bugrimmar said:
Digital Distribution:
+Your games will never disappear, you will always have the ability to repossess them in the event of a disaster
+You can get games from your house if you didn't want to go to the store.
+You can save space in your house.
+You can access any of your games at a touch of a button, without having to switch discs.
+You are not using any physical resources so you are helping the environment's trash problem.
Physical Media:
+You own the games physically and therefore you can sell them easily when you're done with them.
+You don't have to wait hours for downloading to play, especially for large games.
+You are not limited by your bandwidth.
+You have less DRM to worry about, of course, considering if the platform doesn't go online only.
+You don't have to go through the trouble of buying external HDDs or other peripherals.
+You don't have to potentially uninstall other things on your computer in the event that you have too many games.
+You can buy games cheaper as they get older, unlike in DD where many if not most games stay at the same price.
Well it's obvious, anyone who says digital distribution is the wave of the future has not considered the limitations of that platform. Not everyone has internet (really, trust me) and not everyone has fast internet (obviously), and not everyone has unlimited bandwidth (yeah, to all you people who do, good on you).
I'm an advocate of both. I like to buy off Steam for smaller things such as expansion packs or games that are less than 2GB. But for a game like Total War, forget it. It would take me half a day of constant downloading to get it, plus patching.
Basically, you can't get rid of physical media until:
1. Internet speeds EVERYWHERE are fast enough, and there are no limitations in bandwidth (not in the next 50 years probably).
2. Online storage EVERYWHERE is unlimited and can be accessed 24/7 (not in the next 10 years probably).
3. Game companies learn a code of ethics where they lower prices on digital titles since they are obviously cheaper to produce (never, probably, especially for EA. Did you know that to buy Mass Effect 2 DLC still costs the same on Origin now as it did years ago? And did you know that SimCity on Origin at launch cost I believe $5 more than from a store? I'm not even sure now if they've lowered the price. Everything is more expensive in Origin. EA can go to hell.).
Therefore, physical media will never go away, or at least it won't go away for another few decades. Anyone who says otherwise is delusional, biased, or simply idiotic, including this so-called developer in the thread start.
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Legally, in the USA at least, a physical copy of a video game is a physical license to access the content on the disc. This is known as the shrink wrap license. This and EULAS have never been taken to the US Supreme Court. For good reason. The video game industry...Excuse me, the Interactive Entertainment Industry would lose and lose so hard to the point where physical copies would exist until 2050. This I believe. Feel free to disagree, but I know the average age of the US Supreme Court and the very fact that the issue of EULAs and shrink wrap licenses have not gone to the point of a US Supreme Court opinion speaks volumes.
Now I know that is not a USA gaming forum, yet I live in the USA and what happens in the USA affects me. Call it selfish, but I believe in the system to correct these technocrat gaming developers who believe that they can code "ownership" out of existence.
I agree with both. I own both physical and digital games. As for the United States, It will be another 3 decades until we have the same universal, Internet access regardless of whether you are in the Black Hills of South Dakota or San Francisco, CA. The USA is backward like that. Until then, expect physical copies to exist as the standard.
