By Jay Peters , a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to th

Limited Run gives digital games a physical legacy

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2024-02-27 16:00:04

By Jay Peters , a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

The future for physical video games looks bleak. Major console hardware makers seem to be inching toward removing ways to play discs at all: leaked Microsoft documents revealed a potential disc-less Xbox Series X (though the company says it isn’t completely giving up on the format), while the “slim” PS5 has a detachable disc drive that requires an internet connection to pair with a new console. You can get most games digitally nowadays, but there are plentiful stories about people losing access to games they’ve purchased when digital storefronts shut down or because of licensing issues or unexplained bans.

Because of the many issues with digital ownership, Josh Fairhurst, the CEO of physical game maker Limited Run Games, thinks that people will still care about physical media. “The minute they start to see things like games getting delisted or access being revoked to things that they purchased, I think they’re going to start saying, ‘I wish I’d never stopped buying physical,’” he says in an interview with The Verge. “I think that’s going to catalyze people towards finding a way to have that physicality again.”