The games industry’s been in an (understandable) fuss lately about the prophesied death of physical media from Sony, which has announced it’ll be going discless for the foreseeable future. Players are really angry because it’s not exactly great if the one place you can buy your games also controls the entirety of the pricing—as Sony hypothetically would on its PlayStation consoles.
Things are a little easier for us over here on PC land, but this recent allergy to download-only games has had fans up in arms whenever they get a whiff of digital exclusivity. As is the case with Final Fantasy 7 Revelation which, even though it’s getting a physical disc version, will require a digital download.
Speaking with IGN, director Naoki Hamaguchi claims to be with gamers on the importance of physical media: “Personally, I’m very happy that we are able to release a physical disc version of FFVII Revelation considering how the entire gaming market, or the landscape, is veering towards the disc-less direction.”
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Regarding the download requirement, however, Hamaguchi says it was there to avoid compromising on detail: “When we had an internal discussion with the development team about how we wanted to approach the physical discs and the physical releases of FFVII Revelation, initially there were conversations about using the same disc size as we did for, say, FFVII Rebirth.
“But if we were to do that, it would mean that we would have to make a compromise in terms of the fidelity and the quality of the game. So as a development team, we didn’t want to do that. We didn’t want to make any compromises for the game. So realistically, the only choice that we had was to release this physical disc, but with certain sections of the game being a digital download format through the physical disc.”
Which is an interesting take on it, depending on its implementation. On the plus side, a hypothetical PC version of this sort of thing skirts around a couple of the problems folks have with gaming’s disc-pocalypse: It still lets gaming stores set the price, giving folks a wider range of options for purchasing, which is healthier for the consumer on the whole.
It also, depending on implementation—like whether the game requires a code—might preserve the second-hand gaming market, though I’d be surprised if Square Enix didn’t slip a sneaky set of numbers in there to drive up sales.
On the downside, it also makes them inherently perishable. I don’t think Square Enix is going anywhere for a while, but over the course of decades? Sure, anything can happen. And if it does, and Square can’t provide a download for the rest of the game, then the disk becomes inherently useless. Counter to an ever-evolving future, at the very least.
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