Excuse my silly question, but what's the point of pre-buying a game, if it will only exists as a downloadable copy. I get you want to gift it for xmas, but for the rest of players? The point of pre-sale is to make sure you will get one when it comes out?

Over a decade of development and an estimated budget between $1-2 Billion, I am okay with paying ten bucks more. There are significantly lesser games selling for full retail.

Some backstory - I like gaming quite a bit - but more of a personal archivalist. I have basically all games I've ever played on physical media and try to keep someway to play them offline - just jailbroke my 360 to be able to play games from HDD incase the DVD drive broke. Anyway...

I saw the no DVD and was initially devastated. I'm in two minds - I saw one post that basically said "it won't contain a DVD at launch".. if I read between the lines, though I'm not sure I see the value incentive for Rockstar, but...

If they hypothetically launched with physical boxes with digital download codes, okay... This would definitely be in the name of re-sellers (as they've stated). But this is the same as piracy, which has always been, not that "we need to stop people from pirating our games for eternity" but "we need to stop people pirates our game for X months after launch", which makes sense (the piracy party).

So, I'm wondering, if they actually begin releasing physical disks (offline, re-sellable, usable in 20 years), say, 6-12 months after releasing the game.. would that work? I mean, for me, assuming it's the equal block-buster to the franchise I adore (in a varying sense), then I might not mind too much to pick up a copy after 6-12 months (I don't care about bleeding edge).. but... would this work? If we assume the first 12M of buyers can't resell, would the people who buy the game after 12M actually bring a great number to the second hand market.. perhaps not?

I really have the idea of having games that I love in physical form that I know it can't be taken away.. similar to reading a book that you end up reading and know you want to come back to anytime in the future.. and this would _suck_ if I couldn't get a copy (and I assume all PC versions would be full of online-only DRM stuff anyway).

Ergh, I dunno

It will be very interesting to see if this lives up to the hype and/or if it is able to recoup the enormous amount of money spent developing it. The expectations from everyone seem to be so high; it's a very long way to the bottom if it somehow flops.

Personally, things got a little too realistic for me around the time of GTA IV. The earlier games felt like cartoony fun but I started to feel bad about the stuff I was doing in IV. I tried V a year or two back (I think they've maybe remastered it since?) but it ran so terribly on the Steam Deck that I refunded it.

The price seems sensible to me, these AAA titles are expensive to create.

Not that it'll affect me personally; I'm not buying this game after Rockstar's [union busting][1]!

[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9v10rr1meeo

I've been seeing a lot of drama around price increases in games, but I just don't find it to be that bad. I mean, 25 years ago a new game cost $50, and now that huge open worlds are common and the playtime can be in the hundreds of hours, and adjusting for inflation, I don't think $80 is a huge ask.

They say it's $100 for the ultimate edition but really, due to how much stuff they're locking into only that edition (certain shops and stores in game), that's the base edition and the $80 one is the lite edition. It is simply a marketing trick to have a 100 dollar price tag without as much pushback.

There's no way it lives up to the hype, right?

Time to start complaining to them about RDR3

I can't believe GTA 5 came out 13 years ago...

GTA 5 lasted so long, it's a good buy

> Rockstar said physical copies of the game will contain a code for a digital download for the game inside a box, rather than a disc.

So what's the point of that? Why waste all that money and energy shipping "physical copies" when it could just be an email

"physical copies will contain a code for a digital download for the game" ?!?

I think this is a reasonable compromise. Let's face it - they could have made this a $100 game (or even more) and many people would have bought it. I would have bought it. I'm not sure if it needs to go to Neo-Geo game costs ($200+?) but Rockstar has earned enough of my trust to buy in.

That said, I think I've bought GTA5 two or three times for various platforms over the years. I doubt we'll see GTA6 on sale for years.

As they say in the automotive industry, buy once, cry once. (Pay more for the known good thing, rather than buying the cheap third party things... I'm looking at you, $30 clockspringexperts.com that I have replaced 3 times in the past 4 years... instead of buying the $300 toyota part once)

I guess the real question is its gonna be release within 2026?

GTA III was $50 in 2001.

take my money

I'll respond next week when I'm finished laughing.

The highest capacity blurays available are 128GB and there's a good chance the game is larger than that, so it'd need to be a multi-disc installer.

I used to think physical media was great, but optical discs do have a finite shelf life. DRM-free is the important part, so you can make your own backups (like you're doing with your 360).

Physical media doesn't work when modern games are 100GB or more.

And to answer your question, most consumers don't care. The convenience of being able to buy with a few clicks and download immediately without going to a store or waiting for the mail is far more beneficial to most people than being able to locally archive or replay in 20 years.

I guess my point is.. if they were really to wait for X months and then start to release physical media (again, I can't see the financial incentive for them to do it), but it would really put a big split between: 1) people that buy that the game and simply want to re-sell it and 2) people that want to buy the game to "last forever" (like myself). Because most of the people in 1) are _likely_ to be the people wanting to buy at launch, play it and move on, the second are _probably_ more willing to wait (or even (probably) wait and buy a second copy later).

Pirating should solve your problems pretty directly. That's basically what it is: restoring copyability of a piece of media.

It's being released on November 19th, you need a box so it can go on a shelf in walmart so your relative can buy it, wrap it up and put it under the christmas tree.

No disks large enough probably (100 gig for PS5). And still if they manage to squeeze some form of the game on it, a large day one patch would render it obsolete.

A nice box with artwork like a map and other goodies is still great. I always found those maps useful and aesthetically pleasing.

Having a playable version of a game physically is great and I’d buy a version with some physical storage medium if it ever hits the shelves. Maybe the game needs more time for that. Or a different data carrier.

Edit: added PS5 disk size and preference of a physical game

You can't wrap an email as a Christmas present.

So it has a presence in stores.

I think it's just that some people really like having a physical object to put in their bookshelf or whatever. I don't personally see the point, but I also don't need any more clutter in my house.

Awareness and for those who don't yet have a console?

Every shop selling it will be advertising it in their shop windows and on the shop floor. That's free marketing!

Also I imagine there will be bundle deals with consoles and other accessories.

Maybe the point is to trick people into thinking they're buying a version that they have the right to resell. The online version is a lesser product.

Physical store space, promotional contracts with vendors, special editions, bundles, etc.

I find it very silly, utterly unnecessary, but it is far from unprecedented [0] for this industry. I think it's very problematic for preservation and will only lead to more interest from groups trying to bypass their DRM because of this.

[0] https://www.shacknews.com/article/108552/cardboard-disc-incl...

Selling empty useless packaging should be illegal. If they want to use physical chain they should come up with a physical product that has some utility.