NSMB2, WiiU mark the birth of downloadable retail games on Nintendo consoles

[theRepublic]

happydolphin said:

@theRepublic. As far as I can tell, Starcraft II can be played on any machine, as long as you're logged into battle.net and have the game installed. It's the right way to do it imho, we are sick of giving our money away repeatedly and need more ownership of our purchases.

If you can't connect to the internet, or the servers are down you are probably screwed though.  And what happens when the game is no longer supported?  That is not something that you really need to worry about with Starcraft, but for smaller digital services it is going to be a problem at some point.

As far as I can tell, the agreements for digital games make it so you are basically renting the game.  Physical copies will be better unless something drastic changes.  I don't expect that to happen.  It gives the company more control and removes it from the customer.  Companies will not give up that power unless some law changes that, most likely.