I agree.. I'd much rather have a physical copy of a game I own.. so i can play it a few years later if I want to. If it means i have to shell out at extra $5. So be it.

Reduced piracy? Please,look at the free torrent sites,every Pc game is there. You don`t have to pay nothing and is very easy to download(no credit card,etc).

Digital distribution is terrible because you have to pay full price,you can`t rent,you can`t buy used and your software is not YOURS because it`s digital,you can`t resell it.

Plus,digital distribution let`s you download the games days before giving you the activation code...the download is being distribuited to torrent sited and cracked in hours/days,depending on the protection. With no digital distribution,you have to go to the store on launch day,create a copy image and then upload it. Not so fun and hard to do.

The only reason STEAM is alive is because people pay to download. If there are no people downloading and paying for it, Steam will be irrelevant. By controlling you software that you BOUGHT,it already is.

A true games comes out with a true case,disc and manual that are yours forever and YOU can do whatever you want with them because YOU payed for them.

Yeh they do i know, I use them when I'm at a major center. (which is about a few days every three months lol)

They're still damned expensive and seriously capped though. ($300 gets you a USB modem , an extra $150/month gets you 2GB cap/month last time I checked)

tarrifs: http://www.vodacom.co.tz/docs/docredir.asp?docid=3530

Modems: http://www.vodacom.co.tz/docs/docredir.asp?docid=3430

Currently I'm using the companies sat link (which routes through Kenya, then Germany then to wherever) because there's no other reliable infrastructure.

HotSpot (A Wi-Max outfit) is also trying to get some coverage in major centers

June -July should see some improvement, SEACOM IS LANDING!!!!

(It's a massive fiber pipe running the entire lenth of East Africa. Should be pretty awesome. But right now, at the moment, Internet sucks here.)

i hope not i like my game boxes and manuals i dont want to wait for the game to down load either

The downloads arent too bad...

Most people will be more than willing to download for a few hours to play a game.

Games can be structured so the majority of the games required files can be front loaded to enable play to start quickly.

I've got a relatively slow 4 Meg link here in the UK. That means a DVD sized Xbox game at 7GB can be downloaded in approx 4 hours.

Thats not so bad. Is it ?

I think for PCs, this will increasingly be the case. In part because productivity software is going to drive it -- not gaming software.

But I think for consoles and handhelds, it will quite a while (decade plus) before this happens. The infrastructure in the US could not handle it, let alone in other places in the world.

I certainly hope brick and mortar stores won't go extinct. There are many people who have very slow connection and the general non-tech aware population doesn't urgently need of faster connections which are vital for reasonable download times. Combine that with the increasing size of games and lack of incentive to stretch broadband speeds further up.

From what I hear, the broadband infrastructure in the US is among the worst in the developed world. Even when comparing big and dense cities. I expect DD to catch on in Europe earlier than in the US, not to mention Korea and maybe Japan too.

If DD becomes the only way to buy games, then i'm putting on my pirate hat.

I don't buy "air".

I usually get 500KB a second for a good connection to a server, which is fast enough for most uses. Next year I will probably get double that, which means I will be able to get a full game in a couple of hours. Which for me is far more conveniant than going to a shop!