Hey there,
I had a tech talk about retrogaming on OG Hardware. We ended up with the point that discs, some GBA,(3ds) and Switch games just die and cannot be used anymore.
So i question what is the use in collecting then. Its basically dead money. Its not really a cheap Hobby.
What do you think about it?
I personally like having my small collection of games. No idea when any of them will die, but it’s at least nice to have them. For price, I’m lucky enough that the vast majority of games I want aren’t super expensive at a local game store I like to visit.
That, or are cheap enough at a pawnshop near me. Ty the Tasmanian Tiger for PS2 for under $20 (possibly under $10/I don’t remember)? Sign me up! Almost bought it, but decided against it since I wasn’t sure how tight the rest of my college financial aid money would be after all my Christmas shopping.
Edit:
I am also skeptical about things like disc rot because I have heard countless times about it but have never met a single person who has ever had it happen to them.
Just on the issue of disc rot, I feel like I have something to add to the conversation that’s more than a personal anecdote.
For many years I worked as a game developer and I did tons of multimedia software, it would not be an exaggeration to say that in my career I personally oversaw the burning of over 100,000 discs, and that’s not counting manufacturing or high-run final product.
There’s actually a pretty high failure rate, even on new disks. Most that are about 7 years have a 50% failure rate, anything after 10 years if you’re lucky you can use software.
In the above examples I’m talking about discs that the consumer grade hardware can burn. It doesn’t matter that we used the highest quality equipment, it really doesn’t change the formula. Commercially made ones have a much higher durability, somewhere around double.
So basically any disk you own, regardless of where and when it was made, you’ve got 15 to 20 years at best and then it’s nothing but a crap shoot.