What's the point of a retail release, when all you get is a Steam code or a Steam installer and you have to download the whole thing anyway. It makes sense for nostalgia editions like the big box release of Ion Fury and such but that's about it imo.I know that it isn't that interesting but I want to talk about the state of the retail on PC, because this year sure is worrying. (For me at least, I still buy a lot of boxed thing)
If we are going to analize a bunch of the fall release available on PC we can see that:
Where does this leave us?
- The Surge 2 (Only Digital, The Surge had a retail version)
- Code Vein (Only Digital, Namco was one of the most prominent in that sense)
- Gears 5 (Only Digital, all of the Microsoft games were available boxed thanks to the relationship with THQ)
- Control (Only Digital, AW and QB were boxed with godlike standard edition)
- Destiny 2 (Only Digital, the first one had one of the boxed-only-code-inside edition thanks to Activision, better than nothing I would say)
- Remnant: From the Ashes (Only Digital)
- Borderlands 3 (Only Digital)
We still have THQ Nordic, Capcom and SEGA doing really good standard and collector's edition of their games but it seems that a lot of Publishers (Especially on the AA space) are abandoning completely the retail on PC, and it's a fucking shame.
All the Epic deal also played a role on this because aside Metro (Which we know that there were a lot of retail preorders prior to the deal) there isn't a game that it's available digitally and retail aswell.
It sure tells something if BigBen is waiting the Steam release of The Sinking City to release also the retail version of the game.
I will miss retail console games though
