Today’s announcement that the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nintendo Switch will be receiving a port from both the Bioshock and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Borderlands series with a physical release was great news at first, but less so🍬 as details emerged about the way in which thꦇe developer is handling the physical copy.
On one hand, physical releases are great for collectors who want to display their game, or for those who want to sell, trade, or let friends borrow later a game in the future. Unfortunately, we now know that the cartridges are only coming with only some of the data aജnd a hefty ꦛdownload for the full experience. This is not only frustrating, it also limits the use of a physical cartridge in the future and makes us wonder what the point of a physical release is if the implementation is so half-baked.
As Jason Schreier points out, Bioshock is packaged into a 16GB cartridge that contains only the opening acts of the games, with later content and add-ons needing to be downloaded; Borderlands comes on a 8GB cartridge with a 6.6GB required for Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition, and a whopping 35GB for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.
On the other end is 168澳洲🥃幸运5开奖网:The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition. It seꦅrves as the gold staꦑndard of ports for the Nintendo Switch with developer CD Projekt Red going above and beyond to provide not only an excellent port, but also putting everything onto one cartridge. They were the first to utilize a 32GB cartridge for this purpose, and this is how all developers should treat physical releases.
One reason that these newly-announced ports are so frustrating to see is because the costs saved by cutting corners for Bioshock and Borderlands are passed dܫirectly onto the consumer. Fans now need to ensure they have adequate storage on top of a physical cartrid🌌ge, which seems counter-intuitive.
This is a bad business model for consumers in the long-term as well. Eventually, these games will not be available for download when the develop🃏er no longer supports the game. That might be in ten years; It might be in twenty years. The point is that when someone purchases a physical good, there is an expectation that it will continue to work indefinitely outside of breaking.
Everyone can still play their old NES, SNES, and GameCube games today because the cartridge contains the entire game. One could argue that those games are from another time in gaming history, but it seems like selling only a part of the game without a way to ensure it is always availablꦿe is not progressing with technology, but going backwards instead.
Years from now a video game collector might be showing off their Nintend🗹o Switch library of physical titles, yet unable to play games that require a download because support has ended. Put simply, it’s a half-assed job, and consumers꧑ should reject it outright with their wallets.