While this may seem like an unnecessary and inconvenient change, it serves an important purpose.
With this data, the console could then load game resources through the system’srandom access memory (RAM).
After the game finished installing, the disc mainly served to confirm that you still owned the game.
Many console games of the era also started to receive “day-one” patches and frequent post-launch updates.
This reliance on full game installations and downloads has since become the standard for all current gen consoles.
While this helps avoidconstant loading screensand performance drops, it has also become a necessity for modern games.
Older consoles were restricted by the read speeds of their disc drives and their limited RAM.
Likewise, content updates provide plenty of reasons to continue playing older games long after their release.
In rare cases, post-launch updates have even turned critically panned failures into unexpected success stories.
Anthony McLaughlin/Shutterstock.com
If physical games didn’t bother downloading updates, you wouldn’t get to benefit from those changes.
Are Physical Games Still Worth Buying?
However, this doesn’t mean that discs are suddenly obsolete.
Western Digital
There are still plenty of reasons tobuy physical games over digital copies.
Because of this, it’s still worth collecting physical copies of the games you want to preserve.
In fact,an all-digital gaming landscapeisn’t something most people would want.
Tim Brookes / How-To Geek
