the more I think about this it makes me want to just get Nintendo systems from here on out. like I did so in the 90s

if Play Station 4 is highly expensive I may just very well get a Wii U and stick with that if this rumor comes true.

Not only did I put up with enough red ring of death this gen . (5x) plus 2 bad disc drives and 1 av port problem as well as a e74 .

I expect Microsoft to fix things but yet here they are trying to control the way I get my games. assuming this comes true they would not be fixing things but rather throwing the Xbox brand down the drain.

And if digital ever was to take over then there will definatelly be less purchasers !
we'd all just upgrade our pcs enough to play games there and get the Nintendo system.

at least we know Nintendo is not fully gonna take away retail since their family oriented . and understand that children do not know much about the internet and the parents would rather see whats being bought

I'm about 98% sure the US PC game market is larger than Germany's, even if you break it down per capita. The US consumes everything in excess and there is still a strong PC market in the country. There's a reason why the PC gaming market was basically born in the country and is still dominated by it from a developer standpoint.

I know a lot of people who play PC games (though in recent years, I haven't been one of them) and none of them buy retail games any more. Why would they? Steam is fairly priced, you can download a game and be playing it before you even got back from a store, and their selection is great. DD has taken over the PC market by force. Most stores don't even carry a decent selection of boxed PC games anymore.

I 100% do not buy this shit.

...i'll argue against piracy until my voice is gone.
...i'll stand my companies that provide inventiveness to buy new (like dlc and to a lesser extent online pass)

but a console where used games cannot be played. the backlash would be soo incredibly sever MS would be out of the console business in a matter of minutes. nope...not gonna happen.

the used market sucks for developers but its also a fucking fact of life. all markets have to deal with it, period.

maybe the market is a little bit bigger but you have 4x population there :)  pc gaming compared to console gaming in america is nothing. pc gaming is only a very small part. here in germany almost everyone is playing on pc.

you just have to see the difference between us an german gaming sites. in america almost everyone is talking about the console versions and only a few talk about the pc versions. here in germany evryone is talking abou the pc version and when you see someone talking about the console veriosn it'S like "wtf how can you play that on console?"

pc gaming is the biggest single platform in germany. in 2009 the gaming industry made 1,56 billion euro here and 413 million of that was only for pc. everything else together 1.1 billion (xbox, ds, playtation, wii....) and pc-games cost less so the sold units are even hgher for pc compared to xbox or ps..

in usa, the market was 8 billion and only 415 millio euro. so pc gaming almost same numbers then we had but with 4x so many inhabitants.

i believe all numbers are without dd.

i have all this from a german site and didn't read the sources but i see that all the time switching between american and german sites and yeah in germany i see with my own eyes how big the pc market is  and you guys have really no clue how big pc gaming is here.

i don't find pictures of german retailers and their shelves but then you would see it.

i mean talking about my posted numbers let's say you can double them with dd. then you have in germany 800 million compared to 1.1 billion for all other platfoms and in usa you have 800 million against 8 billion.

@rocketpig

you asked why people should still buy the copy in a shop but that's exactly with what many argue against the future of  console gaming. they say they won't buy dd and they want buy the copy in a shop. why should they? pc gamers don't need that why console gamers? there are always many people who don't wish to get it only as digital download.

A big difference is choice. You have options in the PC world and you're not locked into one method of DD. The publisher may choose to use only one service but after a time, there will be various DD vendors competing for your dollar. Consoles are a different matter entirely. With consoles, you're locked into one ecosystem. If everything moved to DD, that would be very constraining on the consuer, though DD will naturally continue to gain ground in the console arena because of convenience.

Another thing to note is that consoles are group devices while PCs are very solitary. Rarely will a person take a PC game to a friend's house just to sit and take the time to install so they can watch their friend play a game. Inversely, how many times have you taken a console disc game over to a friend's to give the game a whirl in multiplayer? They're very different entities with very different uses. PCs are also dominated by MMOs. Why on earth would you need a disc for an MMO? It's entirely pointless.

Also, I really question those numbers you posted. It puts the US PC market at $400 million in 2009. Yet in December of 2009, Blizzard reported 11.5 million subscribers for WoW. In one month, those 11.5 mllion people would have paid somewhere around $115 million to Blizzard in the month of December alone and that's only counting subscription fees. I found a Kotaku article from June of 2009 that states the US had purchased 8.6 million copies of the game so at worst, half of WoW's subscribers are American. And we're only talking about one game here. Blizzard must get at least $500m from the US every year for that one game, probably much more. By using numbers that exclude DD and therefore MMOs (a huge section of American PC gaming), the numbers are so skewed as to be nearly useless. It's akin to saying Japan has a stronger RPG market than America because you looked at the latest sales of Final Fantasy.

euro not dollar. it was a german site putting all numbers to euro and i said without dd so subscriptions aren't in these numbers. no clue why you talk now about these numbers because we talk about copies you can buy and not a subscription...i don't talk about xbox live or so lol?

i really don't care about all of that i just replied t the guy who said pc games aren't presesnt in retail anymore and that's not true in europe that's all i was saying. in germany the shops have bigger pc game shelves than console shelves...

Yeah that's an especially good reason. Some games you can't find new no matter how hard you look and the only option is used. 

i just mean it's got to suck to see your hard work sold and resold and resold again.  but has my post said "MS would be out to the console business in a matter of mintues" i guess i didn't say but kind of implied that attempts to squash that market will hurt them...severely.

Used games do actually help franchises.

For example if a game is really popular a lot of people buy it used and check it out and if the love it.
They will likley buy the new one at full price.

That was me and COD.