IGN: No used Games on Next Xbox

[rocketpig]

crissindahouse said:

you asked why people should still buy the copy in a shop but that's exactly with what many argue against the future of  console gaming. they say they won't buy dd and they want buy the copy in a shop. why should they? pc gamers don't need that why console gamers? there are always many people who don't wish to get it only as digital download.

A big difference is choice. You have options in the PC world and you're not locked into one method of DD. The publisher may choose to use only one service but after a time, there will be various DD vendors competing for your dollar. Consoles are a different matter entirely. With consoles, you're locked into one ecosystem. If everything moved to DD, that would be very constraining on the consuer, though DD will naturally continue to gain ground in the console arena because of convenience.

Another thing to note is that consoles are group devices while PCs are very solitary. Rarely will a person take a PC game to a friend's house just to sit and take the time to install so they can watch their friend play a game. Inversely, how many times have you taken a console disc game over to a friend's to give the game a whirl in multiplayer? They're very different entities with very different uses. PCs are also dominated by MMOs. Why on earth would you need a disc for an MMO? It's entirely pointless.

Also, I really question those numbers you posted. It puts the US PC market at $400 million in 2009. Yet in December of 2009, Blizzard reported 11.5 million subscribers for WoW. In one month, those 11.5 mllion people would have paid somewhere around $115 million to Blizzard in the month of December alone and that's only counting subscription fees. I found a Kotaku article from June of 2009 that states the US had purchased 8.6 million copies of the game so at worst, half of WoW's subscribers are American. And we're only talking about one game here. Blizzard must get at least $500m from the US every year for that one game, probably much more. By using numbers that exclude DD and therefore MMOs (a huge section of American PC gaming), the numbers are so skewed as to be nearly useless. It's akin to saying Japan has a stronger RPG market than America because you looked at the latest sales of Final Fantasy.