| Shadow1980 said:
Regarding de-listed games, sure, if you got it while the getting was good, you still have access to the title as long as it's on your hard drive. If something happens to it and it's no longer available for re-download, well... Like I said, once the Halo 2 DLC maps became unavailable for download and I somehow lost that data, I couldn't re-download them. There was, fortunately, a physical option for all but the last two maps. Only physical allows someone who wants to purchase a title no longer in publication to do so. There are countless digital-only games that have never been re-listed after being de-listed, many of them having been gone for many years with no indication that they'll ever be available again. Think of all the digital stores that have been closed on consoles. If you lose any of your old WiiWare games, well, you're just shit outta luck. There's no way to re-download them. But there's lots of old games released physically that are long OOP and never got re-released (some of them being orphaned works), yet you can still buy them. My skepticism towards digital will go away the moment the necessary legal reforms are put into place where downloads are treated as "sold, not licensed," requiring owners of distribution platforms to implement a means of license transfer for people to re-sell, gift, or lend their games and removing their ability to take away access to any lawfully-purchased copy. IIRC, this is how it works in Europe, where digital downloads are apparently treated just like tangible copies. Also, there needs to be some mechanism to ensure the ability to re-download games into perpetuity. Until that day arrives, I want the ability to buy an actual, tangible product that I can hold in my hands and say "This is mine." In its current form and the way the law currently is in the U.S., digital just has too many drawbacks. |
I wonder, if consoles go fully digital why not continue playing games using a PC? DRM isn't as bad there so as long as the files of a game are out in the wild it'll always be available to download even if removed from storefronts so a much better situation than a digital only console. If you dislike gaming on a PC though then I guess nothing can be done about that.
