There are Best Buy's and GameStop stores that have small physical boxed PC sections and then there are some that have big ones.

Fry's Electronics at least the three in my area have pretty big physical boxed PC isles. At least one out of the three Fry's Electronics stores I go to has around 200 physical boxed PC versions of video games that they sell any given week.

DVD discs for movies is shrinking yes, but Blu-Ray discs of movies are growing and the Target by me always has 100+ Blu-Ray disc movies selling in their movies section.

DVD discs while not as good as Blu-Ray discs I really don't care as I like to collect them and put them on my wooden shelves. Only if they are 100% Digital Rights Management (DRM) free of copy protection client software and CD Keys. Disc checks are ok for me.

"this is a MASSIVE let down on Bethesda softworks part" - It's more than just BGS doing this though. Expect to see it more and more in gaming.

Right but I'm sure you can agree that it is shrinking considerably in the past 5ish years. I watched that section shrink and shrink in my store over 4 years until it was little more than steam cards and a blizzard stand.

I've still actually yet to see a Fry's. Oh, just looked it up, they aren't east coast at all haha closest is about 13 hours from me

Yeah I was only really specifically talking about DVD as a format. Blu-Ray is really where the PC gaming industry should be focusing as it's already an established media type that has been available for 10+ years.

I've grown passed the need/want for having a rack of DVD or game boxes. I find digital to be entirely more convenient. But, I haven't been in a restrictive internet situation, ever, so I can't really comment on the absolute need for full game physical disks. Unfortunately for those people, with the sizes these games are today, I think the push towards full digital is going to win. Adapt or get left behind

I like having the physical boxed versions of video games over digital versions of video games because I can display the physical boxed versions of video games on my wooden shelves as a collection and as decor. I like having the printed art on the paper that's in the plastic sleeve show too.

I have to keep saying this. 100% Digital will not happen, not even 10 years from now.

Biggest problem is, the game is almost 30 gig. So, at 8 gig per DVD, you would need four..... Or one BlueRay. (maybe....) I don't know many folks that have blueray drives..... So, in order to keeps costs down.... you get to download most of the game, if not all of it. Yeah, it's a major pain for folks with slow/capped/non-existent internet connections...... But, beth has always appealed to the majority.

I have never seen physical copies of PC games for cheaper than they go on Steam. Even the sales at physical retailers don't make things nearly as cheap as Steam's sales. Maybe that is the case wherever Ballowers100 lives but it's certainly not the norm.

Me, I've never seen a new game cheaper on Steam than any retail store (online or actual store). So I doubt the cost factors into printing up four DVDs, seeing as digital is as expensive as (supposedly) physical. Sales, sure, but ho wlong before a new game hits one of those sales? Yeah, it's not exactly new any more then.

It's an odd decision on Bethesda's part, to skimp on this. Hopefully they make a complete edition later or something.

I mean, a lot of people were able to get the digital version fo Fallout 4 for $42 from different places. Not Steam directly but you got a Steam key. You won't find a physical copy of a brand new $60 game getting sold for that

Yeah, they're usually exactly the same price unless there's a sale going on. Although sometimes you can buy a Steam key (not from Steam but elsewhere) for cheaper. Since there's no physical cost, though, the companies get more money from digital sales than they would physical sales (unless Valve charges them that much more than a retail store, I guess, but I doubt that's the case). That's one of the reasons a lot of video game companies have been pushing for more digital sales.

If enough people are unhappy with this decision I could see Bethesda putting the whole thing on Discs for the inevitable GotY edition of the game when it gets released.

You must have missed the thread from some guy who said that, all told (due to charges for going over his cap, and then having to buy a cap extension so he & wife could still use internet the rest of the month), FO4 ended up costing him over 400. Obviously, that's an extreme case. (I remember a similar one from a couple years ago, when the 6+GB download for a WoW patch cost some Australian guy a couple hundred).

But there are also plenty of posts from folks who are having 24+ hour downloads. Even without a cap, that download speed svcks. That's what physical discs are for, not just having a box on the shelf.

People with "high end" builds also have awesome internet & are tech heads/enthusiasts. They're buying digitally. They're not the ones complaining. It's the people with average machines (which, obviously, still have DVD drives) that buy the discs.

And "todays streaming/download society".... is the province of the folks who have great internet & like to download stuff. People who don't (large chunks of the US and other places with crappy broadband) aren't participating in all this streaming.

(Yeah, I watch a clip or trailer now and then on Youtube. But I've never streamed a TV show, never used netflix, never watched a movie on the internet. Our TV comes from cable. And our movies are played on our DVD and Blu-Ray players.)

...have you noticed all those Redbox kiosks around your town? That rent movies on disc? Yeah. Those people aren't streaming stuff.

edit: oh, on the topic of buying games on disc. Every AAA/Day 1 release that I've gotten, has been on disc. Either bought at Best Buy by walking in the store and grabbing it off the shelf, or buy pre-ordering it at GameStop (since they don't have a very large PC rack anymore, so I pre-order to make sure they have a copy for me. FO4 is the first Release Day game I've bought that wasn't on disc. Because of the moronic download requirement. Took 4 hours to download it, which is crazy. No way do I want to obtain games that way, if at all possible.

Obviously, when I buy an old game during a Steam sale for $5, I know I'll be downloading it and I'm okay with that. Because $5. But when I wanted to try the f2p Star Wars Galaxies this past spring? I bought a cheap copy off Amazon rather than try to download the whole thing. As an MMO, I knew there'd be a pile of crap I'd need to download anyway, so it was worth the $ and shipping wait, to avoid as much as possible.

At one time I remember publishers and developers claiming the price of the game was because of the disk print, box print/art, instruction booklet, etc, etc. Well they've all but done away with instructions manuals and dvd's are mere cents in todays world, fine, still $60. Then they made the claim the $60 price tag was because developing in HD was more expensive, and claimed digital would make game cheaper.

EA has at least taken it upon themselves to put a "warning" on the box for battlefront. They will completely alienate a good size of the user base. Now I know some kids will make mockery comments in regard to that statement. But this is an industry built on "squeezing" profits and when it becomes apparent they are losing a few thousand or more sales things will change.