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This means you can't pass the game around to your friends or sell it afterwards, which completely ruins the purpose of physical media imo. I mostly play PC these days so this doesn't affect me, but it's a disappointing direction for console games. At least they could've used an empty disc that has proof of ownership.
EDIT: Bethesda has confirmed that only the PC version won't include a disc. Physical versions of Xbox will include a disc. Whew.
I haven't bought a physical copy of a game in a while but don't they all come with a key that you must associate with an online account nowadays?
Nope, most of them do have a disc inside where you can just plop it in. You have to install the game from the disc and usually download a day-one update, but at least you don't need to download the whole game.
Yeah but OP is upset about not being able to share or resell the game, which isn't possible after using the key, even with the physical copy...
When there's a disk you can use it to preload a large chunk of data so you don't have to download everything. Useful for remote areas or areas with low bandwidth.