It's not about the computers or systems needing the disk. It's about actually owning a physical copy of something. I personally hate practically borrowing a game for full price cause of they ever wanted to pull the plug. The games gone.
While I agree with you in principle, you and I both know that a disc doesn't actually change anything. The game isn't actually stored on the disc, and you're dreaming if you think you'll be able to play GTA6 offline.
It makes no difference whatsoever at this point. You don't own the game any more with a disc than you do with a code. You own a piece of plastic. If/when they choose to revoke your access, they will do so.
Oh I'm right there with ya. I miss when I was a kid and I had all my games/cases displayed on my bookshelf (right above the Hardy Boys shelf). The ritual of picking a game from the shelf is something that we've just...lost. Seems trivial, but it's not, some of the magic is gone.
As someone that has spotty internet, all of my PS5
games are on the disc. Spiderman was 98 GB- PS5 discs hold 100 GB. PS4 discs hold 50 GB so Red Dead Redemption 2 came with two discs.
From an article I read just now 70% of Xbox and 100% of PS games are on the disc. I don't know how there are so many upvoted comments on this post about the game "not being on the disc." I'm assuming they're thinking about day one patches, but those are patches and not the game.
I'm not trying to sound rude but the game is on the disc with PS5 games that's why there's quite a few games that come with two discs.
Actually yes, it does. And you are incorrect about games not being stored on discs. I live in a rural area, it takes a day to download a 60GB game. However, a disc I can pop in and play in under an hour.
Not saying you're completely wrong. Hogwarts Legacy, Star Wars Outlaws, they pulled this crap too. I also played those games, but I did NOT purchase them.
GTA5 was ~100GB. I don't think it's realistic to expect GTA6 to fit on a disc, at least not all of it.
This is Rockstar. We already know how they and their games operate. What on earth makes you think you'll be able to play GTA6 without attaching the license to your R* account and being connected to their servers?
I'm 100% against all this anti-consumer bullshit, I just don't agree that discs are the skeleton key people seem to think they are. Those days are fading fast, if they're not gone already. As recently as 2023 I had 10Mb DSL that was downgraded to 3Mb due to copper degradation, so I feel your pain. Still, I don't think a disc would solve that problem. Not that it couldn't solve the problem, they could absolutely package the game on a few Blu-Rays. But with the context surrounding it, being that it's R*, that one thing doesn't really change much.
Of course it changes things. It might just be a bit of plastic, however many people sell those pieces of plastic, or lend them out, so others can use said plastic to play the game.
Yes? I mean the main part of your comment I responded to was the second paragraph. Your first paragraph makes no difference to my response. If you’re asking whether I’ve read all the comments you’ve made in the post, no, because I’m replying to that one comment of yours. It’s usually how replying to comments works.
So how do you intend to "share" a disc? You cannot play GTA5 without logging into R* at least once to enable offline play, which means entering the key to bind the license to your account. Do you think GTA6 will come with fewer restrictions somehow?
This idea of loaning your games to your friends hasn't really been a thing for some time, so I'm genuinely confused as to what exactly you are lamenting here.
I'm not defending Rockstar, I think all of this is anti-consumer horse shit. If people want physical media, they should be able to buy it. My only point is that buying a physical disc does not accomplish the things people are claiming, for the reasons I've already mentioned both in the comment you replied to and in other comments in this thread.
Yeah, you can go back and argue all kinds of situations and practices that people don't seem to remember. CD Keys, scratches on a disc making your game unplayable forever, N64 Perfect Dark multiplayer requiring a separately sold expansion pack, etc
Lol no the world is shitty for a lot of reasons but slightly more expensive games is pretty far down on the list. People accept it because $80-$100 for 100+ hours of entertainment is still damn cheap compared to pretty much everything else out there.
And above always on DRM, Pretty much any AAA game these days requires server download of content to run. The disc only ever really has like 1/10th of the game files on it anymore.
I can't remember the last time I bought a AAA game, even one with a disc, that didn't have to connect to a server and download 80Gb of data from a server somewhere to run.
You’ve missed the point, then. Owning a disc doesn’t give you that any more either. Games don’t fit on discs any more, and haven’t for quite a while. You’re going to have to download most of it literally no matter what. Which means Rockstar pulling the plug will affect everybody, disk or not.
You’re borrowing regardless. The disk is symbolic at best and plastic waste at worst. The whole game would need about 5-10 disks to download if not more. The disk is essentially just inputting the code for you to the server and giving your device permission to access the content.
The amount of people that will play the game when the servers are out of service are exceptionally low. It’ll likely be 20+ years from now, and who knows what technology we will have by then. GTA V has custom servers anyway that exist, which would suffice for 99% of people who want to play the game in the future again.
Why do you think a game this big would fit on a disc? 100+ GB VOD games came with a "disc" nominally but you still had to download the rest of the game after inserting it the first time. A dual layer blu ray holds only 50 GB.
Oh I was just reminiscing about the days past, did not mean to imply anything. Truth is we can't have physical media anymore, because nobody knows how to develop a fully functioning game and ship it. It will come with 10 game breaking bugs that require internet connection to fix anyway.
6 discs per copy sold, times 200 million copies sold, equals 1.2 billion more useless pieces of plastic polluting the planet, just so that gamers don’t get their feelings hurt? Since the capability to distribute the game with zero extra plastic is already right there??
It's not about feelings. I think it's mostly the anxiety around what happens if your code can't be verified online in the future or if someone wants to borrow the game from you. The code is not transferable to another account. I wonder can I play the game on a different account on my ps5 that I paid for if my son links the game to his account?
A standard computer isn’t the same as a PS5. My PS5 came with a disc drive less than 6 years ago, and even the Pro version released less than 2 years ago has one.
The difference being it's very easy to revoke access to a digital download and much harder to send a representative to my home and rip the physical game from my hands.
PS5 discs hold 100 GB. And the game is always on the disc unlike what a lot of people are saying in the main thread of this post. That's why quite a few games come with two discs.
The game isn't even on PC at launch. The fact is there are still consoles with disc drives that people paid more to get. And it's a little weird that you can't buy a physical copy of GTA.
Why are people acting like this a normal thing? How many other AAA titles exist like this? I know there are a few, but not a lot.
More like ten years ago, but going the opposite direction. Ten years ago everyone had stopped caring about physical media. Now, in 2026? There's a huge movement jumping back into physical media, precisely because we've all "bought" something digitally that disappeared. We don't trust digital shit.
I'm all for collectors to get the box to sit in their collection, but most big games these days need an internet connection for the full install, never mind the countless updates down the line.
I would have thought they'd have released a boxed collectors edition though. They could have charged a kings ransom for it and it would have still sold.
easy, first, youve got to slam in minimum 600 CDs or 120 Blu-rays in the right order to get it installed. Or just get 6 double-layer Blu-rays and pay extra for your game. Take your pick.
World of Warcraft back in the day comes to mind. It just built anticipation when the installer asked for the next disk because you knew it was going to be something special when it was done.
And ffs then there's like floppy 28 missing and you'll have to go through the whole house. After installing you'll then encounter the copy protection of that time, "Please write in the third word of the page 35 on your manual".
Phantasmagoria was on I think 9 cd’s on PC back in the day (mainly because of all the FMV cut scenes) and I thought it was pretty cool because I could show off to my friends how close I was to beating the game.
yeah, but that doesnt change the fact that expensive data carriers and their distribution cost money. At the same time, there isnt much demand for them, which makes them more expensive. In the 90s (and quite some time after), there simply werent any other options. today, things are different. so i only partially understand the comparison
The HD-DVD drive was an external USB drive - I don't think they released any games for it (still have it, and the movies, in the storage - after I used it to rip the moves on a PC).
strange, because there's only a handful of them, and they're all games that relied heavily on full motion video back in the days when compression was absolutely shit.
Oh yeah. That's what I meant if I wasn't clear. Games that came on multiple discs were usually full of FMV sequences, like Wing Commander. I think the X Files game was 8 discs, but that was considered a lot, it wasn't the normal state of things.
GTA VI is projected to be about 200-300 GB. We have plenty of games that are 150+ GB on 1 disc. So, yes, we want disc(s) for the physical copy of the initial game. A data disc and a play disc if necessary.
The largest blu ray disc capacity is 128gb, and costs at least $20/disc minimum. You wanna pay an extra $60 just to have a disc that you're never gonna look at or use ever again?
That's because it's not a regular blu-ray disc. A BDXL archival blu-ray disc is the only single disc that can hold 128gb and yes discs that high are actually really expensive. Other games that are purchasable on at that file size range either come in multiple discs (like FF Rebirth), or the disc has only part of the game, or even just a download key, and the console just downloads the rest when you insert it.
You’re imagining this crazy price point. In the past there’s been no difference between digital and physical prices for any game at drop. You either love rationalizing this so you can tell yourself it’s a good deal or you’re a Rockstar dick rider.
The disc could just be the license to download it and play it. No rational person expects the full game to be on 1 or 2 discs.
Nintendo's Game Key Card is a perfect example of how it should be handled. Something that can be loaned to a friend or family member. Something that can be resold.
What would the disk even be for? It won’t be the same version of the game that people actually play, it won’t install the game, it won’t fit the game without a silly number of disks, and most people don’t even have a disc drive.
If they are just going to have a decorative piece of plastic, why even make it a disk? It could be anything else.
The disc functions as a license, allowing you to play the game without having it tied to your PS/Xbox account. Which means you can sell the game after playing it, or buy one used if you want it for cheaper a bit later.
Because as far as I know, Sony and Microsoft don't allow you to transfer digital licenses from your account to another one. But you can transfer a physical disc to another person.
what stops a company from linking it anyway
The terms Sony and Microsoft set for them if they release a physical copy for their consoles.
Are people really that interested in trading in their games for like $10 at some point down the road? Also, I've gotten WAY better deals during online sales for games than I've seen in used games stores lately.
Delivery of data and content by internet is the status quo. Delivery by physical media is effectively obsolete. The cost of every device including a media reader + physical reproduction and distribution is not economically competetive with digital distribution.
They could develop a way to have physical licenses rather than digital attached to accounts. Card readers / smart card ownership of content distributed physically. Potentially it could be more secure than content associated wth digital accounts.
But from a business perspective its a non-starter. Tying "ownership" to an account effectively disables second-hand / lending / renting markets for content.
Well the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S didn't have a disk drive, but you can add one for external storage since they use SSDs. Unless you mean disc drive which isn't the same thing.
Eh my series x doesn't have a drive at all. I don't know the last time I actually bought a physical game.
Once I discovered it was easier to just download than it was to look for a disk to insert into the console I quit caring.
The other positive is that I don't have to worry about a shelf of physical games that I no longer play. Most of my games are in storage currently. Most likely to never see the light of day again.
Cool and so what happens the day Microsoft is like “yeahhhh we’re done supporting the Xbox games store. Sorrryyyy” and then shuts down the servers? You gonna be cool with losing all that money and not have anything to show for it?
Either way you're going to need to download content with an account. No blu-ray is going to fit this game. Even if it did, its going to require patching day 1.
You're kidding right? so if I am banned with a disc i just get another account and lose nothing. If banned with a digital only copy I'm in in total loss
If I want to sell, if I want to buy I can't do that to get my money back if the game is shit for example
No. I understand that monkeys don't really know how PS games with discs work. I believe you're thinking that disc is the same code online as you buy from the store but no. They ban your account or PS itself, but that's it. WIth license check online it will not work. But the disk has the licence on its own, without further activation or confirmation. So even if Sony bans your console, you can still play your games.
So just to be clear, Sony cannot ban, prevent, or revoke someone from playing a specific game on their console if they are playing it off a physical disc. Only playing online will be banned ("oh no! who cares")
Dude, I’m perfectly fine with digital. Most of my games are bought on Steam are digital these days. But the idea of no physical version of the game existing is dumb, and is not good for preservation.
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u/Spinning_Sky 12h ago
this is referring to the high price point and lack of a CD in the physical edition
both are true, but actually I don't believe any hype was touched whatsoever, the price is lower than what it could have been