Instead now you have most online services allowing you to pre-download the game (and often the day 1 patches too if any) and just do a quick install on release

Instead now you have most online services allowing you to pre-download the game (and often the day 1 patches too if any) and just do a quick install on release day. The experience isn't significantly worse, it's just different. Even Nintendo's e-shop supports this, and god knows how far behind they are in terms of online feature support compared to everyone else. I'm pretty happy to not have to keep a large amount of game boxes and worry about scratching discs too. EDIT: To your specific example, FO76 released on Nov 14, PS4 preload with base game + day1 patch started on Nov 11 according to online sources I've found.