Starfield physical edition won't include physical discs.
This means you can't pass the game around to your friends or sell it afterwards, which completely ruins the purpose of physical media imo. I mostly play PC these days so this doesn't affect me, but it's a disappointing direction for console games. At least they could've used an empty disc that has proof of ownership.
I’m a huge proponent of physical media, but this is entirely unsurprising given Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda. Compared to Switch and especially Playstation, the Xbox has a much higher rate of digital game sales.
If Starfield were on PS5, it would get a disc release for sure, and Xbox would probably get one too for the sake of parity. But discs aren’t terribly important to the Xbox crowd, and that goes double for PC gamers.
Moreover, digital games are good for the publisher’s bottom line, so physical media is only going to exist as long as customers demand it. And PC and Xbox gamers simply don’t.
What I don't get is why even release a physical edition if it doesn't have the physical media.
I own a lot of digital games through Steam, but releasing a physical copy of a game that only has a key in it is just weird.
Might as well be a gift card.
yeah that's that part that sounds almost like fraud
like wtf this sounds like they are trying to sell this edition for a marked up price to ppl who thought they'd buy a physical disk. That's fraud 101: deceiving customers. On the list of scummy things it's somewhere between macrotransactions and Nigerian prince.
So you can go to the store and discover their amazing games because of course that's how people buy games nowadays. /s
how does this comment have negative 1 downvotes lol
Microsoft is successfully finding ways to prevent game sharing.
Image Transcription: Twitter Post and Replies
Züm, @its_zum
Hey @BethesdaSupport. Will the physical standard edition of Starfield for Series X include a disc?
Bethesda Support, @BethesdaSupport
Hello! All physical editions include a code for the chosen platform. There are no physical discs.
I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! 
What's the point of even having a console at this point? I understood when they were easier to set up then computers and cheaper than computers, but now they are just as hard and just as pricy. They had the benefit of being able to share and resell games, but even that's gone away. What's left other than exclusives and momentum?
Gamepass on my Series X plus easier couch gaming are reasons that I’ll play some games on it over my PC. Plugging a computer into a TV isn’t great because something tends to come up that requires mouse and keyboard. There are ways around it but it’s not as seamless as just plugging in a console. A Series X is still cheaper than a comparable PC now that they’re starting to stay on shelves. It’s less free as in freedom but you’ll play 4K games unlike a $500 PC (especially if you have to budget for a monitor mouse and keyboard). Discord on Xbox also slaps right now and cross play is in a significant amount of games, so you aren’t trapped to only playing games with people who own your console.
Not a defense of the starfield physical stuff, just showing that owning a console isn’t just some dumb thing normies do. I love both my computer and my console and both serve different purposes for different games.
You can’t build an equivalent PC for the price of a PS5. That’s the benefit of consoles. They’re a singular spec that developers can optimize for. So they’re always going to run better than a PC that costs hundreds more.
Agreed. I hate this trend but unfortunately with leaks and corporate greed, ownership of anything is going to be rarer as time goes on. Might as well enjoy what we do get to own nowadays.
At least we still have GOG
I'm feeling less cynical actually. Online stuff is convenient as hell and if they do anything dumb there's always pirating, which is easy as ever. And fediverse based solutions too.
I dunno man seeing the fediverse finally gaining traction has me feeling optimistic and excited. Feels like internet in the 90s and 2ks
Not really surprising at this point since the disks contain an outdated version of the game but it is funny that the physical edition exists at all except to peddle some plastic extra's and a case.
No great surprise, sadly--Bethesda has been on this road for a while. One of my angriest "gamer moments" was when I bought the Skyrim PC disc from the store and brought it to my PC and I was told I had to install Steam to play it. I wasn't a Steam-user at the time, and it felt very, very bad, especially since at that time (2013), the family home did not have high-speed Internet (they did not run cables to that neighborhood) and instead we shared a cellular modem plugged into a router a friend at an IP solutions start-up hooked us up with. I had just moved back to that house and was specifically trying to find something big I could do that would not require me to be online.
I am a huge proponent of digital media because, as an anime fan, I've seen firsthand that big, important properties like Evangelion can disappear from circulation for a decade at a time if something happens to the publisher, so I would rather own what I can than have to ask a company for permission to use something I've paid for. I am generally distraught that in order to deal with my other major beef with modern gaming (lack of backwards compatibility in consoles leading to having to repurchase the same shit over and over again) I have to use digital downloads and deal with DRM.
Do "physical" copies cost more? How much extra money is it for the "collectors box?"
They do if they're collector's boxes. Usually the same for regular editions.
I've not heard of this before, what does physical edition usually mean? I would have thought that meant it was a physical edition, so just a code would be false advertising
Nowadays even with the disc you still need to either copy the game to your console's SSD and/or download the latest patch from online service, as the optical disc reader is not fast enough. But at least the physical disc is still a (roaming) key to allow you to play the game (instead of the digital key that's tied to your account).
Also obligatory https://youtu.be/kWSIFh8ICaA