Chinese juggernaut HoYoverse will flog a boxed copy of Honkai: Star Rail – despite the game being free-to-play and updated almost weekly. The retail release will come with some collectibles for fans, including nine gilded holographic character art cards, two chibi Trailblazer keyrings, a postcard, and some in-game items.
This physical release will come with a copy of the game on a Blu-ray, although whatever code is printed on the disc will be immediately outdated, as the turn-based RPG’s live service nature means the developer is constantly pushing out patches and updates to refresh the experience. It’s worth noting as well that the game requires an online connection.
The retail bundle is available to pre-order for $39.99 from Best Buy, with a placeholder release date of 31st March. We imagine it’ll be officially acknowledged by HoYoverse in due course, and we’ll update when we know more. This edition seems to exist purely for fans to have something to place on their shelf, as there’s really no other reason a physical version of a live service title like this needs to exist.
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[source bestbuy.com, via twitter.com]
Comments 30
No, Concord is now the most pointless boxed PS5 game ever.
#2 behind Concord actually.
Bruh wtf don't buy this
Concord takes that crown.
March 31st might be around the 3.0 update, maybe they have something planned. This is definitely weird though.
No point unless this is an offline version of the game (which is highly doubtful)
What a lovely waste of plastic and carbon. Day One!
I wanted to avoid buying the disk drive for my future PS5 Pro and go all digital but this changed my mind
@Czar_Khastik 140 quid essentially for a F2P game on Pro, we’re truly living in the best time ever for gaming.
It would've been worth it for the boxart alone considering hoyos fantastic art. But they went and used the most generic rendition of the mcs possible
I have spent 40 bucks on less. It's a little thing for the fans and collectors of physical media. Personally its not for me. I need to save my 40 bucks to get a stand for my PS5 Pro...
Play it online with PS5 no issues. As I’m in endgame atm, this is a head scratcher. If you install from disc, you’ll need to have that to play the game, which is available for free.
I wonder if the disc would make it playable in Belgium. Wouldn’t be so useless after all.
If it was Genshin Impact, I would buy it. I’ll admit it.
It makes it nicer to give as a present.
I get email vouchers which isn't much fun to unwrap.
A 40 bucks physical copy and it has a lot of goodies inside it? Man, i wish every company doing this or at least give a manual booklet again.
We used to have physical copy that include nice manual booklet or some goodies. Like MGS 2 / 3 PS2 copy has manual book with all page in colour that shows the control, map, characters, and some mini comic strip.
Jump to PS4 era, games became more expensive but the manual booklet was gone and replaced with a single white paper 😐 . Although some games still gave cool goodies as replacement like MGS 5, RDR 2, and GTA 5 has a big poster shows the full map. Mega Man collection has a card that shows every boss weakness, ND gave that ND sticker logo, or Cyberpunk has maps / badge / sticker. Some games also has reversible cover art which is nice.
But now, publisher wants to go full digital and people thinks inserting a disc is a hassle. sigh...
@MikeOrator Why not sell the extras without the case it's so wasteful. I can always laugh when digital collectors tell me a disc is a waste but the ton of extra plastic stuff not. And it's €40 on a free to pay game.
Keep physical alive! Don't buy this physical though! But keep physical alive!
At least Fortnite was physical codes in the box with DLC and less production cost on disks as it's updated constantly. No idea why Honkai is this way at all.
Online heavily updated games with a disk make no sense.
Though Rocket League has a physical disk, may later have been paper codes as well not sure. But if it has offline or bots matches or something then yeah I'd say it's fine, sure less content update access relevance for the game still but otherwise online required games disks are worthless unless archiving the content and removing the online requirement but that's very sketchy and not for TOS after all but I mean if no servers to work around then well yeah. But depends on the assets or anything at all on the disk then a license. That's a big amount of storage on 4K Blu-rays for a license after all. XD
I think most anime/gacha fans are well aware what goes online these days, unless they are hearing about it from less into the online space and pick it up physical sure but we all know it's worthless and no one really cares to archive these disks do they?
Whatever people want to do with their Concord physical copies. If someone reworks the game server wise then well people can play it on unofficial servers, sure no updated content but still. Same for Battleborn builds, PS Home archive builds the community has done, Babylon's Fall and so on.
Lawbreakers has it's audience for example and it's run by fans now. Or any Pretendo or PS2/3 fan server run games modded or different server to attach to.
I mean it looks like it comes with a lot of collectible trinkets. Good if you're a huge fan of the game.
Wait, Concord had physical versions? Hahahaha
It comes with more stuff that Concord and the game it's not dead.
Wasnt there a COD game that came on a disc that had like 100MB of data on the disc which meant the buyer had to download basically the entire game + had to put the disc in when they want to play it
Imo that even more pointless
@Flaming_Kaiser
Why is it wasteful? If someone wants it on the shelf next to some merch and other collectibles why should they not have it. Who cares what someone spends 40 bucks on. It’s their 40 bucks. And if it doesn’t sell then we probably wont see something like this again.
@MikeOrator It won't even work offline is one thing.
@mariomaster96 That's the reason I dont buy COD. How about THPS 5 where they put a demo on the disk.
@Flaming_Kaiser imagine caring what someone else does with their money. That why there going to be a lot people getting a pro people will do what they want with their own money
Any boxed game is pointless nowadays.
@thiagoauler
Until digital games are significantly less than the boxed version, I am going to buy the boxed version.
Until there is a credit for giving up my licence to a digital game to spend on another digital game I am going to buy the boxed version.
The ONLY benefit to digital is never having to swap games.
@C25CLOUD I don't care im just saying what i see.
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