What are your thoughts on digital collections?

[seether]

Anything digitally distributed has no value once it's been purchased.

I assume you mean no resale value because otherwise what you just said is all movies, games and music are inherently worthless outside of the price tag applied to it and you place no value on the entertainment of the product or accessibility to the product.

I bought Red Dead 2 digitally and it has a lot of value to me.

value

noun
1.
the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something.

synonyms:   merit, worth, usefulness, use, utility, practicality, advantage, desirability, benefit, gain, profit, good, service, help, helpfulness, assistance, effectiveness, efficacy, avail, importance, significance, point, sense

You can value something for its utility, practicality and desirability rather than simply financially.

[burningdoom]

You bought a game...and you're actually enjoying it? You don't feel guilty over it?

...not buying it.

[dashv]

I certainly can appreciate and agree with the sentiment that a digital purchase can provide value.

I’ve really enjoyed some digital only titles.

That said I feel the value of digital purchases is more delicate than that of physical items.

If I store my physical items safely and carefully they can be enjoyed again anytime later. I may need to tweak, adject, or fix something. But for the most part I can get the value out of them again whenever I want. Assuming they were finished products in their physical state.

With digital the window of time where I can realize the value of my purchase is subject to the whims of another parties rules, restrictions, profits, etc.

At least that’s how it was until the last few years.

In an age of updates, patches, and internet authorization schemes even having a physical copy may do you no good later.

Like the hardware and software I cherish, I and my wants as a consumer have become relics of a soon to be forgotten era.

As of the last two console generations there is barely any real difference in value now between digital and physical.

I don’t consider half the games I own the last two generations to be part of my “collection” in the same sense as my other games and consoles.

Sure, I added them here on VGCollect. But that’s just to prevent a double buy. I’ll still be playing my Sega/SNES/NES long after I’ve lost the ability to play my PS4 games. Those are the things I consider part of my “collection”.

[kypherion]

Definitely more of a physical games guy. I do own more games digitally but not a fan of digital collections, I'd much rather have a case, game, manual, inserts etc. than needing to buy a bigger SSD

[dashv]

Definitely more of a physical games guy. I do own more games digitally but not a fan of digital collections, I'd much rather have a case, game, manual, inserts etc. than needing to buy a bigger SSD

These days the bigger hard drive is mandatory either way.

[mastodon]

The best games and systems have already been made. Same goes for music and film. Find something else to sink money into.

[oldgamerz]

The best games and systems have already been made. Same goes for music and film. Find something else to sink money into.

I can agree somewhat, because I am a retro gamer and a retro music collector. Most things are just rehashes or repeats of the same media, but partially that is not true, It's just that a lot of newer music for example, in which I only hear rumors about is bad, because I don't pay much attention to the modern stuff.

In music, most of the older stuff actually used real instruments and an actual musicians. Instead of solo trained computer engineers. That write their music with sound engineering and codes all by themselves, but again a lot of the older music has been the same, just one musician. But again not all old music or video games are all good either