The fact is that physical media is not as permanent as it feels. I became fully on-board with digital distribution when some of my Battlestar Galactica DVDs started disintegrating after less than five years of ownership. If I had bought them on iTunes, I would have had files that could be easily backed up on multiple hard drives (you can rip, of course, but it's a tedious process). If I had just watched them on Netflix, then there would be nothing to lose at all.
It feels nice to have tangible things, but they take up space, they cost extra money to manufacture, they degrade, and they're subject to disaster. A digital service can handle the storage and backups for me while delivering content over the network to whatever device is appropriate, and they can do it cheaper than a plastic disc manufacturing and distribution network. That means that I either get to save money or I get to enjoy more content.
It's true that my ideal digital service doesn't exist yet. And it's true that the content owners are trying to scoop all the cost savings into their own bottom lines while they try to wrest more control away from the consumer. But there is a definite trend towards providing digital services that have better and better terms for the consumer. I can't wait to get rid of all my bookshelves and disc-swapping and never needing to worry that my data might fall apart or have its format go obsolete (having watched my father transfer all his LPs to reel-to-reel tapes to minidiscs and finally to a hard disc).
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
