From a technological perspective, that seems pretty opimistic. But not impossible.

From a consumer perspective, streaming your games instead of owning them sounds absolutely terrible no matter how great the tech is.

Really? The only real issue I can think of is maybe not being to go back and play really old games, since the servers may be down or whatever. Personally that's not a problem, I never go back that far, the farthest I've gone this gen is playing Fallout 3 in 2011.

I'm looking forward to it.

Physical>Digital>Streaming>No games>Dreamcast

How can giving the content provider complete control over the content be a good thing? There's already problems enough with digital distribution, like people getting banned from the EA forums and losing access to their Origin games. Fuck that shit. Maybe I'm just old, but games as a service rather than a good sounds beyond horrible to me.

Dreamcast > physical >>>>>>> digital >>>>>>>>> no games >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> prison rape >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> streaming

"but games as a service rather than a good sounds beyond horrible to me."

Absolutely right

Isn't that kindof stuff already happening now on phyisical copies with stuff like online passes?

Maybe if consumers wise-up and stop supporting anti-consumer business practices than things will get better, but that's being optimistic.

I can imagine a company like Steam having a great streaming service.

I agree with this post. I think steaam shows hardcore gamers are perfectly fine with DD.

I'm not a huge fan of online passes, but the way they've been handled so far seems to be that if you buy it new, you get to play online as a part of the deal. If not, well, that'll be $10. Seems a relatively reasonable way of handling used games, if a bit of a pain in the ass. Has there been a case of an online pass locking people out of single player content yet?

Of course, anti-consumer behavior has to be stood up to regardless, but I'm afraid that the power shifts far too much toward the content providers in a streaming-only future. Steam is great and all, but Valve isn't perfect - far from it.

But that isn't the fault of digital distribution. That is the fault of supporting a shitty company. Steam seems to do it fine with no issues. Amazon does too. But origin from what i have heard is a joke. I won't use it so I can't buy any games that require it. So no BF3 for me(unless i get it on a console). But Steam is very good. Amozon is very good too as it is basically jut a download client. I haven't really used Xbox live digital distribution yet or sony's so i can't comment on them.