Alan Wake 2 Is Digital Download Only, Here’s Why

Remedy Entertainment has revealed several release details for Alan Wake 2, following its appearance in the PlayStation Showcase event yesterday.

We now have the release date of October 17, 2023, but surprisingly enough, that is not the most pertinent detail that we’ve learned today.

In their official FAQ, Remedy revealed that Alan Wake 2 will only be available as a digital download. They gave this reasoning:

“There are many reasons for this. For one, a large number of have shifted to digital only. You can buy a Sony PlayStation 5 without a disc drive and Microsoft’s Xbox Series S is a digital only console. It is not uncommon to release modern games as digital-only.

Secondly, not releasing a disc helps keep the price of the game at $59.99 / €59.99 and the PC version at $49.99 / €49.99.

Finally, we did not want to ship a disc product and have it require a download for the game — we do not think this would make for a great experience either.”

While it’s disappointing news for sure, we should at least commend Remedy for being upfront about the situation, and not try to pass off a retail disc as a copy of the game. It’s strange but common that that is something other game companies and publishers have been doing for some time now.

While some fans profess to prefer getting games on a physical format, whether that’s an optical disc or game cartridge, it’s becoming increasingly impractical to offer that as an option.

It’s true that part of the reason is that games are getting bigger and bigger, but there’s a flip side to this that the game and tech companies won’t owe up to. They haven’t been making, or using, newer formats that can accommodate these growing file sizes.

Let’s put this in context. Call of Duty Modern Warfare II, the most recent release in the game franchise, stands as a 72 GB download. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X currently use 4K UltraHD Blu-Ray drives. Technically, those 4K UHD discs can hold as much as 100 GB of data. However, because of technical limitations and lack of optimizations, games aren’t actually shipped using the full capacity of the format.

It may be the case that it’s becoming unfeasible to make the games in such a way that they can run on disc too. Whatever the reason, this looks like it will be the future of console gaming, unless the game companies decide they want to preserve physical games and actually do something about it.

Alan Wake 2 will be releasing on October 17, 2023, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows via Epic Games Store.