Almost every form of media on my comp was acquired through alternate means. Screw DRM itunes bull crap.

And if DD becomes the norm, there will easily be measures in place to prevent pirating....There's a reason that you don't see pirated Halo 3 copies playing on XBL. All the players that use them are banned.

DD via PC's is the same way. If the company is smart, they can integrate pirate-busting software into whatever system they have, to prevent copying.

require a login for multiplayer gaming, problem solved.

I have a dream...lol

anyway I don't think DD is quite going to work like that in the future.
As someone posted earlier, who wants to download a 50GB game?
I think the future will be one of server based games with a light-weight frontend on the client platform - a remote games terminal if you like.
This way, the companies have a much easier time controlling piracy, and ensuring everyone is using the same game version.

edit: let me clarify, i don't mean server based games as in WoW like setup.

I mean the ENTIRE game is on the server side, and all thats on the client side is enough of an interface to interact with the server.

but you can still pirate halo 3 and play it offline.

people could buy two consoles one of pirating games and one for online play.

I hope it doesn't become the norm, because I like a hard copy of my game that I can physically touch, show off to friends, won't get corrupted, service won't get cancelled suddenly, etc. But that doesn't mean I would never want any full downloadable games.

It'll be just like DVDs are now (once internet speeds are fast enough and hard drives are big enough). You can purchase a hard copy from a store for a premium, or purchase it online. Hell, maybe at some point we'll even be able to STREAM the games like we are with movies, eliminating the hard drive space issue altogether.

And then the console maker is already getting more of your money.

I think one of the obstacle to downloads is that while the Internet connections get faster, the games become bigger. So, it's harder to store your games on an Harddrive and it takes longer to download the games.

For that very reason, I don't think we'll see digital distribution completely replace physical before the HDD can contain at least 100 games without problems.

At that point, I wouldn't care about digital distribution. Until then, I'll buy hard copies.

Gas prices are increasing.
Internet prices are decreasing.

Digital distribution wins.




Also, games don't need to be 50 gigs. I downloaded the entire Orange Box on some shitty wi-fi DSL I got going on here, and that game's better than anything I've seen so far that 50 gigs can offer. By the time a 50 gig game is worth my time, the internet will be a SUPER INTERNET.

(And the best selling game of the last few years, Nintendogs, is about 32 MegaBytes. Brain Training was like 8 MB. I'm just using these as an example of how crafty developers can be with their space these days. And procedural generation (Spore) is gonna be a big help in shrinking game sizes too.)