Well, raising prices would benefit the manufacturers and publishers too, because it earns them more money, but then the real decider of the future would not support it, IE the market, IE you and me.

The market will always have its way, as it is now, most customers are happy with retail. Publishers who try to work against market forces will fail, simple as that.

Publishers are good at bending consumers to their will it seems. Just look around you to see what I mean. They can bend even more.

I like to pirate so digital only is a disaster from my perspective, I'll masquerade my view as it being because I like to have physical artworkdiscbox etc. I will then say that digital only takes advantage of consumers because publishers will still want the same price for games.

My true concern (not for myself, the last time I paid for a genuine game was many years ago unless counting for profit making purposes) would be for my fellow human beings who will be taken advantage of due to distribution monopolies, could possibly cause gaming to end as a widespread entertainment choice in the long run.

None of the above is true or false.

Because you won't have a choice in the matter lol. Pay or don't play.

It will be a great day when we are all expected to pay £49.99 for a game with our only special offer being a free theme based on that game as an enticement to buy.

We're moving that way but as already said, that is a good 6-7 years away at least.

You mean how Old Republic is killing WoW, how it took Nintendo's own mismanagement to kill off the Wii, how DRM stopped piracy and didn't hurt legit copies at all, how PSPgo failed, how the Medal of Honour remake interrested CoD players, how Kinect gave Xbox360 Wii level sales and how people got two jobs to buy a PS3? :P

Or get into retro gaming or join the pirates :P

If publishers will force people to go fully digital they'll lose shitloads of customers and money. There will always be a place and money for retail.

Anyway, the bubble of DRM is slowly going to burst. I hope either the online passes or on-disc DLCs would be the next thing. People won't let publishers to rape them infinitely, I guess. If gaming distribution will be digital only (or even in the cloud) it'll be even more shitty for consumer. Few advantages and shitloads of disadventages. Why in the hell am I need this?

DRM is disliked but accepted by most gamers, DLC is getting more and more important, online passes are seen as a good thing even by many consumers, and digital distribution has been growing for what feels like forever now. Not sure how your examples are related to this.

The day consoles go online only is the day i stop beeing a console gamer... unless they can sort their act out and give us low prices (since the distribution cost is reduced significantly) and garantees that i dont have to be connected online to be able to play the game i bought.

Without those 2 solved, i see more loss on online only than possible gain. I want to actually own my copies so i can play them whenever i want after the console cycle ends and wether or not the parent company decides to bring down their network.

Which reminds me... There is probably a significant amount of non-online gamers who only play games locally, and all of them would have to either finally adapt or simply skip the next- or whichever generation that goes all digital. Just a thought...

OT: Looks like less than 10% wants games to go all digital. Given how lots of those are PC gamers, I guess the big three (and especially Nintendo) will wait at least one or two more generations until it actually happens. Otherwise, the last company standing by their solid game copies would gain an incredibly large advantage over the others.