Throughout this console generation, ever since the launch of the Series X/S and PlayStation 5, I was completely convinced that most games shipped with little more than an unlock code on them, or at best, were so buggy when they shipped that they required a day one patch to be reasonably playable.
Then, just a few days prior to Sony’s fateful announcement, I discovered the website DoesItPlay.org, and it changed my entire perspective.
YES, IT DOES PLAY
DoesItPlay is a website that tests and tracks physical video game media, and it claims to have tested thousands of games across almost all modern platforms. It has a simple two-part system to tell you whether a game requires a download to be playable and/or whether it requires an internet connection to work, and any nuances to either designation (like, maybe it doesn’t “require” a download but has major glitches without downloading a day one patch.)
For me, physical games are truly worth owning if they don’t require any download to be playable (without major missing features or bugs that render them unplayable) and don’t require any internet connection to run, the idea being they could be played long after the PlayStation / Xbox / Nintendo digital storefronts eventually shut down.
But how many games in this current generation ship without needing a day one patch, or an internet connection to be playable? Well, it’s a heck of a lot more than I thought it was.
According to DoesItPlay.org, 66%, or about 524 of the 795 physical games they’ve tested on PS5, are completely playable straight out of the box with no download required, and 93% are playable with no internet connection at all. That’s WAY more than I ever thought possible in the year of our lord 2026.
THE OFFLINE TEST
At first I honestly had a hard time believing it, so I decided to test a few games for myself. I bought physical copies of two games they listed as completely playable with no download and no internet required: Dead Space 2023 and Elden Ring: Nightreign (I know what you’re probably thinking: Nightreign?!? But isn’t that multiplayer at its core? Well yes it is, but you can play it offline as well.)
In order to make sure the games ran fine with no downloads or updates, I disconnected the WiFi connection from my PS5 before I began, then I put in the disc for Dead Space (the 2023 remake). The console read the disc and installed the necessary contents to the hard drive, then I booted it up. To my surprise it ran perfectly fine. Nothing seemed missing and nothing was buggy. I played it for several hours just to see how it performed, and it seemed totally fine, just as DoesItPlay had indicated.
If you want to see gameplay from this offline Dead Space test, check out this video I created for EGN:
The bigger test was going to be Nightreign. I could hardly believe a game built around multiplayer would even be playable offline. Just like Dead Space, I inserted the disc and the PS5 read it and installed the necessary files to the hard drive; then I booted it up. To my surprise everything loaded and played just fine. I watched the intro, choose my character and jumped into the tutorial level. Everything played fine with no discernible bugs, glitches or issues. Then after the tutorial finished I jumped into an actual match. Now, playing offline of course you have to go it alone, and in Nightreign that’s practically impossible given the difficulty of the enemies, but hey, everything worked.
Frankly, I was stunned.
HOW HAD I BEEN SO WRONG?
After contemplating it a bit, I believe I identified the source of my confusion: the install and boot up process for most new physical games make it look like downloads are required. Now, to be fair, games like Call of Duty, which are over 100gb in size, do require a download to be playable, and they also require online connectivity, but that’s somewhat expected.
However, almost every game, big or small, has a mandatory download at initial boot up these days, but not all of them are required to actually play the game if you’re offline. Some are day one patches to fix major bugs, others are missing content that needs to be downloaded, but others are just little tweaks that aren’t completely necessary; to the gamer it’s almost impossible to know the difference, as they all appear the same from the way it looks on the PS5 dashboard.
Now, I don’t want to make it sound like I think there was some great conspiracy to convince gamers that physical games were unplayable without downloads, but the way the process was presented, it very much appeared like that to me. I also ran into several games where that was very much the case, and without a resource like DoesItPlay.org, it’s honestly really hard to determine for yourself without trying to install each game and play it yourself (which is beyond impractical.)
As a result of what I experienced, and thought I was seeing, I was completely 100% convinced that physical games were essentially nothing more than unlock codes that enabled you to download and play the game, but given my recent experience with Dead Space and Nightreign, I know that isn’t the case.
SO WHAT DO I DO NOW?
Well… given Sony recently announced they will stop producing physical games beginning in January 2028, it seems my newfound realization has a short lifespan, but I can choose to buy the games I love that I want to ensure I can play well into the future, and using a resource like DoesItPlay.org honestly makes the process very easy.
For example, I was in a store the other day and saw they had the Resident Evil 2 remake for PS5 for a really good price, but I wasn’t sure if it would be playable. I just looked it up on DoesItPlay and found out that yes, it can be installed and played directly off the disc with no major issues, and it doesn’t require any internet connection to play; so I bought it.
Then, I was on the internet the other day and saw a great deal on Hogwarts Legacy for PS5, so I looked it up and found out (sadly) it does require a major download to be playable. As stated on DoesItPlay: “The game forces you to download a large update (roughly 40 GB) after the tutorial. You can’t progress without it.” So I decided not to buy the physical version of that game.
So that’s how I’m going to approach it going forward. I don’t have a perfect answer, or a perfect plan of my own, but I’ll just keep an eye out for physical copies of games I want to ensure I can play well into the future, and I’ll double check their long-term playability on DoesItPlay before I buy them.
Does that mean I’m going to just drop $59.99 for a physical copy of Elden Ring when I already own multiple digital copies? Probably not. But if I saw it drop to half of that, I would probably pick it up (after checking it on DoesItPlay.org).
That balance of preservation vs value feels like a good plan for how I like to collect and play games. Most of all I’m glad I finally know the truth about physical games in this current generation, and now I can plan my future game purchases accordingly.
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