Which one do you prefer, Digital vs. Retail games?

[Talal86]

So now that we've had the Ps Vita for months, which one do you guys prefer when it comes to handheld games?

so far, I've bought 3 physical games for the vita: Uncharted GA, Metal Gear HD Collection and Gravity Rush (and will soon buy Persona 4 Golden and Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation)
and downloaded: LittleBigPlanet, Sound Shapes, Escape Plan and PS Allstar Battle Royale (technically I bought the retail game for the ps3 and got the digital ps vita game for free)

I have to say that I'm kind of loving how Battle Royale is just siting there on my screen and I can play it whenever I want

I think if Sony released 128 GB memory cards.. I might go all the way digital

[SpectrumOfPain]

I own 2 physical copies, AC III Liberation and Uncharted, but recently I have purchased PS+ and now I have like 6 games on my 32 GB card and I love it! Just as you said, it's nice to play a game like Gravity Rush and then quit and boot up another game straight from your dashboard.

[West E]

yeah PS+ has changed my mind. I used to be anti-digital just because I like having the physical copy but Uncharted is so easy to boot up. I still haven't put a cartridge in my Vita yet.

[Mavrick]

It all comes doen to whats cheapest really. I'm not going to pay more just to download a game if I can get it for £10-£20 less in a shop or online.

Obviously I take the free games you get with PS+ but I only have an 8gb card, and the 32gb cards are hard to get in the UK and cost around £75, thats about £121...

I picked up a 1TB SATA drive for my PS3 for £60,I can't justify £75 for a 32gb card.

[Talal86]

I think they should offer an option to download the game from the store for free, when you buy the retail version. if you agreed to lock the cartridge to your account, of course
like the cross-play feature they've done for All-Stars Battle Royale and soon for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

which btw, I can't wait to get! I've never played a Sly game but it looks amazing

[silversnake]

For the vita and with my 32gb memory card I much prefer digital copies.

[JTStarkiller]

I won't pass up a good deal on a Vita card in store, but for the same price, I prefer digital. It's just nice being able to boot up games easily, as others have said. I don't need the box for collecting or anything, when it comes to Vita games.

[Icemage]

Small games I don't mind, but with a maximum limit of 32GB, I always prefer physical to downloadable when size or loading speed is an issue.

The physical cartridges load game data up faster than the memory cards do. While it's not a bad thing to have the digital copies so you don't have to mess around with cartridge switching, the ability to save all that limited space AND get faster load speeds outweighs simple convenience, IMO.

See: Uncharted: Golden Abyss loads 4 seconds faster on physical media.

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[SpectrumOfPain]

Originally Posted by Icemage

Small games I don't mind, but with a maximum limit of 32GB, I always prefer physical to downloadable when size or loading speed is an issue.

The physical cartridges load game data up faster than the memory cards do. While it's not a bad thing to have the digital copies so you don't have to mess around with cartridge switching, the ability to save all that limited space AND get faster load speeds outweighs simple convenience, IMO.

See: Uncharted: Golden Abyss loads 4 seconds faster on physical media.

You bring up a really good point. For me I don't mind waiting for the game to boot up if it means that I can carry my whole game library with me on the Vita.

[AikonEnt]

Originally Posted by Mavrick

I can't justify £75 for a 32gb card.

This is the biggest thing stopping me buying a Vita at the moment. Being a PSN+ member I'm liking the free games that have been made availble but the cost of memory is ridiculous. The Vita should come with 16gb (or so) internal memory with the option to add more if required. Does it actually come with any usable memory out of the box?

I like to have a selection of games on the system so am not one for deleting and re-downloading games so would like a fair amount of memory, but not at the cost it currently is.

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by SpectrumOfPain

You bring up a really good point. For me I don't mind waiting for the game to boot up if it means that I can carry my whole game library with me on the Vita.

Yes, but with a hard limit on space, at some point you run out of room. I've got the physical copy of Uncharted: Golden Abyss as well as the digital download via PS+, but that digital copy is going to get jettisoned as soon as I start running out of room on my 32GB card (Uncharted is 3+ GB), which won't take a whole lot longer.

I'm not a hater of digital content; I've got 100+ games installed on my PS3. But the difference between a ~100KB? shortcut versus a 3GB digital install when I've already got all the space I can ever have on my Vita is a serious consideration even if the physical copy didn't load faster.

Between Vita games and other things, I'm sitting at something like 5GB free left of 29GB usable on my Vita. Recovering 3GB of that from Uncharted seems like a good idea soon.

[MOONPHASE]

I'm always for Retail. But sometimes my games are released as PSN Store only because of being too Niche even though a Retail version exists in Japan and/or Europe. Then there's some Publishers who are trying to go Digital Only just to avoid used game sales like *cough*XSEED*cough*.

[Hayabusa85]

Vita is making me hate digital releases more than ever. If a game is digital all around then I am fine with it but if there are retail versions somewhere then all regions should get a retail version. Especially when you have games like EDF charging the same price a retail version would cost. Deals too good to pass in favor of a physical copy is the only time I will pick digital when given the choice. And 99.9% of the time that only applies to PC through Steam sales and stuff.

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by Hayabusa85

Vita is making me hate digital releases more than ever. If a game is digital all around then I am fine with it but if there are retail versions somewhere then all regions should get a retail version. Especially when you have games like EDF charging the same price a retail version would cost. Deals too good to pass in favor of a physical copy is the only time I will pick digital when given the choice. And 99.9% of the time that only applies to PC through Steam sales and stuff.

EDF 2017 pisses me off. I refuse to buy a digital game at $40 that was $40 when its original Xbox 360 version launched 5 years ago.

$30, maybe. $20 for sure. But $40 for a 5 year old game (even if it does have a bit of extra content and online play added)?

[THE_FORCE]

I never thought I'd be 'pro' digital releases, but now like many others, I love being able to boot up games without having to swap cards over.

[Stitches]

I prefer digital for sure, but until the memory cards are even bigger and digital games can be had at a significant discount (like retail can) then I'll buy a majority of retail.

[PA_Kid]

I go back and forth (both on PS3 and Vita)

I have a ton of BRs, but I got RDR digital on sale, Catherine, Battle Royal and a few others

On the Vita I got Uncharted, Gravity Rush, Wipeout, MK, Hot Shots Golf, Modnation, Lumies, @ MvC3 all on card. After trading in UC, GR, and Wipeout due to PS+, I grabbed Persona on card. Lumines, Modnation, and MK were all super cheap on clearance - I probably would not have picked up all three digital at full price.

For digital I have AC3:L, Battle Royal, Smart As, and LBP Vita (in addition to a ton of PSN stuff).

I actually prefer digital, but B&M still end up giving much more competitive deals and earlier clearances that keep me coming back to cards more than I expected.

[Trogdor2010]

Steam has kind of made me want to go for digital downloads. It's convenient, painless, quick and yet easy to use, and come with the updates. Even install periods for large games usually take a few minutes to install. I would be very happy going all digital if they were like steam.

But the way that the PS3 does digital downloads is... terrible, especially updating. No wonder people hate digital downloads. In a worse case scenario (like say MAG or SOCOM 4), if you have to wait for a PSN update of the game, then an hour for a game to update after you downloaded the game from the game's own server, which is slow as hell, then, if the game will install, about 10-15 min for it to install the update. For companies attempting to embrace fully digital games, don't you think there is something wrong here? The digital downloads need to come with the newest patches. Even games that take say 18GBs of data that took me an hour I think to install the game, like that Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition, a game with so many updates and crap I won't care too much, still needs another freaking update screen?

If I download a game on steam, it will come with the game and the updates before it'll let me play the freaking game, which I'm fine with. The Xbox 360 is acceptable because the updates are usually small and painless to download, no 1GB download updates that you can't use background update with or installs that take an hour like the PS3.

I'm very sure they can fix this in their next game console, but the PS3 clearly wasn't ideal for large downloadable games. It can be worth it after dealing with all of this, but it can be very hard to swallow.

I don't own a Vita, but I would love to get one. Speaking of which, can you back up your digital games on a PS3 or PC? It would be nice to put a game on my hard drive if I don't want a game on my Vita, but may get away from downloading the game again.

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by Trogdor2010

I'm very sure they can fix this in their next game console, but the PS3 clearly wasn't ideal for large downloadable games. It can be worth it after dealing with all of this, but it can be very hard to swallow.

The Vita works sort of like the PS3 but the updates can now download in the background and you can go about your business while they do so, then just install them as part of the startup process.

Not a perfect situation, but a marked improvement over the PS3.

Also, if you're a PlayStation Plus subscriber, games auto-update for you overnight without you lifting a finger.

I agree that new purchases of digital games should absolutely come with the latest revision in theory, though there are a few problems with that. For instance, shortly after it launched Mass Effect 3's PS3 digital download version was updated but the disc-based version was not, leading to the game servers locking out the digital owners from multiplayer due to unmatched versions.

I don't own a Vita, but I would love to get one. Speaking of which, can you back up your digital games on a PS3 or PC? It would be nice to put a game on my hard drive if I don't want a game on my Vita, but may get away from downloading the game again.

You can back up the game saves for sure. I don't think you can archive game code from the Vita to the PC or PS3 (that would be begging for hackers).

What you can do, however, is keep the game downloaded on your PS3 and re-install it to the Vita via the Content Manager without having to re-download (assuming you've got enough space on the PS3, naturally).

[MOONPHASE]

I'm not too concerned about the whole situation with Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable. What I want is Earth Defense Force HD Collection of the 1st 2 games being available in America or even put onto PS Vita.