I haven’t heard of any disc game not being able to be played.
There's a number of games that don't come with the whole thing on disk/cart, usually including only the early stages and the rest needs to be downloaded.
As long as you have a way to download the data that ain’t a problem for me, but if one day Sony or EA closes without giving the update data to be available for everyone that would be a problem.
Still I don’t see the advantage for them to only put the early stages on the disc. Are they saving money this way?
Either saving on media costs (25GB disc instead of 100GB disc, maybe 1 disc instead of 2 if the game is too big), or even having more time to work on the game.
Developer makes sure the early stages are properly tested, send the disc for manufacturing including only those, use the manufacturing time to tweak/bugfix/optimize more stuff the rest of the game.
There's a number of games that don't come with the whole thing on disk/cart, usually including only the early stages and the rest needs to be downloaded.
Hogwarts Legacy and Jedi Survivor are two fairly recent examples.
As long as you have a way to download the data that ain’t a problem for me, but if one day Sony or EA closes without giving the update data to be available for everyone that would be a problem.
Still I don’t see the advantage for them to only put the early stages on the disc. Are they saving money this way?
Either saving on media costs (25GB disc instead of 100GB disc, maybe 1 disc instead of 2 if the game is too big), or even having more time to work on the game.
Developer makes sure the early stages are properly tested, send the disc for manufacturing including only those, use the manufacturing time to tweak/bugfix/optimize more stuff the rest of the game.