Many people i talked to recently, has been talking about the needs of Digital distributions for gaming and videos.  It sound like a good idea and it does has its good point.  Microsoft believe in digital distribution and refuse to use BLU-RAY disc, i am not too sure if that is a smart move, but hey....they are one of the biggest company in the world, i am sure they know better than me.  But, to me...i will always leaning more toward hard copy.  

My arguments are :-

1. HDD storage space (imagine try to download games like FFXIII and GOWIII etc onto our HDD?  Never mind the storage space (1TB you basically can only installed 20s games)

2. Downloading time (i 'm not sure about you, in Australia the fastest broadband provide 100mbps and the average speed for most users are 40 - 50mpbs.  It still took me 5 minutes to stream over the internet for a 4 minutes 720p movie trailer.  Imagine a size of GOWIII or Heavy Rain and MGS4 etc...it gonna take forever!!  It is quicker for me to buy the game from the shop and cheaper)

3. The cost ( It cost me AUD $169 per month for 50gb usage a month)

4. Ownership ( I know we don't own the DVDs, Cds we bought.  But at least we still have a hard copy in hand.  The digital copies like Itune, netflix or stream is all in HDD and what if the machine crashed and we lost everything in HDD?) I know we should have back up, but is not always the case right?

Digital distribution does has its advantage with space saving and cheaper to purchase due to no packaging.  But even now, i will still like to sit down with my partner go thru all our photos in a photo album at night, instead of viewing thru TV or computer.  

Maybe another 5 to 10 years, the technology might catch up and we will starting to swift to digital distribution, when all consoles or PC come 10TB HDD as standard.  But at the moment, i believe in hard copy.  

What do you think?  

Screw DD to hell, it's too suspectable to various problems and to me it doesn't even feel like real ownership to me... not to mention that it's exactly waht you mentioned, hard to use for most people these days due to small HDD's and low net speeds.

Screw it again :P

I 2nd this. I enjoy some of the small Wii Ware games, but I would hate to download a full game on to my Wii. If i am going to pay 30-50 bucks for a game I want my boxart I want my shiny new disc I want my manual.

Its the biggest PC distribution model and it works great. But the consoles are to weak to handle it. The specs and storage together with online capabilities in the livingroom in alot of countries makes it hard to go full DD on console games.

I like owning a hard copy but especially for handhelds it's a lot more convenient to download. That having been said, I still buy UMD rather than download (my only PSP DD games are some PS1 classics and a severely discounted Gulty Gear) because prices for DD are currently not reasonable - neither compared to buying the hard copy first day (DD should still be lower because of no retailer/packaging), and especially not reasonable compared to buying an older, discounted game.

For home consoles there's obviously the download speed as well due to some games being huge, I have a fairly cheap and fast flatrate connection but that's not a given globally. And there's also the size on hdd, so it will be long before home consoles embrace DD as an only option.

For me to subscribe to digital distribution, other than Wii-ware, Virtual console etc there would have to be a substantional drop and difference in price between the digital version and the physical media it comes on.

The reason for me is value, If I buy a PC game, Console game, DVD or music CD I possess the actualy physical item and if I don't like it or get bored of it I can then sell or trade it in; in other words, it is still worth some monetary value to me.

When I buy a digital copy of anything and despite the fact they are often very close in price to their physical counterpart, as soon as I have paid for and downloaded it, it is worthless.

I'm the perfect candidate for digital dd.  I'm not afraid of the internet or downloading stuff and I've always been more interested in the content on disc rather than the plastic box that holds the discs.  I turn all of my CDs into digital files because I know i'll eventually lose them or break them otherwise.  I rip my DVDs because it's more convenient to watch them that way.  I buy anime for shows that I already own digitally or can stream online and will never actually watch on disc format because it's less convenient (bought only to support the makers).  Digital distribution is all pro, no con... assuming the products cost appropriately less than a physical copy.

1.  By the time DD gets big, massive HDD's will be the norm.  1TB external HDDs already go onsale for $100, so I wouldn't worry about sales HDD size.

2.  There's nothing to stop companies from doing what Steam does, which is allowing you to download almost 100% of a game as soon as it goes gold and getting the final part on the launch day.  Also, inet speed is increasing.  In two years the slowest service offered by my ISP has gone from 70 kb/s to 380 kb/s.  By the time DD reaches consoles in a major way (likely next gen), the average consumer will probably be downloading at a pace of like 1 gig every 20 minutes.

3.  You live in a sucky country for internet.  The major markets in the world (USA, JPN, UK) don't have nonsense like that.  They'll probably make high price collector's discs for people like you who must have a physical copy for one reason or another.

4.  This isn't a valid point imo.  You can redownload stuff on iTunes, Steam, Amazon On-Demmand, XBLA and PSN.  I don't know where people come up with the idea that it's impossible to redownload something if your HDD crashes.  It wasn't like that in the past, it's not like that in the present, and it's doubtful it will switch to that in the future.

You and your partner may enjoy browsing through photos, but you're honestly going to tell me that browsing through games on your console or browsing through movies on your TV is going to ruin your gameplaying or moviewatching exprience?  That doesn't make sense to me.

There is plenty of cons for people who do not share your opinion.

Hard copy, every time. I don't want anyone to be able to take games I paid for away on a whim.

I prefer DD for hendhelds.
And hard copies for home consoles.