Star Wars Jedi: Survivor PS5 Physical Copies Require a Download to Play

Soooo no point in buying it physical then.
I’ll use my free trial of EA Play to buy this with a 10% discount on the digital store.

I canceled my physical preorder just now. Getting major deja vu here of FO76 or the newer CODs where whatever data is on your disc is so minimal (or in 76 literally an empty case as a troll) that you still install at least the full 150 GB but probably a lot more due to day 1 patching.

If it ends up being good I will catch it on sale. As I am new to PlayStation my console and 1TB SSD are pretty plump with games. I will get to this when I have beaten more games and removed them.

This feels like an issue with either compression (or lack thereof), or just not wanting to spring for a second disc (PS5 discs can hold up to 100gb, citation: https://blog.playstation.com/2020/11/09/ps5-the-ultimate-faq/#bluraydiscs ). Definitely going to wait on this until one or the other happens in a reprint, because geez.

I'm not a fan of this. They should have shipped it with a second or even third disc if it was necessary.

I am a fan of the game though. Started playing the first as it was a PS Plus title a few months back. Just got around to it. It's Star Wars meets Uncharted. So... yeah... enjoying it.

I was under the impression all games still had to be downloaded in part for some reason.
Anyway, for me, the purpose of physical isn’t to avoided downloads (although I do feel for those in countries that still impose download caps), no, for me, the purpose of physical is just so I don’t throw away money needlessly on much more expensive digital copies.

Yah isn't This the norm now? I can't think of a single Physical disc I've bought in the last 5 years that didn't require all of the potential download size of digital to be downloaded regardless. It's been where Disc's are just proof of purchase authentication for some time now.

I've never understood why this has been the case, but my assumption is that likely modern games cannot operate fast enough from disc and need the hard drive/ssd capability?

Which is lame for sure, and in all honestly completely wasteful. It's likely why most Pre orders don't even include the physical disc anymore. Just adding to the garbage dump like mentality we treat our planet as.

@thefourfoldroot1 "much more expensive digital copies..."

you're doing it wrong. I pay far less for my digital games that any physical games, and that's for day one or at any other point.

@thefourfoldroot1 My problem with this is that say 20 years from now, you decide to pick up the game with a PS5 system at a pawn shop wanting to replay a few retro favorites (yeah, I'm going there). You put Star Wars in and go to play but find you're unable to connect to the servers to download the required data. Your purchase of the game physically holds zero value as the entire game (needed to run) is not on the disc(s).

@KundaliniRising333 this is NOT the norm. Assuming you’re talking about PS4/5 games, only patches/updates are downloaded. The console may SAY it’s downloading when it’s installing, but the disc is still providing it.

Ah, EA... 🙄
That greedy Western company with stupid decision.

@Gamer_Guy
No second hand market for digital copies makes it automatically multiple times as expensive as physical.

@Uncharted2007
True, but I have far too many new games to play to play anything retro. And by that I mean 15 years plus.

Blu-Rays are dirt cheap to mass manufacture. Like cents on the dollar.

EA could have easily included a second disc. A data disc and play disc, like many late era PS4 games.

They were just insanely cheap. Which considering how EA operates is not surprising.

Edit: don’t blame respawn for this. They are the developer. The publisher of a game has the responsibility to order discs. This is entirely on EA.

@KundaliniRising333

Nah, on most games you’re essentially ripping the disc’s content to the SSD/HDD. It’s how PC games did it back in the day.

This is necessary because even the fastest spinning disc drives are just too slow now for the amount of data that has to be loaded during gameplay.

Remember how bad load times got on late era PS4 and Xbone games.

Imagine how much worse it would have been had they loaded the data directly from the disc during gameplay versus having it stored on the HDD. Even a pokey 5400rpm hard drive is orders of magnitude faster than a Blu Ray drive.

The only game I can think of where the disc has nothing on it and is used solely for authentication is Modern Warfare II and a few other newer COD games. I was appalled by Activision’s decision to even offer a disc version. It should have been download only. They used 150 megabytes of data on the disc. Such a damn waste of plastic.

That’s a lotta gigs!

@thefourfoldroot1 I can’t recall for PS4 but for PS5 the game would entirely copy to the console storage from the disc and then will download any updates. You can play the game immediately after it copies on PS5 while the patch downloads in the background, I usually just wait though.

I’m hoping Respawn or EA had the decency to put as much of the game data on the disc as possible which means a 50GB download for those of us that went physical. But then again how big will that day 1 patch be? 🤔

see guys? physical isnt better than digital.

This game has basically made me finally bother to increase my SSD storage. When you still play MK11 and Gran Turismo … it eventually becomes untenable to be packing 650GB of storage or whatever it is

this will make me not buy a game🖕

@LN78 <---- This guy gets it.

@LN78 Yup, I’ve been doing this for years. Some games I keep for nostalgia or possible replay, but I can usually recoup 30-50% of what I paid. In the case of Cuberpunk 2077 I actually sold it higher than what I paid for it since it’s value went up after the patch.

Lazy and cheap.still buying it.

@thefourfoldroot1 Most of them have some type of an update but not an entire disc worth of data.

@LN78 Agreed. I'm at a point in my life where I don't need the cash and can keep physical games in my library but I don't really know how anyone can think that physical isn't a better option to give you choices a digital copy never could. I see people try to debate that all the time but to me it's a no brainer. Not saying digital is bad but if you have the option, I'd always go physical media. I know the gaming industry is trying to push us all towards digital, because they hate the used game market, but I'll hold out as long as I can.

"This is why I buy all my games physical" people are in shambles right now.

This weird combination of physical and digital will only last for this gen. PS6 and Xbox Whatever will be solely digital. ☹️

As much as I liked the original, that's a no from me. Not supporting physical releases that don't even include a playable copy of the game. Disgraceful.

@ATaco But people wanting to buy a game and physically own it shouldn't be sneered at. That's how the video game industry has worked for 50 years.

You're talking like it's better to not fully own something you paid for because it's easier to access. Weird.

@OrtadragoonX @dskatter
gotcha so they are still using some data from disc or is it just fully ripped from disc and then then the disc is useless after that?

This really shouldn’t be allowed. This is just ridiculous.

Yes I thought the blu-ray disc wasn't as big as the game , could of put it on two disks?

@KundaliniRising333 I always assumed that there was still some data being accessed from the disc in real time but I’m guessing it’s evolved to the point that the game is fully transported over to the internal drive now. I say this because 1) I almost never hear my disc drive kick in during long play sessions; it only seems to spin during the first few seconds of booting the game up, and 2) they just released that firmware update whereby if you own the physical version and then later buy the digital (or get access to it via PS+) that you don’t have to redownload the game and you can play your same game file without having to insert the disc. I’ve not tried this yet, but I need to confirm how well this actually works.

@LN78 all the power to ya! This game is going into my gaming library and my collection is near 35 or so years old.

Like@KundaliniRising333

It copies certain parts of the data to the consoles HDD/SSD, then reads small certain parts of the data off the disc too.

It makes owning the physical copy pointless, but I suppose that's the point to nudge gamers to the more expensive digital copy. I cannot think of any other reason why it wouldn't be on two discs.

@KundaliniRising333

It’s ripped from the disc but the data is still there on the disc. Plus there is an authentication so that the game will run. Otherwise everyone would just loan game discs to their friends, the game would install on each console, and everyone could play it at the same time.

@__jamiie
This is why we back games up friend! If the PS3/Vita store closed tomorrow we'd still have access to everything we legally paid for. This is why I'm not worried about what happens down the line because I know my fellow gamers will have everything covered.

@nomither6 Let us know what happens when you go to trade or sell your installed digital copy.

@YourNameHere I get to keep my digital copy stored in the cloud- the same digital copy that i got for cheaper than a physical copy . physical = scratch discs, inconvenience, potentially can lose the disc, less physical room space, can’t play anywhere like digital & you still have to install the entire game regardless .

i know it’s a tradition to keep old ways , but this ain’t one them , time to evolve guys !

@ATaco Your fellow gamers??? Who are they?

What happens if Sony decides to shutter all servers allowing you to download anything in the future? What do you do if they don't allow you to redownload to a new system?

@__jamiie sony can also decide to lock all ps5s from reading and playing particular discs. there’s no escape man , just go digital , lol .

@nomither6 I understand to a point but your entire game collection could disappear tomorrow. If Sony decided that PlayStation wasn't part of its plan anymore then you could lose every game you've ever bought digitally. It even says that in the T&C's of every digital purchase.

I own all of the games I bought until the PS4/Xbox One generation.

Stadia is a poor example but people paid ACTUAL money to buy games they never owned. Then they lost those games and their money when the platform died.

That's not good. That's not how things should be.

@__jamiie good point, but if playstation wasnt part of their plan anymore would physical stay the same as simple as putting the disc in without needing an internet-connection or license check etc to play?

@nomither6 Mate I'm just old and want to hang on to the time when I owned an entire game. I love my Sega Saturn, Xbox, Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, SNES, NES, GameCube, PS2, Atari Jaguar, Sega Master System, PSone, Sega Mega Drive, Game Boy, Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS.

I'm just a part of the dying age.

physical games have resale value digital games do not

@Anti-Matter Do you hate Western video game companies? Is it EA an American video game company?

blu ray

single layer 25gb
dual layer 50gb
3 layer 100gb
4 layer 128gb

I'm a digital gamer so this does not impact me, that said i'm not thrilled with a 147gb download but at least i don't have data caps thank god.

I have quite a decent physical games collection but starting to lean towards digital purchases way more. Here are some benefits to buying digital that have worked for me:

• I have a shared account with my brother who lives in another city. We split the cost of any game we buy.
• We can both preload the game and play it when it releases at the same time.
• I get reward credits from my bank which I can use to buy topup ps store vouchers. Few shops in my area or online stores accept these credits to buy physical games with.
• Digital games more often go on sale and are sometimes cheaper than physical games on launch (Dead Space remake comes to mind).
• Some sites legally sell game codes for other regions which are way cheaper. I have multiple foreign accounts.
• Digital games do not take up space in your house except for maybe the extra harddrive they are stored on.
• They do not degrade and scratch over time. I get that they could "dissapear" one day but hasn't been a problem so far.

Honestly it's become a more convenient and affordable option for me. I still buy physical games now and then but the older I get the more and more I have opted for digital.

@Balie3000 what is at the back of mind for me with digital is I have all these licenses on Steam, and whenever Steam is bought out (and that WILL happen at some point before I am too old to play video games) there is a good chance the new owners will make the service far more intrusive and onerous. The way it is now if you sue Steam for a dispute they can permaban your account and you lose all the games you own. Imagine a store going into your house and taking everything you ever bought from them just because they over-charged your account so you started proceedings to get your money back?

Anyone claiming that PS digital is cheaper than physical is simply ignoring a lot of basic facts. You can get AAA and GOTY like Elden Ring for 15-20 bucks discounted weeks after launch on a retailers website of physical copies. On the store they have no reason to discount it because its a beloved game with great reviews. Target had Cyberpunk 2077 for $17.99 in post-Christmas 2020 deals--that game seldom sees those lows on the PS or Xbox closed environments.

Now if we are talking a open platform like PC digital copies, yes you can get stuff very cheap. But we aren't discussing that at all. We are discussing PlayStation.

Another shi*storm from EA. Why they are doin'g this? They don't see how stupid it is, or they desperately seek for way to sell you something incomplete?

...and no, we are not used to Day One Patches! They are always pain and lowers trust in product! (How would you feel, if you get with new car also a box of accessories called day one patch?) It all just says "We know, we didn't finished it before release. Sue us, if you can. Hahahaaa! "

@KundaliniRising333
Hogwarts Legacy. No day one patch on PS5 when I installed it. Spyro Reignited Trilogy reprint. Had all game install data and patches on the disc, it was rereleased a year later.
Original Persona 5 (not royal) still has no patches or download required.

It still happens sometimes. In the case of Spyro the disc and box art are identical and still says "download required" because they didn't change it. But if you check the disc print one has 2018 on it and one has 2019 on it. Subtly it was rereleased and required not a single piece of data to download. I found a copy on eBay (specifically zoomed in on disc images to find the right one 😂) and can verify this to be true.

SW:JS should have two discs if they couldn't be bothered to compress the data. There's no excuse.

@Konks Yea mate everything I talked about was regarding Playstation. I don't play pc games at all so can't relate to any Steam experiences. Those digital codes I mentioned also apply to brand new games that I can buy at launch, sometimes for as low as 20% of the retail price, legally. Just need to know where to look and how to buy 😉

@nomither6
Not really. Ever heard of CFW? if Sony lock me out of MY games one day all bets are off and I mod the software. I've already prepared for that. There is a website that hosts all the patches and missing data from discs in an archive for download. Install CFW, FTP that data to the console with the installed disc and you're good to play. You're screwed if you're all digital though.

I already backed up the missing data to every PS4 game I own physically to an external drive just in case as PKG files. And will be doing the same with PS5 to prepare for the inevitable day we get screwed over by Sony.

As for scratched, lost or stolen. I've never had a broken game, scratched disc or lost one. There's these nifty things called cases. And you put them on shelves. It's awesome.

should have been a multi disc game

3x50gb discs

Physical games for me nearly all the time,resale value etc, won't get me going digital ,no way pedro:)

@__jamiie
It seems you're not catching my drift. It's quite easy to...modify a Vita nowadays for example. If Sony were ever really going to go through with shutting down the servers and for some reason prevent you from downloading things you already bought then you'd still have access to absolutely every game that was on there (and many that never were) with just a small bit of know-how. This is why I say again that I'm not worried about "losing" any of my games... because it's just simply not possible. Just about the only real benefit I can see with physical is being able to sell it but I'm not that strapped for cash personally,just strapped for time to play everything I want to play.

My wife's getting me it for my birthday (2 days after Star wars day) and very annoyed at the file size and that and that the physical copy will require such a big download. Ridiculous

Heaven help anyone with a slow or poor internet connection.
This is very poor from EA, put a second disc in, otherwise what's the point of it?

EA back to it's usual scams.

@Balie3000 Oh you are mistaken. They do degrade. Your HDD does degrade. Eventually it will stop working and you will lose everything.
Actually, you will lose sooner than that cause digital requires regular checking of the license. When it fails cause the console servers were put offline by the manufacturer, your games will reset to their initial rapid play state when you are installing them.

So, no. It is not the dream you paint. You will lose them faster than discs can degrade.

Well, I think all depends on the country you are in, in Mexico for instance, the game can be 10 years old and it costs USD80 with taxes, so those discounts in USA and Europe are useless, BUT you can get that 10 years old game at USD8 taxes in the PSN Store... so, it's s better deal and as for the dics they only take room and else.. people claim that they own like 200+ discs, but if you move to another country it'll add about USD400 on extra weight, and then you said you care about money... of course, you are right if you never move and else, nothing wrong with that but it ain't that good for another people... I know you can get used copies at USD5 in the States and Europe, but not in Mexico...

@Custom1991
I still love The Sims games by EA but I hate their business practice. Tons of never ending DLC for The Sims 4, trash treatment especially for Switch version (partial download, code in box, streaming only).
Until how far EA still push their ego by being jerk with their video games release ?

Are the discs even in the case? Can i re-sell it after i/m done?

I've been playing games on steam for almost 20 years, and guess what, valve have never in that time decided to shut down all their servers and disable my access to my library 🙄

I do however not have a single disc anymore from the 90's. Never sold then, never got rid of them. Just no idea where they are. I had to rebuy digital copies of Baldurs gate, neverwinter nights etc.

Thank you EA, I would have preferred 2 Discs.
But what do you expect from a Publisher like EA. They are the second worst after Activision in terms of physical Copies.

@__jamiie I'm totally with you my friend. Don't let people tell you something.
Especially with words like "just go digital".
It's still smarter to buy games physical and feels better as well. 😊

@nomither6 why is digital better, you'll be paying a lot more digital. In a few months I will be able to pick this up second hand cheaper regardless if I have to download some crap as well.

I will just play it next year on EAplay for £0.79p

I'm waiting for a steep discount, don't want to spend to much if it this kind of practices that I hate.

Another soft nudge by the industry pushing us towards pure digital...I'll love it when all the video game makers announce they aren't doing disc's anymore and the community acts like this will have been sprung on them like some big surprise.

Collecting physical games in the modern day seems pointless to me. They're pretty much just a code on a disc these days.
Also, if you're planning on trading it in 2 weeks or so after launch, why not just rent it?

@KundaliniRising333 It's been the opposite for me on PS5. It's one of several reasons the PS5 is my preferred platform. I can actually buy physical copies of games and have all but the day 1 patch on it to download. Horizon Forbidden West was almost 90 GB at launch and it was all on the disc. Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, The Last of Us Part 1, Resident Evil 4, and God of War Ragnarok are just a handful of other examples of game being on the disc with just a Day 1 patch to download. Obviously there are cases like Far Cry 6 where they only filled a fraction of the disc and then required a large download, but more often than not the fact that Sony requires publishers to use UHD discs and the great compression makes buying physical copies a benefit still.

Respawn seems to have gotten quite lazy with the compression, or they compressed it for the Xbox version where it would automatically be larger and just plopped it onto a UHD disc for the PS5. There's no way this should be 147 GB when a massive open world game that is also the best looking video game on the market was only 90 GB at launch (Horizon Forbidden West). As long as they didn't get even lazier, the actual download should only be around 50 GB. That's large obviously, but the article makes it seem like you could have to download 100 GB, which shouldn't be the case at all as long as Respawn didn't get absurdly lazy. EA is also just being really cheap by not including a second disc.

@Uncharted2007 Like I said above, there's no way this should be 147 GB. Horizon Forbidden West launched at just under 90 GB and that is a massive open world game that is also the best looking game on the market. There's no way this game should require 57ish GBs more than that game. It's clear Respawn got really lazy with the compression, and that EA got really cheap by not including a second disc. That's all they needed to do since every game ships on a 100GB UHD disc, so they would have still had around 50 GB to spare.

@get2sammyb As far as I know, every single physical copy of a PS5 game ships on a UHD disc. I get the impression that is all that Sony provides the publishers, and it's smart as it prevents the same issues that occur on the Xbox Series X since Microsoft still uses regular Blu-ray discs and even then only have a fraction of the game on them. I have yet to buy a PS5 game that didn't come on a UHD disc.

The only way people should have to download more than 50 GB or so would be if Respawn got even lazier and didn't fill up the disc when there would be no reason not to. Obviously we don't know yet until it releases at the end of the week, but I guess you never know since Respawn clearly got really lazy with the compression. There's no way this should be 57ish GB larger than Horizon Forbidden West was at launch.

Really weird this one. EA has clearly been using the ps5 compression tech for other titles so I’m unsure what the deal here is. The file size is concerning, though, so I’ll wait for a digital foundry review. Given the visuals are not a HUGE step up from fallen order, I smell performance issues and optimization struggles. Hopefully I’m wrong, because the game looks amazing.

This marks the end of an era...you can't deny that. Digital empire strikes hard with this one :/ (with day-one patches, physical PS releases have been as good as obsolete ever since mid-PS4 era anyway...)

Between my PS and my PC, I have WELL over 500 games, with less than 10 of them being physical copies. Buying digital is just too convenient, but also, if I had purchased physical copies for all 500 games, the overwhelming majority would either have been traded in by me, or lost or destroyed by my kids. So, by buying digital, I have an extensive library of games that I routinely go back and replay multiple times. If you go through my library, you'll find COUNTLESS single player games with 200, 400, 500 hours and even beyond. I spent less then 20 hours playing RDR2 online, but have around 560 hours of total play time. So, buying digital has been a huge advantage for me.

@Anti-Matter OK. I know EA does shady practices with their games.

@LN78 ah that's a fair point

Re: Huge download and insane game size? It’s par for the course. For those folks saying that they buy physical copies so they can sell ‘em on the secondhand market or keep em and play em in 15 years when the servers are shut down, I say this:

In this day and age, it’d be stupid for any company to put the entire game on a disc. It’d make the game easier to bootleg and sell/give to their buddies. Don’t be surprised if damn near every game disc will soon require a healthy download just to make ‘em operable. And, when the game server shuts down, even if you have a physical disc it won’t be surprising if it doesn’t work in 10-15 years. Why?

For better or worse, we’re now living in that future that XBox’s Don Mattrick got ripped for back in 2013, when he said this: “Fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360. If you have zero access to internet, that is an offline device..” In other words, the future is now. Out with the old ways of doing business and in with the new.

@KundaliniRising333 The game INSTALLS from the disc.

Once the game is installed, the disc is needed to prove you can play the game. But the game was still installed FROM the disc. It doesn’t RUN OFF OF the disc.

It’s been that way since the PS4.

@dskatter yah I just realized that's where the confusion lay for me as I put the ragnarok disk in. Lol
Still though, those that have mentioned that recent games are running parts off disk are just wrong.

Yet yes you are right I made the mistake of looking at it Like download and installing from disk are the same. Which they are absolutely different in terms of net usage for sure.

Yet in terms of SSD usage, they really are identical and that is my main consideration.

Side not though, what the f is up with hundreds of dollar collectors editions not even including a physical disc version of the game nowadays?!

@Uncharted2007 As someone who loves playing older games, this is a massive concern I have as well. These current gens are not future proofed at all.

Nintendo should have stuck with optical storage, they said.

It's higher capacity, cheaper to produce and wouldn't ask for big obligatory downloads, they said.

I will get this digitally then 👍

@Uncharted2007 Hell yeah, that's where I find my old PS2 & PS3 games.

@KundaliniRising333 Yeah man a second disc isn't a option ofcourse it's insane.

Simple I wont buy it let me pay for the second disc no problem look a MK11 where the complete game was on the disc for the complete edition on PS4 and you had a voucher for the PS5 version.

@jgrangervikings1 There is no way to copy digital games thats why the PC which runs of a digital market has the no problems with illegal. 🤣

@Nintendo4Sonic Ubisoft is a big offender on that front as well most of there games are broken on release. Why not release digital first and physical after its patched up.

@ChrisDeku They are one the few on the PC now as platform aren't they. My SNES and Gameboy, Playstation 1/2 all still work with the disc as well. The PS3 had games where they atleast tried to make put a working game on the disc with some smaller patches they don't even try to do that.

@nomither6 Put your game in it's case that will keep it from scratching.

EA sucks. Glad to get that reminder.

@IOI I got EA Play so pretty chuffed to find out I can give this a go and potentially get a discount

@Flaming_Kaiser Exactly. That’s the point. They likely wouldn’t put the whole game on the disc nowadays because it would open the door for hackers to figure out a way to more easily pirate the game.

@jgrangervikings1 Nonsense to me so you are going to punish the userbase for a small group of people. I buy at LRG and i dont see a massive amount of pirated LRG games everywhere. Its for pushing it out the door and let the userbase find the bugs less time needed for testing.