Masahiro Sakurai is a man on a mission. Well, he’s on several missions, as that’s his role as a maker of games. But aside from making games, he’s dedicated himself to his new YouTube Channel about “making games” and teaching people how he views the gaming industry. It’s been a very insightful experience as he’s talked about everything from getting into the game industry to working on the little details of games to make them stand out, to his cat. But on his Twitter, he teased an upcoming video with a poll focusing on one of the biggest debates in gaming today.
More specifically, he had a poll where he asked gamers what “format” they prefer when buying video games. Do they prefer getting physical copies? Or do they go digital? The results might not have been surprising, but the numbers put into them were interesting:
While it doesn’t show it in that tweet, the English version of the poll had over 71,000 votes. So for digital game buyers to get 31% is not too shabby.
The truth here is that this debate is much more profound today than it was even a few years ago. After all, the gaming industry was all about physical copies when it was born because there were no other ways to get the games. Even when the PC came out and the internet was there, how you got games onto your system was limited.
But then, over time, the digital market started to grow. It became easier to put games where they could be downloaded onto other systems. The growth that the internet took over the years to make it easier to access and more reliable helped that immensely.
Fast forward to now, and it’s no longer taboo to go and get digital versions of games. Many titles have had incredible digital sales in the last few years alone and were AAA titles. For some, having digital copies is easier because they can download the game and then archive it for later.
As for physical copy gamers, they prefer to enjoy the hard copy due to the preservation of it and the notion that they don’t have to repeatedly adjust the memory banks of their systems to play another game.
There is no “right or wrong here.” It’s all about preference, and preferences can change over the years, which is why “digital” was so high in the poll. We look forward to Masahiro Sakurai’s video on the topic.
Source: Twitter
