of course if those opinions infringe on the rights of others.

JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian joined Stage Select Start in 2015 along with Dr. Potts after rebranding from their original site, Two Boys and their Blog which they started in 2012. @Jaconian