But you have to match that against the upside of not being wallet raped for out of print games. Although the collectors drive up the prices of some of those games, it hurts gamers that want to play an out of print game (collectibility be damned), but have to fork over mad cash for the disc. Remember a few years ago when Final Fantasy 7 was going for $100+?!? Yeah, I’ll download it for $10 off PSN, thank you very much.
I <3 Steam.
Also, you can backup your copy of the game, and burn it anyway. In addition to that, you can play all of these games offline via the steam loader, which it’s own DRM so you won’t have to deal with the lameness of other games that require it. You still have the game no matter what, when you digitally download it, it’s the same as if you had the physical copy of it and installed it on your harddrive, except for having to use something such as Steam, to play it.
mp3’s or CDs?
I say that digital already is the way of the future. will physical copies get completely phased out? No. can’t see that happening in my lifetime. DLC has plenty of advantages though and it’s here to stay. DLC FTW.
-Starhammer-
thats true. i forgot about steam. was thinking mainly consoles.
Thats true too. i guess it only sucks for the collectors that are collecting to make money.
Still on the fence though. if there was a way to pay for a digital copy, that you could burn to a hard copy anytime (that only you could use of course), then that would be the ultimate thing for me.
I think it’ll take a while for people (not SRKers for the most part though) to get over the “if it’s not on disc it’s not real/great/serious” stigma. Hand helds have been out for years and people are just now getting around in the past couple of years to thinking that they have good games in their own right and not just gimmicks and knock offs of proper titles. That mind set was created because, well, it was true for a while. Handhelds didn’t have the power to play proper games until recently so when something was launched only on say gameboy, for the most part it was just nodded off (yes I know exceptions, exceptions, I’m talking “majority”).
The same thing is happening right now with download games (I’m talking console again). Only remakes, smaller titles, and party/gimmick games have taken the majority of download only games so if a publisher made a serious title with just as big of a budget and had as much quality as any other big title on disc but was announced as download only, most people would just scoff at it as not being serious before it’s even launched. I think we have a bit of time before this stigma goes away honestly.
For the record, I prefer owning hard copies.
Analog Downloads is the future.
Belee Dat!
This. I hate hearing about compilation discs of XBLA games after I bought the games on XBLA. I too am paranoid that our gaming overlords will fuck us one day and say we never owned shit and that we’ll have to rebuy everything. Save your Steam receipts kiddies!
Not entirely true. You can still buy it on XBLA. I just did like three days ago. Boy is it riot! Goes great with my After Burner Climax.
As long as we have an internet structure, Digital copies are way more reliable than a disc.
A customer will need broadband internet. A customer like me values 15 Mbps download speed and abuses it often, however a customer like my parents rarely uses the internet to its capacity and so a 1.5 Mbps download speed is plenty fast, however not really good enough to stream high quality video and download large video games.
A ten year old CD/DVD will likely wear out and have scratches, spots, and degradation, very rarely will it be kept in pristine condition, besides that they were out eventually anyways.
I prefer instant streaming video, however it’s not quite up to the standards of a DVD/blu-ray in both quality and features. Most streamed video doesn’t have all language and subtitle options. Opposite to this, a digital copy of a video game is exactly the same as the one bought in the store, assuming one will keep it up to date with the latest patches. The exception is that a video game console video games are still designed to fit onto a blu-ray/dvd with little HDD usage, however the next generation of consoles may ship with 5+ TB hard drives, keeping up with the latest on a personal computer. Hard drive space is cheap, but storing physical dvds and video games can be expensive, because space in an owned/rented real estate is more expensive than a hard drive, that is I get more utility putting other things in my home than stacks of dvds/video games.
Digital copies should be available for re-download and re-install at the request of the customer at any time. If it’s not. If there is no way to retrieve a digital copy of the game installer after initially installing, then it’s fuqh-tarded.
Digital copies should be cheaper than a disc at the store. No packaging, no store markups. They end up paying IT and web designers to maintain webpages, and the same amount of people on tech support as always, so there are fewer middle employees eating up salary.
Also, according to Steam, games can cost less, get discounted, just like in a store with old/used games.
Digital copies can be distributed and stored in multiple places for backups. A customer has reliable access to his game installer via internet download because of this distributed system.
We’re still transitioning from disc to digital because not everyone has broadband internet capable of streaming blu-ray in real time. Once that happens, it might be possible that video games will adopt something similar to Dungeons and Dragons Online which downloads game content piecemeal while the user plays. Not all games work this way, for instance competitive fighters need the complete arcade mode before anyone can be said to be able to play.
I’d rather have a hard copy. If you’re smart about it and actually take care of your stuff, you won’t have to worry about scratches or stains on a disc. Just don’t be retarded and take care of your shit.
It is the future as long as we upgrade our infrastructure to compete with the speeds that other countries are already enjoying.
What can also affect prevent digital downloads as the future for media consumption will be the FCC, corporate heads who refuse change, and the topic of net neutrality.
In line with the argument about digital downloads having a corrupt file due to a connection spike, hard copies can get scratched or destroyed within the medium they’re designed to play through. Once the disc fails to play, then you gotta buy a new one unless you have a warranty(which would cost extra), digital downloads you just download the file again at no extra cost.
Assuming you don’t get fucked over with some DRM bullshit, remember what happened with EA’s Spore. Anyways I’m in the physical copy camp for no other reason then I think I can take care of it better than my pc can take care of my DLC.
What happened with Spore?
A quick Wikipedia search turned up this on Spore:
“Controversy surrounded Spore for its DRM software, SecuROM, which can potentially open the user’s computer to security risks.”
Apparently SecuROM would remain on the hard drive even after Spore was uninstalled. Pretty crappy IMO.
The whole DRM thing is pretty bad, I know. That’s why I’m cool with Steam though because it works as it’s own DRM.
I remember I got annoyed at how EA runs it’s DLC with Mass Effect 1, I’ve still yet to play any of that game’s DLC even though I have Bring Down the Sky. All of this stuff is even worse with GFWL(games for windows live), with Fallout 3, they went as far as to make the DLC(such as anchorage and the pitt) a hidden file, in a hidden folder, in some other folder with scattered letters and numbers as the name, only allowing you to play the game’s DLC when you’re connected online. So you could be in the middle of Broken Steel or playing in Anchorage and your internet cuts off due to maintenance, and your game freezes or crashes stopping you from playing.
The work around was to just find the hidden folder, and hidden file, make the file visible, and put it into the main directory folder of the game and tick the box like a mod… Finally allowing you to play the DLC offline. This had to have been a major problem for many, which I assume attribute to why New Vegas is a Steam game on Windows, this time.
Steam is, depending on how one looks at it, the lesser evil or shinning hope of digital downloads.
Also, I’m not sure, but aren’t there plenty of games that are in disc format that still have to go through DRM? One of the biggest problems is just EA in general though.
Bump. Interesting read from Francis Ford Coppola.
I’m going to say yes.
I thought digital downloads were the present.
^_-;