Just one last point: one of the cool things about Steam is that you can download games before they're released, and then as soon as the release date arrives, Steam unlocks the game for play.

This has an obvious advantage for customers, and a less obvious advantage for Steam's servers - they won't get as busy when big games get released.

I do think this will be implemented. Its that or a big developer crunch like in the mid nineties. Do you really want the number of games released for your next console to be halved.

A lot of Devs are just about breaking even in todays overly commercial market. Sales are their lifeblood.

Every game resold deprives the originating companies of all revenue.

I agree DD alongside standard physical sales would be nice but if the second hand market survives people wont bother. Cash is King.

For example in England I picked up a copy of Saints Row 2 for 19.99 a week after launch on Deal of the week. Thats roughly what they buy the game at.

So you think fine, it's a loss leader.

Guess again. Just one week after the offer closed if you traded in your copy of Saints Row 2 you could get 15 GBP off another latest release.

It worked. Days after the offer was posted the shelves at this store are stocked up full of second hand copies of Saints Row 2 for sale preowned at 24.99

24.99 per sale none of which goes back to the Devs. Its all store profit.

Commerce as they say is a dirty business.

SO what if the retailers dont like it. Hasn't stopped digital distribution of music, films etc. Either they get ahead with the times or close shop as many have done.

How about if you download all your games, you cannot trade them in for credits. You are stuck with your downloaded games. What if they are horrible not as represented in the demos?

Well said. The margins for used games are way higher than new ones.

If that becomes a serious problem for many people, I guess they could add a "money-back-guarantee" if you delete the game within a day.

1.) 7 hours? do you really want to play a game 7 hours after it's released? and like you said this is already fast as hell but that's still a long ass time. your download speed is very very fast.. but yeah, most people would not have anything quite like yours. and in the future, the majority of people will still have much slower speeds than people who can afford fast ones.

2.) re-downloading everything is a pain in the ass. yes, i mentioned that you can re-download everything. i didn't say you'd lose your games forever. i just said that you'd suffer all the frustration of having to A.) buy another hard drive, and B.) downloading everything again which will take days, and C.) having to deal with annoying customer service people who need to prove first that you're not lying. the worst part of this all is that you have no choice since you are entirely dependent on your hard drive.

3.) no matter how fast internet becomes, it will still pale in comparison to advances in game design, which will be increase in size exponentially faster than download speeds. look how game size has evolved. in the PS era, the standard game would likely go between 300-500mb or so, with big games such as FF7 spilling into a gigabyte or two. in the PS2 era, games went into the 5-9gb games, with some exceeding one dvd. nowadays, you have games like lost odyssey that go into 4 dvds and metal gear solid 4 that can hardly fit into a blu-ray disc.

the trend will always go this way, that games become bigger and bigger as designs get more complex. more pixels in the GT cars. more explosions in the next call of duty. higher resolution textures. 7.1 uncompressed audio. more detailed cities in the next GTA. etc. etc.

and no, it's not about FMV. games just get bigger. mgs4 didn't have any FMV at all and it managed to fill up an entire blu-ray disc. all it had was a lot of in-game engine cutscenes. actually, now that i think about it, there are so few games nowadays that have a lot of FMVs that use up a lot of space.

face it. games will get bigger beyond reasonable lengths to download with or without FMV.

1) As I said before, look at the Steam solution - if you're really in a rush and can't wait a few hours for a download, you can download the game before it's released and then it gets unlocked when the release date arrives.

2) Yeah it's a pain in the ass. But it beats losing a game you bought. At least in the DD case you can always rest assured you will have your games. In any case disk failures are not that common, this is not a big deal of a point.

3)As I said, there's a limit to how bigger games can get. HDTV resolutions aren't going to increase for a long time. The biggest games like MGS4 use uncompressed audio (fairly useless for the vast majority of people) or vast amounts of content which few developers can afford to produce. Yeah, textures will get bigger, but processing power increases also make higher compression levels possible (plus procedural textures which in a way is compression too). I don't think games will get nowhere near as big as you said in your previous post anytime soon. I mean what media will those 500 GB games use? Do you really think there will be a new optical format to be used in the next generation?

to sum up my point:

(all speculation based on physical media size)

MGS1 - 600-900mb (2 CDs)
MGS2 & 3 - 4gb-6gb (1 DVD single layered according to some sources)
MGS4 - 50gb (blu-ray)

look at the trend. metal gear has never had any FMVs, but it gets exponentially larger with every console generation. think of how big it will be in the next generation.

@NJ5

yes, i believe there will be an optical format for at least 2 more generations. pioneer already developed a 500gb blu-ray disc. the majority of people just will not have the bandwidth to accommodate such huge downloads. pure DD consoles will cater only to the wealthy.

and i believe in trends. trends say games get bigger and bigger as technology gets better. more realism, more pixels, more particle effects, better AI, etc. so yes, games will get bigger and bigger with time. they will expand faster than internet speeds will.

but i see what you mean with steam. i haven't thought of that.