I will always plainly state this. If you own a console, stop buying digital! It is not for a matter of, “I want to stop the corporate–” followed by something about capitalism. It is often cheaper, there is often a greater deal, you’ll always keep your games no matter what, and as has happened with me several times, you’ll get pre-order bonuses or some day-one edition that would be $80 on a digital store.

Let’s take, for example, the first physical Xbox One game I had bought a few weeks ago. I bought Red Dead Redemption 2 for $39, and it contains all of the pre-order content. That purchase just happened to be at the end of April, several months after its late October release in 2018. Therefore, I didn’t pre-order the game. Nevertheless, I now own a war horse and an “outlaw survivalists kit,” nothing special.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve seen a pre-order card on the inside of a box. I’ve also seen the same from Deus Ex: Mankind Divided which was the “Day-One Edition,” yes, day-one of several months later, once again. This time including digital downloads for a mission I swear I’ve never seen, some clothes for Jensen I’ve never seen, the OST, a novella (PDF), art book (PDF), and a comic book (PDF). For all I know, there may even have been the pre-order bonuses because it seemed I had an extra “praxis kit,” when I first played. I hadn’t seen the micro-transactions be too much of an issue upon the first playthrough, the second was a different story.

It should come as no surprise that both these releases were cheaper than their digital releases at the time. I had even seen Red Dead Redemption 2 at $35 the week prior: As was Kingdom Hearts 3. Buying the entire Dark Souls series for $40 in the middle of April bagged a download of the OST of the series, whatever the points were for a Bandi Namco rewards site, and, did I mention three Dark Souls games? Not just the Dark Souls games, but all of the DLC included for just $40. If you were to buy them digitally this would easily be $100 or more. Dark Souls 3 alone on the PS Store is $59.99 with the season pass at $14.99 (down from the usual $24.99).

If you own one of the two major consoles that are fought over (PlayStation and Xbox) you will often find a better deal as a consumer buying the physical edition of the game you want. If you own a previous generation console or sometimes the current generation you can find last year’s sports games for $10 in the likes of pawn shops (Cash Converters in the UK). This is how I bought the entire inFamous series for under $30. I’ve still to play the first or second games of the series. There are deals to be had for physical games that many are ignoring.

There are a few other points to be made, and I’ll make them quickly. Gaming historians one day will look back on this point in gaming history and ask why several hundred games were never physically published when ten years before it was normal. This ignores that when the nuclear apocalypse happens in six months, and we’re all fried by the thermonuclear blast: The steam servers will be much like us, shadows on the wall behind us. All the games you currently own and have presently downloaded will only work for 30-days afterward. Have I mentioned the deals?

As a consumer, you are better off buying games you can play when you don’t have an internet connection or lungs from whatever blast happened nearby.

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