RWarehall: Not to mention what happens when there is a bug fix/update? The biggest problem with physical copies (and especially new releases) is that the copy on the disk is almost obsolete as soon as it leaves the box because it is lacking all the updates which come out within days of it's release.
kbnrylaec: In
Good Old Days™, games (usually) do not need any updates after public release.
I am wondering why developers now always write super buggy codes and shamelessly release them.
Because they know they can push out a patch shortly after release (but the decision of when to ship is usually dictated at least as much by the publisher as by the development studio). Before Internet access was ubiquitous, there was really no good way to distribute bug-fix patches and other updates (and no, putting patches on demo discs included with gaming magazines doesn't count as a
good way); this meant that the high-profile and/or bigger-budget games of the pre-digital-distribution era had to be reasonably polished at release, or they would probably never get a chance to get fixed and maybe see a turnaround in opinion among the "gaming public", such as it was.
Of course, the lack of easy access to (or in some cases, lack of
existence of) user reviews, "let's plays", and other things we now use to help decide whether a game is worth playing also made it easier for companies with less high standards (or scruples), or with more enthusiasm than game design/coding skill, to still sell plenty of copies of their games. There was no shortage of low-quality (and, in some cases, low-effort) shovelware back then, either.