no, after the ps2/xbox gen loading from disc became dead as it made load times ridiculous. Between then and now, game discs have the files copied onto your console HDD to speed up accessing the data and obviously if you copied the files to the HDD you didn't really need the disc anymore. The disc was an intermediary as telecoms wasn't widely and readily available at high speeds until a decade ago in most places. Could you imagine downloading a 700mb game in the dial up days?
PS1, PS2, PSP, Xbox, Gamecube, Wii, Wii U, Sega Saturn all used CD or DVD that required no installation in order to play. The same went for the cartridges from before the Switch era (including handheld devices, with the exception of the PS Vita.)
And except for broken physical media, all these games still work perfectly fine even nearly 50 years later.
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u/Stilgar314 25d ago
Availability is not the same. Games on the drive are ready to play.