In the past I've always bought the physical copies of the games as I just feel as if your going to be paying that amount of money for a game, you get more for your money with the disc, case and other extras you tend to get when you purchase a game from a store.
Lately though I have purchased a couple of games via download, and I think looking into the future that's the way things are going to go, so like it or not, I think we have to get used to it.
I guess the physical copies are nice, especially if I receive it in the mail because I get really excited and the case always looks cool. I always tend to lose any kind of DS games though. I even bought a game twice recently, once physical and the other digital because I lost the physical.
I always like buying games digital because then I do not have to fuss with changing the games, which is nice, and also not ruining the physical in some way. So yeah, probably always digital for me.
I used to purchase physical copies of games for my PC. In other words, they came in the form of CDs and later DVDs. In retail packages too. That was actually during a time when very few games were available in digital form. A lot of the games actually needed the CDs and DVDs to play as a way to deter piracy.
Now I spend a lot of time on my Surface Pro 4, which does not even have a DVD-ROM. The a few games I play on it were all purchased and downloaded from Amazon Digital Service.
I really think the physical copy part will eventually become a thing of the past, but I do prefer to be able to keep a copy on my own storage. I will not appreciate it if a company goes down and take all the games with it (making it impossible to play them while we already paid for them).
I am a fan of physical media most of the time. I am not opposed to downloading games, but given the choice, I will almost only go with the physical release. With that said, the convenience of digital games is really great. I regret not downloading Smash for 3DS because it is the perfect game to play a few matches and put down. It is harder to do that when you always have to have the cartridge with you.
It depends on the game that I'm playing. If the game is a single player game, I'd rather download it online, but if I have a game that I could play with friends, then a physical copy would be better so that I could bring the copy wherever I go. Overall though, I prefer digital copies because I can't lose them or break them, and I can give the game to a friend without buying another copy.
99% of the time I buy physical copies of a game. The only game that I have a digital copy of is The Sims but I can definitely see the appeal of buying digital copies. A problem I've always had with physical copies is having them getting scratched somehow. For instance, back when we had the original playstation we'd have friends or family members over and they'd take a game out and set it on top of the console instead of finding the case. So we ended up with a lot of games that wouldn't work and it was like money down the drain. That's one thing you don't have to worry about with a digital copy.
Used to be mainly disk versions, but looking at the split of games I have to play digitally vs disks of games I still have to play, its mainly digital nowadays. I think that is helped massively by the big PS Store sales these days.
