| VanceIX said: A lot of people are steadfast against digital games, but I'm not quite sure why at times. From what I can see, digital games are much superior to their physical copies. I'll list some common arguments, and try to rebute them. 2. "Digital games take up too much room on hard drives!" Seeing as that almost all games on the PS4 and the Xbox One are now installed on the HDD, regardless of whether you have digital or physical, this point is pretty much moot. Loading from the HDD is faster than reading a disc, anyway. Also, HDDs are getting cheaper and cheaper. You can get 1TB HDD and plug it into a PS4 for $70, or you can get a $3TB external HDD and plug it to the Xbox One for even cheaper. For the price of one game, you can more than double your storage.
Forced installs is the reason I haven't got either of those systems yet and I am leaning towards XBOX ONE due to being able to install on an external HDD when the consoles themselves become cheaper. People complain about the Wii U having no space, yet the 500gb of space offered for forced installs is as bad if not worst then not much space an no force installs. If you going to force peopel to install offer adequate space.
3. "I like having a physical collection to show off!" I actually understand this. I used to love collecting game boxes and displaying them, but then I realized that the convinence of having all your games available as soon as you start the console without having to look through your collection to find a game is just too awesome. And, you still have your collection, it's just digital. You can amass a huge digital library, and show that off if you please, as many people already do on Steam.
If you store your collection in a logical order nothing is hard to find. Physical look better because people walk into a room and see your display. It takes effort to make it look nice,
4. "Sony/Microsoft/Steam may not keep those games available forever!" While a valid concern, I also thing this is an overexaggeration. All of those companies have promised that while they exist, they will keep purchases available. And I know some really peccimistic people are going to say Sony is isn't going to last, but even then, I doubt the digital downloads will ever go offline as long as the Playstation brand is alive (which it almost certainly will be). Companies like Valve have even said that they would consider removing digital DRM from games if they ever felt that they were about to die out. Also, physical games will scratch and break as you use them over time. I'll take the small chance that my games will not be available for me to redownload many, many years from now rather than worry about a physical copy getting scratched up because my system's disc drive decided to fail.
Agree and disagree here. Valve has the right model as it can work on any PC and they keep all their patched online forever. Where as atm consoles do not offer the same versatility when it comes to patches once a generation ends. Therefore you have to keep your games installed on the consoles, meaning more space and more backups on hdds. If gamers did not become beta testers for devs I wouldn't care about patches as much.
Overall, I think digital is the best way to go, and I for one am glad that the industry is heading that way. How about you? Yes and No. However overtime it will be acceptable if they can get closer to Valves digital model where generations do not matter. |
