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Forums - Gaming - Digital distribution is coming to consoles

Joelcool7 said:
I really don't see online versions being massive this new generation. Last generation it was to early and by that I mean way to early. I suspect it'll be another generation before downloadable content actually catches up to physical and without a serious event I think physical media could even remain on the market for a third generation from the current one. Though a second generation from now physical media will be nearly defeated.

The problem will be the retailers and intelligent consumers. Say Sony wants to sell online games drastically cheaper then retail to cut out the middle man and make all the profits. The retailers will revolt even if the physical option is on their store shelves they will demand Sony keep the physical copies competitively priced.

So when will retailers disappear? Well retailers like GameStop and BestBuy will not disappear for awhile. They are very powerful. Even if big box retailers dissapear they will still have a difficult time taking out Amazon


Where you are wrong is where you think that Sony and co want to kill retailers.

They do not want to kill those, they want to curtail the used game market. 

And physical media will still be around in 25 years ( the same way you will still be able to buy physical books).



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are people missing a few screws ps3 and 360 have digital titles already , that don't mean retail copies are going away , sheesh , if that happened millions of workers would be out of work!



Degausser said:
DarthVolod said:

Can anyone explain to me what the advantage of doing this is? Maybe you love Mass Effect so you would want to keep the game anyways, but if this turns into a distribution system then the prices better be pretty low to make up for the cash back you could receive selling the game.

Even if you are too lazy or afraid to sell on ebay or amazon you will still get 20-35 dollars at Gamestop, Bestbuy, or other retailers for your used game.

Maybe if they lower the price of games to 20-30 dollars at release (not very likely I would imagine) it would sort of be worth it.

I will never understand the draw of digital distribution. It just seems like I am paying more and getting much less all to avoid the minor inconvenience of driving to a store (which you will probably go past anyways assuming you work or go to school).

If you preorder Mass Effect 3 and preload it (assuming they let you do that) then you will get to play it a whole 30 minutes to an hour before the midnight release folks who will have a copy of the game they can share, collect, or trade away for cash towards more games. Just seems like digital supporters are paying one hell of a price for virtually no advantage over physical.

I get why publishers like it, but unless you work for EA it seems rather odd to support this.


 It has its perks, I have an absolute ****ton of SNES, N64, PS1, PS2, Gameboy and Ps3 games in my room that I'll never ever play again. They're taking up a lot of space, and in reality all I'm gonna do is sell them at like a car boot sale for like £1 each or throw them away. It's entirely pointless me having them - so DD is nice in that it saves a lot of space. It's the same for a lot of people. LIke I' move between home and university a lot and each trip I'm having to take a bag full of PS3 games... it's slightly annoying lol.

 The convinience can be nice too, it's nice when you have **** all to do on a night in and can just download a new game or something. Albeit most pricing is rediculous it'll eventually come down to a reasonable price.

 But yeah I think most people like me who want things to go to DD sort of believe that the pricing will become reasonable in the long term. It ultimately depends how they do it, but if the pricing is completely up to the publishers and it's just a competitive market then the prices will come down, as people will realise they can undercut the rest to sell more. In theory it should be less then whatever they charge through retail as the costs associated with the games are less, we'lll see what happens long term I guess...

My advice would be to ask for a little more than that for old and potentially rare games. Even if you have just a bunch of garbage you can bundle it all together and sell it on ebay for a decent amount of money.

It may be slightly more convenient, but that all depends on your location. I have a 24 hour department store about 5 minutes drive away if I ever just had to buy a new game.

If you are traveling a lot then get a bluray/dvd case that lets you store your games in one portable unit so you are not dragging a bunch of ps3 or xbox cases with you every time you go from home to university. All you need is the disc really so just leave the cases at home.

Speaking as someone that has an entire room filled exclusively with video games, I would suggest you invest in storage bins for all of those old games you never play and do not want to sell at this time. You may be able to make a nice profit on them someday as there will always be a market for old classic games. Digitial games, on the other hand, will never be collectible or resellable which is something that everyone should keep in mind when purchasing them.