https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/18hkrvj/you_c...
It's effectively impossible to release a "gold version" game to the quality standards of ~1990 physical media, in 2026.
The surface area for potential gameplay bugs is too large: it'd take another decade of QA polish.
So even if you have physical media for the release day version of a game, what can you do with that? Play a buggy version?
To GP's point about post-release physical editions, it makes more sense to sell something later that rolls up the most critical post-release patches and content.
As far as bugs go, the solution for this has been and continues to be that after you install the game from the disc, you download a patch to update it. It's been this way for almost 20 years now (XBox 360 and PS3 both launched with explicit support for this).
Technically correct, but not really correct. It's hard to think of a game in the last decade where I've inserted a physical disk an been able to play without having to download a giant update first. Sometimes literally impossible - the installer disk isn't a complete game until you download an update
For the sake of participating in a discussion, avoid doing that in the future.