Should I Buy the Game Digitally or Get the Disc?

[the8thark]

Physical is the way to go.
Why? If you buy digital and something happens to your WiiU...Bloop.
gotta buy again.

This the reason why the disc is better. When nintendo fixes up their **** and has an online register of your purchases like iCloud then we can start to consider digital for more expensive game purchases.

 

[Ceadda]

There's nothing better than holding the game in your hands when you purchase it. I'm pretty staunch when it comes to physical copies.

 

[Deleted member 269706]

If you have a crazy family who is always losing discs and stuff (like mine), go digital. Otherwise I'd say you should get the disc. I mean if you ever want to bring it over to a friends house, or sell it, or any of that good stuff, a digital copy can't do any of that.

 

[Katy Parry]

I'm going digital this time. I'll have it forever, which is great, I had like $20 credit for the eShop Digital Deluxe promotion anyway. Plus my system is downloading it now. Gotta love it.

 

[Fudgenuggets]

Physical because box art is sexy <3
In all seriousness, I'd go with physical so if I ever want to play with a friend who has a Wii U but not Smash Bros. I could just bring it over to their house. Except I have yet to get a Wii U T-T

 

[Phenomiracle]

Physical every day of the week and twice on Fridays.

 

[Qbopper]

Physical.

I preordered the bundle from EB Games with 1-2 day express shipping - I just pray that they ship it early enough for me to be able to play friday

If anyone can confirm/deny when they ship stuff like this it would make me feel better

 

[Vann Accessible]

Physical.

Like most game players I'm mildly OCD.

I must collect it!

 

[New_Dumal]

I had decided to take both.
Digital at launch, physical after to take the adapter and box...
But at the same time, I'm not in a condition of waste money like this.
So I decided to go physical with the adapter+controller.But again... Everything I want is to play at launch.
I'm still thinking about it.

 

[Rueckkoppler]

Remember, guys: Physical copies contain the chance to play it even before the Street Date... just saying!

 

[Azew]

Honestly I'm probably going to pre-load it digitally so that I don't have to wait. I have plenty of storage and I find having a place to put all my disks takes up unnecessary space. If I lose it not much is lost, since everything I work for applies to my skills and isn't part of some save data. That's just my opinion though.

 

[ChikoLad]

Both options have their pros and cons. For me, the biggest con with going physical is the wear on the system's disc drive and lens. Brawl destroyed my Wii's lens twice. I'm not sure if the Wii U's is any hardier, but I do have my worries (I'm getting my copy physical).

This won't be a a problem on Wii U. Brawl was on a dual-layered DVD disc to fit the 8GB of data onto one disc since a single layered DVD disc only holds 4GB, but the Wii was not built for dual layered discs. Brawl is one of the very few Wii games to use them, and the system not being built for dual-layered discs was why the lens would get destroyed.

The Wii U is built for dual-layered discs, as they are the standard disc format for the system (Wii U discs are a variation of the Blu-Ray format, if I'm not mistaken), and the system is built specifically for them. Smash Wii U isn't unusually big for a Wii U game in terms of it's file size, so it will be on the same kind of disc any old Wii U game uses. So you will not have any issues specifically associated with the game.

 

[Reila]

I don't buy physical copies of games unless there isn't an alternative. The pros of digital games vastly outnumber the cons for me.

 

[the8thark]

I don't buy physical copies of games unless there isn't an alternative. The pros of digital games vastly outnumber the cons for me.

Just hope your WiiU does not die on you.

 

[Reila]

Just hope your WiiU does not die on you.

Not a problem. If it dies, I can call Nintendo and retrieve my games once a buy a new Wii U.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

Just hope your WiiU does not die on you.

Everyone likes to say this. Do you plan on your Wii U dying soon? I could just as easily say I hope your disc doesn't get lost/destroyed. If my Wii U goes bad, a physical disc does me no good either. All y'all who talk about selling Smash are blasphemers!

Not a problem. If it dies, I can call Nintendo and retrieve my games once a buy a new Wii U.

Exactly.

 

[HiPNoTyQ]

Selling Smash is **** hitting the fan.

Hahahaha, exactly!

 

[the8thark]

Everyone likes to say this. Do you plan on your Wii U dying soon? I could just as easily say I hope your disc doesn't get lost/destroyed. If my Wii U goes bad, a physical disc does me no good either. All y'all who talk about selling Smash are blasphemers!

You can look after your disc. Easy. it's harder to prevent random electronic issues with hardwares. Of cause I do not assume anything will go wrong. I've had not one day issue with any Nintendo hardware, and I've owned the lot (of the TV consoles) since the NES. It's more a piece of mind thing. An iCloud like service to track our online purchases would be better.

Not a problem. If it dies, I can call Nintendo and retrieve my games once a buy a new Wii U.

Exactly.

Not exactly. You should not have to call up Nintendo. You should just log into your e-shop account on the new (or fixed) WiiU and see everything you've purchased and re-download it again. And calling up Nintendo means dealing with their customer service people and waiting till the day time to ring them (not sure if they are a 24 hours service but I would not think so).

 

[Logsmash]

I'm buying physical because I don't have enough space left on my Wii U. Then again, I do like having the physical copy, so maybe it's not such a bad thing.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

Remember, guys: Physical copies contain the chance to play it even before the Street Date... just saying'!

Digital copies will guaranteed have it before Nov 21 if you live west of the east cost. ^_^

Not exactly. You should not have to call up Nintendo. You should just log into your e-shop account on the new (or fixed) WiiU and see everything you've purchased and re-download it again. And calling up Nintendo means dealing with their customer service people and waiting till the day time to ring them (not sure if they are a 24 hours service but I would not think so).

I agree I shouldn't have to. It's a dumb service. We all agree on that. I'm just saying that the claims that I will lose my game forever are greatly exaggerated.

Overall, it's just far more important to me that I be able to launch Smash on a whim anytime without having to switch discs. I bought MK8 on disc. So, now, we can go from racing to smashing with very little transition. It'll be great.

 

[Hayzie]

I went digital for 3ds and I'm going digital for Wii U. This game will always be played a ton, so less Wii U noise and less disc-drive working hard constantly. I have enough space and I'm at the point where I really don't care anymore. If I absolutely need a hard copy for collection/sentimental purposes, then I'll just buy it again. I only go physical for something like Zelda nowadays. Smash isn't going anywhere for me to need a box that someday "I might not have one". This world is going down anyways.

 

[Bearbuddy4]

Physical
+having that physical copy in hand :]
+can trade it away later
+can swap games w/friends
+Saves gigs of memory on wiiu
-could get scratches and lag/hurt the game
-if your disk player/reader dies
(like mine did on wii) you're screwed
-you have to go to the store
-disk can make the console loud
-disk can be lost or destroyed ,or stolen, people could also steal your wii u, but ya'know.

Digital
+you can download as soon as its out
+saves you a trip to the store
+cant scratch a digital copy
+no swapping disks to play a different game
+less/or no noise from the console
-you wont be able to hold the box/box-art in your hands :[
-takes almost half of the wiiu's memory
-wiiu can die and your games will too.
-cant play at your friends or trade , or sell the game



Thats all i can think of. I want the physical copy but im afraid of scratching it like it did with my brawl, i also fear that the disk reader will die on the wiiu which happened to my wii. I am leaning more towards getting the digital...oh crap then again it takes so much space on the drive...i dont know guys.

 

[Bearbuddy4]

This the reason why the disc is better. When nintendo fixes up their **** and has an online register of your purchases like iCloud then we can start to consider digital for more expensive game purchases.

But digital takes almost half your memory, the disk reader may also die (your wiiu cant read disks anymore) its happened to me with the wii

physical can get scratches which can do god knows what to the game

 

[PreciseMotion]

I'm going physical for the awesome box art and to save space (also because I'm going at midnight to pick up the controller stuff anyways) but... Digital is cheaper because there is no tax, and if you have a deluxe Wii U, you get a 5$ eshop code back in return, (could use it towards pokemon ORAS)

 

[Sparkchu]

Since I don't have much room in my Wii U to download, I'll stick with the disc.
Heck, even if I did, I'll still get the disc.

 

[R0Y]

Was wondering how most people plan on purchasing Smash Bros Wii U, buy a hard copy in store or purchase the game digitally on the Wii U eshop.What are your opinions? What are the advantages and disadvantages? How are you going to buy the game?

Disc, get a nice case and manual with it too.

Also, all you're buying with a digital copy is the software licence, limited, like a rental.

With the disc no matter what happens to the Wii U or Nintendo's online infrastructure you will always own it.

I'm going physical for the awesome box art and to save space (also because I'm going at midnight to pick up the controller stuff anyways) but... Digital is cheaper because there is no tax, and if you have a deluxe Wii U, you get a 5$ eshop code back in return, (could use it towards pokemon ORAS)

Not true, Nintendo charges tax, included with prices in places like Europe and added after in places like Canada most of the US. That is except in a few US states that don't have Sales Tax.

 

[Engage]

If Nintendo was anything like Sony/ Microsoft then I would go digital for sure, but they are far from. Basically if anything happens to your Wii U your SSB4 will be gone. There is no way to recover it or re-download it without a charge. What Sony does is all your DL's are linked to your account so you can delete them and recover them basically on any Playstation system. With Nintendo all of your games are console locked. If you feel like your Wii U will stay alive forever then go digital but if anything happens you could lose your game and there will be no way to recover it.

No, all of your DL's are linked to account as well. You get them back by calling Nintendo and they will give you everything back when you sign into your nintendo ID and do a few steps they give you.

 

[the8thark]

+Saves gigs of memory on wiiu

Saves gigs of drive space on wiiu.
Drive space is not the same as memory. And you got the wording wrong is all. Apart from that your list of pros and cons are very good.

 

[slavoslav]

I'm going digital. Something that needs more awareness is that we can expect the digital version to have _significantly_ faster loading times - at least if Mario Kart 8 is any indication where the disc is about 20% slower compared to the digital version in the console's memory.

If you buy digital and something happens to your WiiU...Bloop.
gotta buy again.

Or you could just contact Nintendo's customer support. An unorthodox approach for those who keep bringing up this completely false argument, perhaps, but perfectly viable nonetheless.

 

[the8thark]

Or you could just contact Nintendo's customer support. An unorthodox approach for those who keep bringing up this completely false argument, perhaps, but perfectly viable nonetheless.

Perfectly viable, agreed. But being forced to contact their customer service department is not the best way of handling this. It works but we should be forced to do this.

 

[slavoslav]

Perfectly viable, agreed. But being forced to contact their customer service department is not the best way of handling this.

It's certainly not optimal but it works, and the widespread, erroneous assumption that you won't be able to retrieve your digitally purchased games if your Wii U dies on you needs to be eradicated.

 

[Jerm]

No, all of your DL's are linked to account as well. You get them back by calling Nintendo and they will give you everything back when you sign into your nintendo ID and do a few steps they give you.

If what you say is true then that is awesome considering the fact that I opted for digital as opposed to physical! The fact that you can now pre-download digital titles makes them much more appealing than waiting in the snow for 2 hours to pick up the physical.

 

[Rueckkoppler]

If what you say is true then that is awesome considering the fact that I opted for digital as opposed to physical! The fact that you can now pre-download digital titles makes them much more appealing than waiting in the snow for 2 hours to pick up the physical.

Just wondering... why would you have to wait in the snow? Midnight release? I ordered it online, so I don't have any hassle. I guess I'll survive the first hours of the release day without the game

Digital copies will guaranteed have it before Nov 21 if you live west of the east cost. ^_^

Okay, I don't have these issues in Europe. But I can imagine, how this could be.

 

[Jerm]

Just wondering... why would you have to wait in the snow? Midnight release? I ordered it online, so I don't have any hassle. I guess I'll survive the first hours of the release day without the game



Okay, I don't have these issues in Europe. But I can imagine, how this could be.

Yup, these November nights down here in Canada aint no joke lolol.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

Saves gigs of drive space on wiiu.
Drive space is not the same as memory. And you got the wording wrong is all. Apart from that your list of pros and cons are very good.

Oh, for the love, this is splitting hairs on terminology. Yes, we generally refer to RAM as "memory" and hard drive as "storage", but it is not wrong to call the hard drive "memory". They are all "memory": long term and short term.

 

[Malcolmnex]

bought it digitally so
1. can stare at it in my menu
2 i have a physical smash 3ds version

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

I still have to chuckle at everyone who comments about the game "being lost when the Wii U breaks". Even though it is not true, it is worth noting: my old Wii works just fine, but its disc drive struggles. I really don't wanna be stuck with a disc 10 years from now.

 

[misterOWAIN33]

Was wondering how most people plan on purchasing Smash Bros Wii U, buy a hard copy in store or purchase the game digitally on the Wii U eshop.What are your opinions? What are the advantages and disadvantages? How are you going to buy the game?

The answer to your question lies in fear. Which do you fear more? Do you fear a corrupted system, erasing your digital copy? Or do you fear a scratched disk, making your physical disc unplayable?
I have experienced both of these, (a corrupt Xbox 360 and scratched Xbox disks) so the choice is yours.
I myself would say physical disk.

 

[jmjb]

physical. i don't want them to have the power to add some un-undo-able patch to my game.
plus this way I get to actually HAVE the game. I'm sure I'll be bringing it
over friends houses and sharing it with my friends who don't have a copy yet

 

[31gma]

I recommend the physical copy if you want a higher chance of modding possibilities along with not losing your data in the event of Wii U breakdowns