As a result of the PlayStation extended maintenance, which affected every PlayStation user, there has been a big debate on social media once again with “digital vs physical” games. For those who are unaware, there are games on PlayStation 4 and 5 that even if you have them downloaded or own them physically, you still require to connect to the internet in order to play them, even if they are single player experiences. This locked out a good chunk of players out of games such as FC 25, where PS5 users can cross-play with X Box Series X/S players, but because of the issues of the extended maintenance, those who play this game on X Box, were able to thrive and play against rivals of their own console without having to worry about the PlayStation users (which is where most of the pro players play, so this allowed for better transfer market deals, better placement in online matches amongst other features that are related to Ultimate Team)

What I’m getting at is, if you wanted to play a game, offline or online, or even download a game you have purchased, or buy a DLC, you simply couldn’t (for the most part). This has caused a huge ripple effect where consumers are talking about buying in physical medium again just to avoid issues like these happening in the future. Being locked out of using your console’s games for 24 hours, especially when Sony has been unclear if it was a data breach like what they previously experienced in 2011, is leaving users worried with regards on if their data has been stolen as well as their credit card credentials. This is a huge cause for concern, especially with hackers being much more experienced in phishing, it is easy for them to appear to be Sony when you want to change your password, or even remove your card from being linked to your account.

Because of this, I would like to give a debate where I outline what I believe what has been some important features companies have done in the past, but over time have evolved and changed.

I would like to start off by presenting that X Box started off this trend, the X Box 360 required you to have constant connection to Wi-Fi in order to play the console, or even set it up for the first time. even if you purchased physical games, you were required to be constantly connected online to play even single player games. This immediately caused issues, since by the time the 360 came out, in November of 2005, not every home had a Wi-Fi connection. Those house holds that did, would have slow Wi-Fi, since it was still a relatively new concept that not everyone could afford. This would cause games to be laggy, cause awful loading times, and even boot players out of the servers at times. With regards to how this looks in retrospect, especially in 2025, this looks and feels like a step back. Forcing your users to connect to the internet for no reason even if they just want to play single player games isn’t exactly a good selling point for your system that will harm the user experience in the long term.

However, the early 2,000’s was a difficult time for developers. Especially with patching their games. The Nintendo Wii was a prime example of a console that had games for everyone, didn’t require users to have a constant connection, and had great single and multiplayer games. However, in November of 2011, with the release of The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, there were some users that found a game breaking glitch. Near the end of the game, you’re forced to do quests in the different regions of the game; Faron, Eldin and Lanayru. The player was allowed to complete these in any order, but if they specifically chose to start with Eldin, they could complete the quest as intended, but if they decided to talk with an NPC before they departed from the region, this would accidentally start the flag for the quest the player just completed again. However, the player would be unable to progress from that point, as they wouldn’t be able to start the quests in the other regions, nor could they carry on the quest since the flag for the quest was raised unintentionally. When the issue was brought up to Nintendo, they got hard at work for weeks in order to fix the issue, whilst allowing players to send in their physical copies to them so that the soft locking bug could get fix (Since the only way to avoid getting soft locked was to have a save from before you activated the original Eldin quest). This issue was a thing for digital owners since… there weren’t any!, most Wii games came out exclusively on physical and it was only the Wii U where you could finally download these physical games from the Wii shop. Like I mentioned earlier, this console was a difficult one to patch games for, since it was extremely convoluted to do so via the internet. Nintendo’s solution to the problem, was a seperate Wii channel that users could download from the Wii shop known as “Skyward Sword Data Update Channel”, users could download this channel and put their soft locked Skyward Sword save on this programme, which will run the patch and fix the issue. This was not the perfect solution, in fact most players didn’t even know of this bug until years later when it was documented in mass on YouTube. This solution back then, was to ship games out as a “Version 1.1” of the game, with updates already installed and applied onto the game, you may own Wii Sports, and I can guarantee that your version of the game is different to the day 1 release in America for the exact same reason I just mentioned.

This method was certainly not perfect, but it did fix the connectivity issues, or the reliance of having to download something onto your system in order to fix issues. This directly challenges what we see today. Although the Wii method I mentioned is a primitive one in comparison to how things are handled today, there is a point to be made that if I were to buy a Wii alongside Skyward Sword today, I wouldn’t have to worry about pirating the channel to update the game because the Wii servers have been discontinued since April 2024. Whereas today, for example Cyberpunk 2077, if I do not connect to the internet and patch the game, I would have a huge mess of a game that would crash the console, or even make me not enjoy my experience with the game as a whole. Of course I’m comparing two different eras and decades to each other, and I am aware of how easy it is to download updates for games. But this reliance of being constantly online, or having to download patches to fix the game, when issues such as the extended server maintenance happen it’s difficult to not look back and see how companies handled these issues two console generations ago.

Day 1 patches are also a big contributor to issues like these. Companies give users early access to games by paying extra, knowing that their game has been shipped out with bugs, just so that on the release date, when most players will get their game, release a big patch that will solve these issues. This affects both the digital deluxe editions, or even the standard physical editions. Which begs the question, if Day 1 they were going to have a patch readily available, why not release the base game with the patch already applied for a better user experience?

Another company that doesn’t have a good reputation of having a good user experience is Ubisoft. It was recently found out that if you’re using their client shop to play their games, if after 6 or more months of inactivity of your account or playing any Ubisoft title, they will de-list your game(s) from your account and if you want it back you will have to purchase the game again. This is the type of issue that is presented with only digital games, since if you have the game physically, unless you lose it, you will always be able to play that game independent of how many months or years have passed. Ubisoft was able to enforce these decisions because of their terms of service which included strict actions against these sort of circumstances, however when they started to take action, the entire gaming community spoke up against them and tried to revert these decisions made by the company.

If you ask me the question, “Digital or Physical?”, I would have a hard time answering it. On one hand, I like the comfortability that the digital media gives, allowing me to change software without having to worry about taking the cartridge or disk out and then replace it. But I do like the physical media more, especially when I can just stack my games on a shelf and have them as a collection that I will fondly look over for the years to come. This is especially prevalent for me, I own almost every Inazuma Eleven game physically, a series that I grew up with and currently has no way of being bought on any current system unless you rely on second hand vendors to sell you the game physically, so for me already having them, knowing that I wont have to worry about any additional downloads after the discontinuation of the DS and 3DS services, is a huge point in favour for the physical media.

Whilst I was typing this, Sony released a statement about the extended server maintenance, in which they explain that it was caused due to “operational issues”, which is why it took over 24 hours in some countries to use their service again. But I still beg the question of “is it necessary, for physical or digital games to be forced to connect to the PSN service even if they are a single player experience in order to be enjoyed by consumers?”

Research/References:

– https://www.indy100.com/gaming/sony-is-playstation-network-down-why

PlayStation being down, as well as update as to why.

–https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Skyward_Sword_Save_Data_Update_Channel Skyward Sword Update Channel information.