In the early days, cartridges were kinda like swapping out the RAM/SSD each time, pre-loaded with a game. Wasteful and expensive, even back then, but it was the best way to do it for the time.
There was a short while there where DVDs and and CDs had a perfect balance between storage and read speed, where you could keep the game files on optical media while still accessing it fast enough to have reasonable load times. BluRay and hdDVD increased the capacity, but not the read speed enough to match.
We could go back to games coming on flash media, which switch does still do, but switch games don't have 3d models and textures at the fidelity levels of other modern platforms.
With current technology, delivering digital media on a storage medium that has the performance to actually play from it, is kinda like gift cards. Like yeah, it'd be nice, but I'd rather just have the NVME storage drive/money so I can use it for whatever I want.
Maybe there will be another ultra cheap read-only storage medium one day, but right now, it's not a thing.
I mean you DID get updates, just hidden in different print runs/regional releases of games.
Its why speedrunners prefer a lot of japanese releases of earlier titles; Because back when Japan was the center of videogame culture, they'd get the first release of most games which often meant the buggiest version.
Except when the game sucked, then it was a waste of time
Try using GOG on PC.
For consoles, yeah that was great. The problem was when you had to download a game on PC either from disc or maybe you used a service like shockwave to get your games. Then the installation felt like it took forever as a kid.
games in the future are just gonna be zettabyte zip bombs
remember when someone patented the concept of having mini-games while it's loading so almost no games have it?
also awesome...Anyone played the game "loki" straight from the box? Unplayable lmao
Uhm let me just to an rpm-ostree update first, see you in an hour
The only games I tend to play these days are the ones that I don't have to update before playing. Such a nuisance to be always online.
I remember when games didn't need updates, they just worked, or the bugs they had were cool (or annoying and required workarounds). Though I guess it makes sense that since games are more complex and larger now, they end up having more bugs and need more updates these days.
I'm glad others have pointed out this is pretty bullshit. If it's a great game then it's good. If the game was buggy you're shit out of luck, stuck with a broken mess with no hope of it being fixed.
I was pissed off when HL2 required installing Steam.
I didn't know that was the least awful variant of this particular affront.
Don't tell me 'but now there's bugfixes!' like I never updated HL1 with bare executables. Fuckin' Doom had multiple relevant versions. They thought 1.666 would nail it down... and then grudgingly released 1.7 a month later.
