I have preloaded games several times on my XBone. Does PS4 not do the same?

could've sworn i downloaded Halo 5 early, even though there was a big day 1 update that i had to download as well.

I could see possibly getting a disc for some games. Games like Assassin's creed or GTA are just too damn long, and i have no intention of replaying them (or getting 100% completion). I could get the discount, burn through the campaign, and resale them.

I could also see buying games that i want to keep forever, like Halo. There's really no point in buying Destiny on a disk, since you absolutely have to be connected to a server for it to work. Once the servers are turned off, there will be no playing for nostalgia's sake 20 years from now; the game won't work. In that case, might as well go digital and not have to worry about swapping discs.

For some reason.

The 20% thing seemed... not worth it for me, given how vastly superior Digital is (especially since it essentially cuts the price of any multiplayer game in half on PS4 if you share your account, which is impossible with Physical), but it could be real useful if you are sure about the game that you want and the drawbacks of Physical don't apply to you.

The one place disc games win is in speed of play. Let's say you get a game at midnight. You have to wait hours for it to download and can't play, whereas with a disc you pop it in and are good immediately.

I am completely baffled why you can't either preload games which then unlock on release (steam does this I think), or simply have the publisher post games digitally right after it goes gold. I know people want to push digital distribution, and what better way than to be able to play a month ahead of the people who have to wait for disc pressing?

Check your power save settings. You should be able to preload games. Also, keep in mind that for disk games, you often have to sit through long installs and updates now (Battlefield 4, Halo 5). Preloading can include these updates.

I know folks who weren't able to play their disk-based Halo 5 games until the next day because of the massive install and update required.

At least downloads happen automatically. I have to physically be near my Xbox to actually start an install.

Anyway, I still think it's a nice thing to have if you're already a Prime member and can't really wait for prices to go down before buying a game.

I am completely baffled why you can't either preload games which then unlock on release (steam does this I think), or simply have the publisher post games digitally right after it goes gold. I know people want to push digital distribution, and what better way than to be able to play a month ahead of the people who have to wait for disc pressing?

If the publisher is fulfilling the order digitally why would it pay another online retailer (Amazon) for a share of the sale? That's probably the reason. They figure their own direct digital sales outlet is in competition with Amazon.

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