Understanding Why Installation Steps Remain Essential for Today’s Tangible Game Experiences

Key Takeaways

• Physical games install onto the console’s storage to improve load times and performance. This shift started with the PS4 and Xbox One.
• Downloading updates also allows physical games to benefit from bug patches and added features that the developers release over time.

If you prefer buying physical copies of the latest video games, you have likely noticed that modern physical games require lengthy installations and additional updates before you can start playing. While this may seem like an unnecessary and inconvenient change, it serves an important purpose.

Console Gaming Has Changed

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Prior to the release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, disc-based consoles ran games by reading data from the game disc. With this data, the console could then load game resources through the system’s random access memory (RAM) .

With the start of the eighth console generation—which saw the releases of the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U—consoles adopted a new means of running physical games. Whereas the Wii U stuck to the traditional method of relying on the disc drive and RAM, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One switched to Blu-ray discs and were designed to run games from their internal storage.

Because of this, games for these consoles needed to be installed before they were playable (though some PlayStation 4 titles could be played in a limited form before the installation was complete). After the game finished installing, the disc mainly served to confirm that you still owned the game.

Many console games of the era also started to receive “day-one” patches and frequent post-launch updates. While these downloads aren’t usually required to play most games (at least for single-player titles), there are plenty of recently released games with severe performance issues or game-breaking glitches that were fixed with day-one patches, such as Elden Ring, Battlefield 2042, and Baldur’s Gate 3.

This reliance on full game installations and downloads has since become the standard for all current gen consoles. The PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch all require physical games to be installed (and preferably updated) before playing.

However, while long install and download times can be an inconvenience —especially with major releases like Final Fantasy XVI and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III requiring at least 90 GB and 140 GB on the PlayStation 5, respectively—they also bring numerous advantages to modern consoles.

Installations Allow for Smoother Performance

Western Digital

Installing a game on your console’s hard drive allows the system to quickly access game files and load resources, leading to faster load times and improved performance. While this helps avoid constant loading screens and performance drops, it has also become a necessity for modern games.

The reliance on the disc drive for reading data may have worked for earlier disc-based consoles, but it gradually became less effective as larger and more performance-intensive games were released on later consoles. Newer games require higher-quality resources to be loaded at a faster rate, especially when delivering elaborate in-engine cutscenes or allowing players to seamlessly explore massive open worlds.

When paired with the limitations of the disc-drive, these resource-heavy elements can lead to frequent frame rate stutters, excessive load times, and other disruptive performance issues. Older consoles were restricted by the read speeds of their disc drives and their limited RAM. Although most older games were designed around these limitations, the ability to install games makes it easier for newer systems to avoid these issues entirely.

Since modern consoles rely on installing games, they’ve also expanded to give more storage options for users, such as allowing you to expand the internal storage on a PS5 or run games from an external hard drive or solid-state drive (SSD) .

Downloads Provide Day-One Fixes and Long-Term Support

Needing to download content to play a physical game is actually a good thing, most of the time. Although downloading a massive day-one patch can be just as frustrating as waiting for a new game to install—especially when infamous cases like Fallout 76 and Star Wars: Jedi Survivor launch with over 50GB of patches—downloadable updates are still one of the best features on modern consoles.

Even after a game is shipped to retailers, the ability to release updates allows developers to improve and add to it. Whereas a common glitch or game-breaking bug would have been a permanent problem for older consoles without the option to install updates, newer games are constantly getting better thanks to these patches.

Likewise, content updates provide plenty of reasons to continue playing older games long after their release. Games like Stardew Valley and Minecraft have remained active for years through their post-launch support, while popular online-multiplayer titles such as Fortnite and Rocket League have remained engaging thanks to seasonal events and content drops.

In rare cases, post-launch updates have even turned critically panned failures into unexpected success stories. Both No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk 2077 were released to overwhelmingly negative reception, but later fixed their technical issues and addressed fan criticisms through numerous patches, content overhauls, and quality-of-life improvements. If physical games didn’t bother downloading updates, you wouldn’t get to benefit from those changes.

Are Physical Games Still Worth Buying?

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Modern consoles have seen numerous improvements in their handling of physical games, but these changes have also lessened the value of discs. With game files being installed and managed through a system’s storage and downloadable updates being completely separate from discs, physical copies rarely provide a game’s full experience on their own.

However, this doesn’t mean that discs are suddenly obsolete. There are still plenty of reasons to buy physical games over digital copies .

Although downloading an update requires an internet connection, you don’t need to be online to install a game. Even if you’re offline, you can still install an entire game from its disc and start playing afterward.

Physical copies also guarantee ownership over your games, ensuring you can install and play a game as long as you own the disc. In contrast, digital games can be permanently lost if you can’t access to the account with which you purchased them or if the game’s publisher decides to revoke all digital licenses for a specific title (as was the case for Ubisoft’s The Crew).

Because of this, it’s still worth collecting physical copies of the games you want to preserve. In fact, an all-digital gaming landscape isn’t something most people would want.

It’s unlikely that downloads and installations for physical games will go away anytime soon, though that certainly isn’t a bad thing. Long game installations and additional downloads may seem inconvenient, but they have ensured consoles can keep up with the increasing hardware demands of modern games.

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