| BinaryDelt said:
I agree, though I think Microsoft has it backwards. Consumers tell companies where the industry is headed through their actions, not the other way around. There will come a day where the digital sales for a new AAA title exceed that of the physical media version, but that's not today. This philosophy makes too many assumptions about the level of broadband infrastructure in homes and that people are ready to abandon their physical media.
Look at the CD. When iTunes came out, companies didn't stop making CDs. They make more money if someone buys an entire album over a couple singles (the major flaw in my comparison, but you get why I'm making it), and consumers aren't ready to let go of CDs. As CD sales slow, that section of retail stores gets smaller, and eventually disappears. People are still buying CDs (myself included), and for a lot of different reasons. Some people like feeling like they own something they've paid for, some like collecting and showing off their stash when friends come over. I personally like to buy a CD and rip the MP3s off it, the CD serving as my legal backup copy, not tied to iTunes or any other service.
For games, I like owning the physical media. There's an excitement with browsing games on the shelf, getting a new game from the store, that "new game smell", flipping through the instruction manual, admiring the box art, and amassing a collection that you can show off to your friends. I'm a PlayStation Plus subscriber and I've filled up the hard drive on my main PS3 slim. Does that mean I'm ready to give up physical media? No.
A better path towards leading the consumer to all digital adoption may have been to offer digital copies of games for less than their physical counterparts. With no manufacturing cost, they could offer games for $5 less, which could be attractive to some. Sure, there's infrastructure required to support the digital download and it isn't free, but it's a negligible cost to facilitate a consumer-friendly transition to digital. Would I still pay the $5 premium for my physical media? I would, but they'd get a lot closer to their goal without pissing a bunch of people off.
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