I did that while I was in the Army. Always moving and I literally had hundreds of DVDs (over 500) and eventually did the same thing I did to my CD collection long before; dumped the cases and put the disks in sleeves.

So rather than toting several boxes full of DVD cases, I had one hard case with a disc sleeve filing system.

In retrospect, if I could have kept those cases, I would have; but having that many just isn't convenient unless you literally never move.

I will turn to piracy and have my own uncontrolled digital copies.

So they better have physical option for me, especially with TV and Movies because atm the digital content isn't in a friendly format I want it. If I pay for it I want to be able to own it and play it where and how I want.

Great discussion everyone. I cannot sum up all the arguments for/against digital distribution, but here are the main points I have read:

For:

1. DRM, Production and Distribution costs. Games via DD will be less expensive because they will not carry the costs associated with having to produce and distribute them physically. Likewise, digital distribution is the next logical evolutionary step in digital rights management for the content providers under the auspices of cutting down on privacy along with lower costs for the individual consumer.

2. Steam, Xbox Live, and PSN are here, popular and will not go away anytime soon.

3. Physical copies are not permanent especially with DRM built-in the disc itself

4. Space. There is only so much space one can reserve for their collections

5. Back-up. If you break a physical copy, you are screwed; there is no breaking a DD version.

6. Convience. Like Netflix or Gamefly, with digital distribution there will be no lines, fewer waiting periods, and one more reason to stay at home and gain weight.

Against:

1. Price. If DD is the future, then that future needs to reflect the cut in costs down to the individual consumer level with price drops from $10-20 for all games including AAA titles.

2. Control. You don't own the DD version; you are merely renting the right to it.

3. Permanence. With disc burners, you can recreate copies prolonging the life span of a 10-20 year old game indefinitely.

4. World-wide Connection Rates. Not every possible gamer has high speed internet, many only have access to lower speeds making DD unfeasible for those in emerging and less wealthy markets.

5. No re-sell or gift value. You cannot see your little sibling or child's eyes light up when you buy them the latest Halo for their birthday, instead they will be like "wow (uncomfortable silence)...I got a 6 month gift card to GameCentral. Thanks Dad." Likewise, younger gamers or poorer gamers will not be able to save up money for a new game by re-selling their old ones.

6. Status and Bragging. Individuals no matter what country they live love to have their hobbies on a shelf to admire after work, but they absolutely love to have a hobby shelf or hobby room where they can show guests and brag about their "limited editions," "collector's editions," and the like.

Did I miss any key points that were made? If so, then feel free to reply and I will update the list in a later post.

I just bought a hard copy of Oblivion/Bioshock combo at Target for $14. They also had Bioshock 2 hard copy  for $15.

This doesn't really happen in practice. Or rather, it really depends on who's running the DD store.

Wiiware doesn't have price cuts and keeps prices flat, because Nintendo has complete control over it and Nintendo doesn't think price cuts improve bottom lines.

At the other end of the spectum is Apple's App Store, where the same game can fluctuate in price from $10 down to $1, or from $3 to free. Just this weekend, Resident Evil 4 dropped from $4.99 down to a single dollar. It'll go back up, then down again once Capcom feels it needs some promotion.

You're worried about price fixing because there's only one retailer, but as long as publishers have control over price, they'll use it to compete.

The point was that the DD platforms (Steam, D2D, etc.) on PC deliver great games at low prices, I wasn't necessarily trying to start this whole kind of price comparison between DD and physical copies, but I guess my "tone" kind of instigated that, so, my bad. But since you want to get into that, I still pay far less for games through DD.

Granted, they're during special sales, but when Steam has 4 big seasonal sales, a weekend special, usually a midweek special, and monthly specials at all times, you can really save a lot of money, and they aren't few and far between. The games are usually on 75% discount, but occasionally the discount will be as high as 90%. Someone tell me when Gamestop sells a new copy of Mass Effect 1 for $5.

I mean, obviously, if you wait, prices go down for both physical copies and digital copies, but no retailer will ever give you the same deals that the digital platforms do. The only thing that's nice with something like Amazon is that they can give that $20 credit sometimes with pre-orders for some games, but you're still paying $60 for the first one. If you feel you absolutely need the game right on release, then maybe that's okay for you. I've bought somewhere around 20-25 games this year for about $140 through DD.

The prices for digital copies drops much faster than phsyical copies, and when you factor in the great deals on top of that, DD really is the way to go for saving money. Now, all of this only really applies to PC gaming, since DD for consoles will never be cheap. If console manufacturers really start to embrace DD, they'll only be using their own platform (XBLA,PSN) for distribution. As time as shown, deals are few and far between, and underwhelming.

But really, the determining factor for why I think DD>physical media is the avoidance of clutter. As someone else responded to my post, if you're going to be moving around even slightly frequently, you'll understand the annoyance caused by having all these cases. This obviously applies to not just games, but also movies and music. In the past 10 years, I've moved around about 12 times (college, back home, apts, back with parents in between apts like I am now). The most annoying things to move are all my damn cases. If you don't move around much, you wouldn't notice something like this, so it's obviously a non-issue for many people. But for those of us it affects, it's pretty annoying.

So essentially, if you never move, and you don't care about saving money on PC games, DD probably doesn't matter much to you. As for console gaming, we'll have to wait and see, but I doubt any console manufacturer will allow a 3rd party DD platform on their device. But who knows, maybe they'll offer new games on DD and cut prices accross the board. Maybe.

I think DD can be good thing and successful, but the biggest obstacles it faces are price and DRM.

GOG.com has been the only service so far that i have seen that does no DRM the way DD should be. You can burn the install file to a DVD, put it in a jewel case and print a cover, and if the price is reasonable then that would most certainly be an acceptable substitute to an original print.

Their pricing model still needs some work though, ideally you would want Digital copies to cost 1/4th their physical copy counterparts as not only would the developer be saving a large amount of cost on shipping, packaging, printing, shelf space, middleman share, etc. the customer would be losing their resale value and all the sales would be first hand sales, so all profits would go to the developer that would have normally gone to the second hand market (which we all know is HUGE).