Microsoft just sent us their brand new Xbox time to make a whole video on all the big changes
Well, it's an Xbox Series X alright with no disk drive and some cost optimizations, and it's white
Okay, very funny, but there is legitimately more to this story the new model will also save you $50
That is if you're willing to commit your soul to the digital only future and give up playing disk-based games
Probably forever. Should you take the deal? I mean on the one hand $50
That's a lot of money to save But on the other hand the conventional wisdom says that physical games are much cheaper than digital ones
Especially in the long run. Does that make diskless consoles like this a bad deal?
How many games would you need to buy before you wipe out that $50 savings?
That is the question we set out to answer and it turns out it's kind of complicated or well really complicated
The good news is we did the complicated part for you And when you're done watching this 10 and a half minute video
You will be equipped with some very practical tips that will save you money
And you'll also be equipped with this message from our sponsor
We began our price comparison journey by adding the top rated and top selling PlayStation 5 titles to a spreadsheet
Then culling any of the games that didn't have a physical release. That left us with a healthy mix of 67 games
We've stuck with the PS5 this time around because the cross-platform licensing on Xbox is a bit more complicated
So leave a like if you want to see a deeper dive that includes the Xbox and the PC
Also about twice as many people have PS5s than current gen Xboxes. So PS5
Step two was to populate our spreadsheet with both digital and physical pricing
Now some individual prices may have changed since October 15th
But the overall story shouldn't giving us the answer to our first question right away
How many non-used games would you need to buy right now to break even on the $50 that you spent on a disk drive version?
29.8 which I gotta say is a lot more than I expected
I mean sure if you bought our entire sample library here, it's clear you'd come out way ahead with physical games
But let's be real that's way more than most people are gonna be buying over the entire lifespan of a console. So
digital wins Brother we are only at the first nest of this rabbit warren to go deeper
We need to add these columns tracking historical sale pricing where
Digital extends its lead Not only is it cheaper for a gamer with an average size library
But it's even cheaper overall and not by a narrow margin
We're talking a savings of $4.19 per game for the patient gamer
That's 281 dollars for our complete library, but before you physical media enthusiasts finish typing that comment
We're not done yet. So backspace backspace a couple more times. There you go
Let's break this down tech tip by tech tip Although we've been focused on digital versus physical so far the most important metric is really current price versus sale price
which was a difference of 13 to $20 per game or
900 to $1,300 for the entire library
So that right there is tech tip number one be patient
Seriously, if you take one thing from this video, that's it
Using some of the same tools that we used like ps deals or camel camel camel
You can not only view historical sale prices, but in many cases you can even predict future sales
Both the timing and even the pricing. I mean look at this. It's like clockwork these days
Especially for digital you can also follow social accounts that are dedicated to keeping you informed on regional sales
We're gonna have links to some of those tools as well as the consoles. We're talking about down below now, of course
I understand you can't always be a patient gamer
You want to jump into that new release while all your friends are playing it?
But especially for single-player games guys you can save as much as five to ten dollars
Simply by waiting a week or two and picking up a secondhand copy. Ah, yes
The ace up the sleeve for team physical used games
These are gonna change the math in a big way first. Let's talk about where to get them
That's tip number two It turns out that if you want something right now your local GameStop might not be as bad as we expected
On average pricing on used games at GameStop and Amazon is remarkably close and that's before you include promotional offers
We did find that used prices on Amazon could be significantly lower sometimes
But the availability was pretty inconsistent Of course if you're patient and willing to emerge from your gamer den once in a while buying on Facebook Marketplace is
King for finding the best deals on used games our spreadsheet makes that clear already and we haven't even tried to lowball anyone yet
So so much for everything else. I said physical for the win video over
Or is it the whole Convenience argument against Marketplace
That's a real argument picking up all your games in one shot really is a lot easier than meeting up with
67 strangers on the internet But if we're gonna talk about convenience in our equation then it kind of reopens the door for digital doesn't it click click
Boom you got a new game to play your time has a value
And I'm not just talking about driving to and from the store because the discs we're buying these days are pressed weeks in advance of
Launch meaning that even on day one there are almost always crucial patches that turn your disc into
Little more than a shiny license key that takes up space on your shelf
We downloaded three whole games in the time that it took to install and update one game via disc
Though of course your internet speed is obviously a big variable there making matters worse though
Let's say you bought six games one at a time as you build up your game library
And you bought them from the store at a median us hourly wage
You just added at least 12 to 15 dollars in time and
Transportation to your cost now the full picture is obviously gonna vary from person to person
You can clearly order a physical game online as well But what we can say is that with waiting around factored in digital absolutely
obliterates physical But we're not done yet. What about game preservation?
Buying digitally is just leasing a license that was literally settled in court not that long ago
And when those servers go down you lose your game
Point for physical then well, yeah, but counterpoint when that happens
You're also gonna be losing access to crucial updates for those physical games
So if you're really concerned with preserving your gaming experience for all time
This key point that used to go to physical media now belongs to
piracy But since the current gen systems haven't been jailbroken yet
We're gonna cut that conversation off here changing gears though
There is one huge W that physical still retains
Transferable licenses you can lend your friend a game without
Account-sharing shenanigans and you can even sell your games outright to partially cover the cost of your next no-life addiction
In fact, if you're trying to min-max your gaming and if time means nothing to you because hey, it's your hobby anyway
This is the clear winning strategy. You find a deal on a used game
You finish it in a week or two then you sell it directly to the next consumer not back to GameStop
If you can time it right you can usually get your money back or even make a few bucks here and there now if that kind of flow
Sounds exhausting to you. Don't worry. You're perfectly normal
But if it's your jam power to you and I get it as for me
I think the most interesting finding from our investigation is probably how
Subscriptions factor into the equation. Let's match up our cheapest overall category of historic low used prices
Against the historic low digital prices, but this time let's include two years of PlayStation Plus extra
That adds $70 for the subscription, but we get 24 out of our 67 games for free giving us a net savings of
136 dollars that makes the price difference between the lowest all used and all digital just
37 dollars for the entire library
So once you factor in the $50 discount for a digital console, all of a sudden you're ahead
$13 by going disc-free and you've got two years of online play
extra features and access to hundreds of additional games, of course
You're gonna have to keep paying for PSN forever and even if you do some of those games might get taken away at some point
Are we gonna have a conclusion here? Teaching value for these things as you can see can be really f**king complicated
And that ignores the fact that depending how you do the math and which games you look at the numbers can bear out
Very differently if we'd used median values for initial analysis, for example
It might have only taken us half a dozen games to make up the cost of our disc drive rather than the original
29.8, which is why we focused on the overall trends that make it easier to make
Generalized tips for you. So here's one more in the real world
The best deals are on a per game basis and if you want the cheapest version of our complete library
It's probably no definitely going to involve a mix of used and digital games
that Right there I think is the conclusion because that is the most irrefutable argument
Against the removal of the optical drive because what it costs you is not only measured in dollars
It's measured in flexibility with this console
I don't get to choose anymore what kind of game I'm going to buy that is why David who wrote this video is
Going to be doing a second exclusive over on LMG gg-slash Floatplane going through the spreadsheet in a bit more detail and
Admitting he was wrong about the ps5 pro's lack of a disc drive
He said he didn't think it was that big of a deal He wrote this video and then immediately went out and bought a disc drive for his I look forward to watching that
And I look forward to telling you guys about our sponsor if you like saving a buck on your video games
Why don't you check out our video about five mods that Nintendo wishes were illegal?
Seriously, don't watch it now before their lawyers try to take it down
Which isn't a challenge big red?