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EDIT: fruitless discussion. I'm out. Cheers.

i'd buy one

"Id buy that for a dollar"

That's a big one there. For sooo many titles one will have to go online anyway within the first week, in order to get updates. And with some developers not hosting this stuff themselves and instead leaving it up to the stores, the consumer might get left in the lurch with a disk copy.

Blame the internet for this change.

by providing drm-free and almost full game in it!

I stopped buying physical because having to give up my entire game's collection, including 90+ NES games.

So the way they can make physical copies attractive is by putting all that waste in the recyclers and not bothering.

My next computer won't even have an optical drive.

Edit: Wanton nudity would be a good bargaining chip though.

I don't use my CD DVD copies anymore, but for some reason I still have them here. It's a literal wall of discs sitting right next to me. :P

One day I'm going to figure out WHY I still have them here.

I'm in the same boat to be honest. Even if I were fond of physical releases (which I'm not), I would not be able to carry them around with me or, usually, have the space to store them.

However, I do know people who are particularly passionate about getting boxed version and you have to admit they are mostly left with nothing to buy these days - apart from a few developers that are offering boxed versions as higher-tier crowdfunding awards and perhaps a few stubborn enough to keep releasing on physical media like the industry used to do in the old days, it's just a mangle of Steam-based releases or nicely packed online codes, as OP has mentioned.

I love big printed manuals with loads of background information (like Microprose did them), large color maps - ideally on cloth and other physical gimmicks... But I don't miss being stuck with translated or even censored versions (because Germany) and having to search for the disk run a game due to copy protection.

In order to appeal to people nowadays, they could have a physical CD box for a Soundtrack of these game, since CDs are superior to audiophiles and are the best quality you could get with music. They could have a custom flash drive full of digital content in a box. With this box they could give you all the extra goodies. Maybe have a Blu-Ray edition of behind the scenes and have a box just for that. Put the soundtrack content on the Blu-Ray instead. There are a lot of ways to go about it.

The physical copies of my games that have anything noteworthy in it - Dragon Statues, Toy Laser Guns or Duffle Bags - are all sitting in storage and the regular physical copies had absolutely nothing to offer besides a paper map i.e. Grand Theft Auto V. It is indeed difficult to come upon DRM-Free physical box sets nowadays even for games that are on GOG, unless you plan to buy the game again. Even aside from that, nowadays, they offer nothing noteworthy unless you pay up for the collector's edition.

Being able to hold something in my hand does appeal to me because I did grow up during a time where it was the norm to have physical media but what it contains does have to have at least some value to you personally to justify foregoing the digital route. Otherwise, it just takes up space.

Yup this!

I still have my Baldur's Gate 2 gorgeous spiral bound manual that was basically a D&D Player's Handbook. And that sweet XCOM manual.

But this stuff is totally out of favor. I hate to sound like an old fart, but this is a time of "reading" less than 20 words in a go. A big fat manual would probably TURN OFF a larger section of the audience than it would draw in.

There was a time I wouldn't even fire up a game until I had read the 75+ page manual. Now it's all "glance at the leaflet for ten seconds (maybe!) and have the in game tutorial spoon feed you all 5 of the game's mechanics."

Now get off my lawn. ;)

I'd like a physical Collector's Edition with the best old games that GOG helped to restore in celebration of the 10th Anniversary, with the GOG logo and that include some cool stuff of the old times.