* Buy digital if...
- It is a long game (like 50hr, 100hr)
- It is a game you will play for a long time, especially for multiplayer (like COD, BF, Destiny, Monster Hunter, Minecraft...)
- It is a game you want to play every now and then
- It continues to have new DLC expansions that you want to play
- It is an annual sports game. (If you bot physical and sell it within a few months you can still get back some money, but you want to play it for one whole year! If you sell it too late, its value drops too much. Might as well just get digital and consider it depreciated over a year.)
- It is only available digitally (like many indie games) or is hard to find (or too expensive) physically (especially Chinese version games or Japanese)
- The physical disc version doesn't contain the full game. Like episodic Telltale games, they release the disc with only episode 1, the rest are digital download on later dates, so the physical disc basically has no resale value, unless you want to cheat the buyer (quite often after all episodes are released, they will make episode 1 free to everyone anyway).
- It is a GOTY/complete edition game, but the physical disc version only contains the base game, all other DLCs included are digital downloads.
- You can only find physical disc of another region (like R2) and you don't want to manage different region psn accounts and wallet top-up etc.
- It is very cheap during sale. (A lot of ppl actually sell away physical copy and later buy back digitally during sale if they like the game a lot.)
- You don't want to keep swapping discs, or you tend to misplace discs, or your PS4 has the auto-eject problem
* Buy physical if...
- You are getting the game on Day 1/week 1/soon after release. That way you can still sell it at a good price. (This is assuming it is not a game you want to play for long time, want to play every now and then, etc.)
- It has collector's edition with physical items that you want
- It is Vita game. Digital Vita games are tied to the account that bot them, cannot play using other accounts. Physical doesn't have such restrictions. (Again, depends on whether you want to play for long time, whether digitally is much cheaper etc.)
- Basically opposites of the above list.