Digital Codes with Physical Video Games, Why Not?

 I am a Staunch and some would say Snobby Physical Media collector in all my hobbies, Books (I absolutely refuse to buy digital books), Movies and especially Video Games. Now if you are a frequent reader of this blog this will come as no surprise to you. But, I will however admit that I do have some "digital" games on my Xbox 360 & Xbox One mainly obtained from Microsoft's Xbox Games with Gold deals, and I honestly cannot deny how much more convenient they are to just highlight, launch and play, especially on those days I am in one of those moods where it takes me 4-5 different games that I will start, stop & switch before I finally settle in on one. As you can imagine this can get repetitive and irritating getting up every couple of minutes to swap discs, put them back in their case and back on the shelf where they belong. 

This got me to thinking, why don't Video Games comes with a code for a Digital copy? This has been standard practice with Movies for years now. In fact when I buy new Blu Ray physical copies they also come with a physical DVD copy and a redemption code for a "Digital" copy as well. That's 3 separate individual copies for one price. 

The main thing I see is that people would make an argument about is the cost. Well chew on this, The week of release you can buy the Blu Ray + DVD & Digital combo pack for roughly $15.00. $15.00, that is One Quarter of what a new Video Game costs. Video Games when they are released are $60.00 and you only get one copy. OK, but what about the cost to make a movie vs. a game?

Let us take a couple of recent "blockbusters" like say Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Captain America Civil War and compare. I chose these two because I have full physical copies of both. If you lookup the numbers, you will find that Captain America Civil War cost 400 Million Dollars to make and made 1.1 Billion Dollars, where as Call of Duty Modern Warfare only cost 200 Million Dollars to make and made over a Billion (Activision does not releases actual sales numbers) Dollars as well. 

Using those numbers, if games only cost half as much as movies to make, why do they cost four times as much to buy and yet they only give us a third of of the content that a movie does? When you sit and look at it, it really makes a person think. There is No Way a game programmer/designer is going to be paid anywhere near what Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle or Chris Evans got paid for their role.

Then of course there is all of the additional paid Downloadable Content of Character skins, weapon skins, calling cards, etc... in the Call of Duty Games, Which I am quite sure they make absolutely Scrooge McDuck sized vaults of even more money off of. 

For the record, even though I get free Xbox credit through their Microsoft Rewards program, I WILL NOT pay for these additional skins, even if admittedly some of the character models do look really cool. If it does not come with the game, or cannot be earned in the game, then I do not need it.

Most of these DLC packs, with stuff that you would actually want to use are 2400 "COD Points" so for an additional $20.00, One Third of the initial purchase price of the game! Now playing devil's advocate,  if you have the disposable income and Call of Duty is your only vice, I am not judging, you do you. I am just pointing out how much more Cold Hard Cash games generate when compared to movies.

I can remember when I was an adult buying my own games and when a news console video game cost $40.00 new. And back then (Mid to late 1990's) There was only one store that I was aware of that sold games cheaper the week of release (like movies today) that store was CompUSA. They sold them for $5.00 less (again like movies today). 

Then when the Original Xbox & Playstation 2 came out, games prices went up to $50.00, Xbox 360 & Playstation 3 went up to $60,00. thankfully for us gamers the price did stay the same for Xbox One & Playstation 4 but with the next generation of consoles (Xbox Series X/S & the Playstation 5 the games are going up to $70.00 for a brand new game 😲

I am not asking the Video Game Industry to lower their prices, go ahead and charge your $70.00, that is fine with me. What I am asking for is that they include a FREE digital copy, It could be on a separate piece of paper with a one time use code (Like movies) or have an actual downloadable file on the disc itself, that uses the physical copy you purchased for the key to install it.  Or tell you what, I would even be willing pay an extra $1.00 for the convenience to download the digital copy, as long as I am the original purchaser of the physical version. Minecraft did something similar to this that I have used.

A person was able to buy a digital copy of Minecraft for $5.00 if they had already purchased a physical copy. I did this for both my Xbox 360 & Xbox One as it was an easier way for my Wife and Daughter to play when I was not around. My daughter who is 9 now, and I still prefer her to not touch physical discs, my wife has put games in the wrong case, which is a Huuuuge pet peeve of mine. So for them to be able to launch and play the game from the dashboard = awesome!

These are just my personal thoughts and opinions on the subject, feel free to comment or Email me if you would like to have a discussion.

Thanks for Reading!