Digital Distribution : It's not the future, it's right now.

"Change and the ability to accept and adapt to changes made: it’s what separates humans from the dinosaurs."

[Droid Control]

The thing is, if you buy something from Steam you know you have it forever. If you buy a game off XBL or PSN you don't know if it will run on 720/1440 or PS4/PS5

[ChunkyLover53]

Didn't they just make people sign some kind of weird user agreement on Steam?

I don't trust fully digital content in the least, not to mention that I have a bandwidth limit of 150 gigs a month, which might sound like a lot, but when you remember that streaming a show on Netflix takes up a couple of gigs by itself, you see the position that I and a lot of other people are in.

Cant have a digital now, or future when so many people wont even be able to download anything.

[TitanUp]

users also had to sign a weird agreement on ps3 almost the same thing as steam users.

[negative]

You don't need it to run on the 720/1440 or PS4/PS5. Just hold onto the hardware you buy it on.

[decrypt]

Hardware tends to go bad in the long run, so are you going to keep rebuying old hardware and for how long are you going to keep doing that, later are you going to rebuy multiple old hardware like maybe when PS6 is out you going to keep rebuying PS3,4 & 5? that surely isnt sustainable.

With Steam or any other PC digital service, you only need a PC it can be the latest hardware or can be old it will run the games. There is no such thing as new hardware not running old games (95% of games from 25 years ago still work) Be it via Emulation etc whatever, it just works.

[TheDivine]

Decrypt the same can be said of a pc. Pc's go bad and you will have to rebuy a pc to play your games. If a ps3 goes bad rebuy a ps3 (which will be cheaper down the road also). All dd is based on having the hardware to run it. I have to have a pc to watch my digital movies and listen to music. If my laptop craps out i need a replacement. The only benefit steam has is than any hardware (pc wise) can access it vs only rebuying a ps3 or 360.

My only problem is will the servers for consoles stay up (to redownload games and whatnot). Thats the only real problem. Consoles HAVE to be bc nowadays with so much content (dlc, arcade games, full dd games) being sold. If the next ps or ms system doesnt play my arcade games i prob wont buy it until its under 200. It has to be bc with disk titles also or no buy until its cheap.

DD can help us gamers. Look at FF Type-0. They wont release it because of cost. With psn theycan release it for psp and vita for virtually no cost and mostly all profit. Why they wont is beyond me. What im against is this streaming bullshit. Now dd copies of movies you get in blurays are for streaming only. If cloud gets big we wont be able to have disks or dd games which is the real problem. DD is a nice compliment to retail to help small publishers and niche games. Cloud will become the devil. Imagine itunes making you stream your music and not be able to have it play without 3g/4g. HELL NO.

[Summons75]

you technically don't have it forever seeing as the terms of agreement says they can take away things and shut down without reason. Then you would not have it. Same with xbox and playstation. You only buy the rights to play the game, you never actually own the game and that's a big reason why we shouldn't support Digital Download. Personally I like to own my games and pick them up, toss them around if they're terrible etc etc. Digital only media will never take the place of Physical media it's plain and simple no matter how you look at it.

Digital is for the XBLA or PSNA games as well as steam but why would you wanna be something digital when you can own it completely as physical.

[NYC_Gamer]

The same reason many of us buy songs from Itunes and watch movies/tv shows on Netflix instead of buying them from retail...Options are always good in my opinion...

[Summons75]

Watching shows on netflix is the equivalent of renting them. You don't own them and your not paying full price for every movie it's 8 bucks for unlimited movies. Buying digital is 60 bucks per game for not owning your game, how dose that even come close to being comparable to netflix

[NYC_Gamer]

@Summons75

I have never paid 60 bucks for any digital game bought from Steam...Valve is good on that end at giving customers more value for their dollar..Console brands need to adapt and offer the same type of deals on software if they wanna move forward with digital....It's hard for MS/Sony/Nintendo because they depend on retail to sell their hardware.....Digital and physical software can exist together....

[Jdoki]

I don't fully agree with that Droid Control.

There's many games, such as DOS games, Win 95 games etc that were great fun - but they don't work properly now.

A good example is the move from 386SX to DX chips - Doom would not run on an SX. Or the move from 32bit to 64bit OS's causing incompatibility with some games. Who is to say there won't be a similar evolution of hardware or software in future.

All we can really say is that you 'own' the games on either console or PC until the point where either your console breaks or Sony/MS stop you downloading the games. And with a PC version you own the game unless Steam decides to remove it from their library, or the hardware / OS causes incompatibility and you no longer have a compatible PC.

Where there is an argument, is over Backwards compatibility in consoles, and emulators on PC.

[DeadlyFire]

BS. This is only the begining of Digital. Its nowhere near the normal thing. As people still fear any new Digital service. OnLive crashing, and Fear of EA sapping the life out of you with Origin service are two of many recent things that have come to light to show that Digital is still a long way away, but if things are set right then it will last and grow.

One. As we do not own a game for more than one generation. A service like Gaikai or another cloud service with PSN built around and in it without it being essential so that downloads are still an option, but say all of our last gen content is saved on the cloud.

There is a global standard for broadband to reach 100 Mbps to 50+ percent of nearly every country between 2017-2027.

[LAZL0-Panaflex]

And so it begins....

[LAZL0-Panaflex]

And so it begins...

[Rhythmattic]

All the PS+ digital content I download, the rest I buy to own as a Physical copy.

Not to shabby really.

[JKelloggs]

Same with me, and if a game is on sale on PSN or is cheaper than the physical counterpart (once in a blue moon) then I'll but it off of the store

[dazzrazz]

Thing is console games on demand compared to those available in retail form are still overpriced as hell, so I refuse to adapt

[NYC_Gamer]

Console brands do that on purpose because they still depend on retail shops to sell their hardware

[Jdoki]

I thought Sony (at least) had clarified that they don't set the prices of the full downloadable games - the publisher / distributor does.

The games Sony does publish seem to be closer to retail or at least offered on sale more frequently - it's the EA / Activision that seem to be going for full RRP (or higher)

[Xperia_ion]

I like having a mix of both

[sandman224]

Digital is fine by me. I just wish that ps3 and 360 would release the games on the store the same day retailers get them

[TABSF]

Steam is just amazing really

Great games
Great prices
Great community
Great support
Great features

Free cloud storage
Free screenshot storage
Workshop
Greenlight
Game hubs

I've got 368 games on Steam, easily the best service I've ever used.

Its the iTunes of video games, that's what Gabe promised and he has delivered beyond exception. XBL and PSN pail in comparison.

All this from a games developer with less than 300 employees, not mega corporations like Microsoft or Sony.

Edit:
Did I mention that there is no £40 a year subscription fee!!!

[LightofDarkness]

It's only the "right now" reality for a small percentage of us. Many gamers around the world still rely on physical media, so hold your horses. Try to imagine other people's needs before jumping the gun with this stuff.

[knifefight]

Imagining other peoples' needs, living situations, and preferences is not exactly what gamers are famous for....
(related and true: http://www.gamerevolution.c... )

[LightofDarkness]

Haha, I absolutely agree with that author. Thanks for that.

[Karum]

Digital only is nowhere close to ready for consoles right now. The main reason for that for me is pricing. The price of full retail games on PSN (I suspect XBL is the same, I never go into it on my 360 tbh) is ridiculous.

I realise the publishers set their prices and not Sony but until they start to sensibly price these things then digital only is a no go.

Steam does it right, it's a fantastic platform and service, I currently have 44 games on there and most of them have all been bought during sales apart from a a few games I pre-purchased. The prices on Steam are great also even outside of sales. Their servers are great too as I always get the max download speed for my own connection. Something I just don't get on consoles.

For me I stick to the PSN digital only games and PS+ offerings. For anything else I buy physical copies. Oh and any EA games too like Battlefield on PC, last I checked prices on Origin were stupid and I can get a better deal from like shopto.net on EA's PC games.

[NeoBasch]

So long as file sizes do not exponentially increase. No one's going to want to keep several hard drives on hand just to store their games digitally. I mean Uncharted 2 is already 23 GB's. I'd hate to see the size of games in five years. If it's anywhere between 75 GB's-100 GB's, then unless hard drives (internal) reach the 5 TB mark I won't consider it.

[jjb1981]

I hate how the user agreement tells me that I have to accept the changes or forfeit the hundreds of dollars of games and cancel my account.

I love digital because there's no disk check and less loading times. I don't like that I can't resell a digital after I am done playing it. The convenience of having a bunch of games on one hard disk makes it so compelling to buy digital. There is no need to worry about discs breaking or getting stolen.

[yokokoroma]

This article is preposterous, first it compares tablet based game downloads to that of consoles. Then goes on to name several computer based applications (i.e. Apple store, itunes, etc...) that are successful at existing as digital only outlets. The likes of which are irrelevant to video game consoles. The writer of this article would have you believe that "full" digital game (i.e. AAA titles) downloads dominate physical game disc sales. The realization is, this article like most other articles that herald digital only as the future, have some type of vested interest in it. This article should be a PC one, as that is what the majority of it's content focuses on. Digital distribution is not the future, it's right now, really? yeah, for PC. The advent of digital only for consoles, will inevitably be the end of video gaming. A smart gamer is not going to pay $59.99 for a game, that cost the publisher less to produce than a physical copy.