Physical games aren’t the whole game anymore and haven’t been for over a decade, is the main thesis. A DRM-locked (encryption and copy protection on the cart/disc are also DRM) physical copy that needs DRM-locked downloads to be complete is equal in preservation weight to a DRM-locked fully digital game. Once both releases are DRM-locked and download-reliant, I do consider the DRM-locked download that’s still acquirable 10 years later to be better than the one that isn’t. Both are shit, but like you said - spectrum. Disregarding piracy, The Old Hunters is better preserved than Champion’s Ballad (Wii U).
Meanwhile outside of console land, DRM-free digital exists. That’s the holy grail gold standard, not 60% of pokemon sword on a flash drive. DRM-free digital survives the CDN end-of-lifing. It survives my PC exploding, because unlike even complete physical games like a SNES cart, I can copy my DRM-free digital installer to as many devices as I want. DRM-free digital installs the version of the game I downloaded, without any connection to the internet. DRM-free digital survives the music license for a David Bowie track expiring. Even if every physical console release eventually got the “final cut GOTY” disc with everything on it, it’s worse than DRM-free digital by virtue of being a physically destructible copy (though I do consider physical a relevant form of preservation for all the patchless console gens). Everything less than DRM-free (or DRM-stripped) digital is ephemeral. PC is the only platform that’s DRM-free by default, and fully abandoning physical copies a decade ago didn’t change a thing for preservation.
Consoles will never give us DRM-free digital, because the only reason consoles exist now is to be DRM. So the only relevant preservation of console games is dumping and cracking and emulating, because that makes them DRM-free digital, even though they’re not legally such.
No, it is not equivalent. A full build in a cartridge is playable beginning to end. It may be missing bug fixes, tuning changes or expansions, but it is a full game.
The Switch in particular has games that look physical but aren’t, and nobody should consider those physical releases, but physical games that actually are physical games aren’t equivalent to digital releases just because there is additional content that is digital-only. You lose me there, that premise is just incorrect. And even if it wasn’t, preserving the 1.0 vanilla version of a game is as relevant as preserving the all-bells-and-whistles last patch with all DLC. Ultimately for full archival purposes both are relevant, so I’d rather have one of those frozen in carbonite than neither.
Now, I agree that DRM-free releases are a better way to handle this than DRMd releases, and I do agree that jailbreaking and backing up digital copies of DRMd releases is crucial for preservation.
But that is neither here nor there. For practical usage, as a sustainable artefact and as a preservable snapshot of a media release a physical version is absolutely crucial.
Physical games aren’t the whole game anymore and haven’t been for over a decade, is the main thesis. A DRM-locked (encryption and copy protection on the cart/disc are also DRM) physical copy that needs DRM-locked downloads to be complete is equal in preservation weight to a DRM-locked fully digital game. Once both releases are DRM-locked and download-reliant, I do consider the DRM-locked download that’s still acquirable 10 years later to be better than the one that isn’t. Both are shit, but like you said - spectrum. Disregarding piracy, The Old Hunters is better preserved than Champion’s Ballad (Wii U).
Meanwhile outside of console land, DRM-free digital exists. That’s the holy grail gold standard, not 60% of pokemon sword on a flash drive. DRM-free digital survives the CDN end-of-lifing. It survives my PC exploding, because unlike even complete physical games like a SNES cart, I can copy my DRM-free digital installer to as many devices as I want. DRM-free digital installs the version of the game I downloaded, without any connection to the internet. DRM-free digital survives the music license for a David Bowie track expiring. Even if every physical console release eventually got the “final cut GOTY” disc with everything on it, it’s worse than DRM-free digital by virtue of being a physically destructible copy (though I do consider physical a relevant form of preservation for all the patchless console gens). Everything less than DRM-free (or DRM-stripped) digital is ephemeral. PC is the only platform that’s DRM-free by default, and fully abandoning physical copies a decade ago didn’t change a thing for preservation.
Consoles will never give us DRM-free digital, because the only reason consoles exist now is to be DRM. So the only relevant preservation of console games is dumping and cracking and emulating, because that makes them DRM-free digital, even though they’re not legally such.
No, it is not equivalent. A full build in a cartridge is playable beginning to end. It may be missing bug fixes, tuning changes or expansions, but it is a full game.
The Switch in particular has games that look physical but aren’t, and nobody should consider those physical releases, but physical games that actually are physical games aren’t equivalent to digital releases just because there is additional content that is digital-only. You lose me there, that premise is just incorrect. And even if it wasn’t, preserving the 1.0 vanilla version of a game is as relevant as preserving the all-bells-and-whistles last patch with all DLC. Ultimately for full archival purposes both are relevant, so I’d rather have one of those frozen in carbonite than neither.
Now, I agree that DRM-free releases are a better way to handle this than DRMd releases, and I do agree that jailbreaking and backing up digital copies of DRMd releases is crucial for preservation.
But that is neither here nor there. For practical usage, as a sustainable artefact and as a preservable snapshot of a media release a physical version is absolutely crucial.