Gran Turismo 5 Prologue: Disc or PSN?

[greenmedic88]

Hell, neither would I. Give me the disc any day of the week for as long as they continue to distribute software in physical media. Games too.

I should feel bad about the hundreds of DVD and CD cases I've tossed over the years, but I still keep going to physical media. I, like many others have it ingrained in my mind that having that tactile, physical product is preferable when it's for a game or album that I like.

In regards to albums/CDs, I rarely ever buy them after buying close to 1,000 of them during the heyday. Post iTunes, I typically just buy one or two tracks and if the album is good, only then will I buy the physical media and generally only if it's a new release sale. Otherwise, I just buy the album on iTunes because of the convenience and consistent price. Most of the download albums I buy (like most of the CDs I bought) quickly become forgotten and unheard anyway.

In regards to download pricing, consistent pricing is one other benefit to the distributer (which is worse for the consumer). Price stays constant until it is dated enough to warrant a natural discount for an older title. Now some services occasionally offer temporary discounts (even the PSN Store, which regularly discounts download games), but these seem to be timed with discounts that began with lower retail prices for their physical media counterparts.

The crazy thing is, currently if you shop around and the circumstances are right (finding a vendor who overstocked or is just unloading inventory), you can easily pay less for physical media than a digital download for CDs and games.

It's when physical media (including out of print) becomes harder to find that downloads gain market share by simple default. And that is the nice thing about downloads: there is no such thing as a market too small for a digital product, whether it sells 10 or a million plus copies since there is no physical product to stock.