Of course it "hurts them", every used game sold is lost profit for them.

yes, it does, it's mostly profit to the stores

..I see. That answers my question. I still try to buy new when possible though. I hate trying to pick those nasty stickers off my precious cover art. And what will I do when I'm bored if there's no manual in the case to flip through!? Eww and sometimes used game cases stick.. has anyone else had that problem? stinky cases. makes you wonder..

For the most part, no.

When people buy something from Gamestop, they generally sell something back and most of the time it's something new, or so I'm told.

That said, developers would rather you buy new, that's why they're starting to offer incentives to buy new. For instance, offering a free DLC code with new copies that would normally cost $10.

Sure they do, the computer you're on, if its a Windows OS or a Mac OS, those companies said "hey, this is what's the latest and greatest..oh btw, we're not supporting the old OS anymore"

Its very simple for companies to force everyone to the next product or method by simply making the old method unavailable. As said, piracy under advanced digital distribution is a lot harder to do than disc based systems. How does the Wii get hacked for piracy? Through a program on a disk, no?

Keep in mind that digital distribution would actually lower the cost of a game by $10-$20, since no manufacturing needs to be done once the game is made into a digital package. Plus it's a lot more "green friendly"

Firstly I dual-boot - like me some Ubuntu.

Secondly Windows is actually a bad example of what you're trying to say, becaus Microsoft tried to move ovr to Vista, consumers rejected it, and now Microsoft has to try again. Consumers dictated that Vista would not succeed, so it didn't.

It's not that simple, because if consumers reject those initiatives (again, like with Vista) then companies lose a lot of money. If consumers reject an all-DD model, companies will go out of business. It does not make financial sense to not serve as wide a market as possible.

That last is part of what I like about DD, but we're not really talking about the merits of DD vs. physical media, simply that the consumer will be the one to dictate the direction of the industry. This has happened time and again for every major media shift.

Yes is does hurt developers. Yesturday was the first time that I have bought a used game. I bought Ninja Gaiden Sigma for the Ps3. It has been a game that I have wanted for sometime now. I remember wanting it when I bought Heavenly Sword back in the day. Although I do prefer Heavenly Sword over Ninja Gaiden, I am happy that I bought Ninja Gaiden. I no longer would not have bought it new. I did get a prestine copy of it for less than $20.00. Overall this was a great buy.

I simply disagree. Gamers won't stop gaming if all provided platforms go DD only. They won't be able to easily hack and pirate, so they'd either have to stop gaming or conform to the new standards. Plus, not all people are resistant to the concept, granted that there is either a location at a store they can get their downloads from (like a kiosk) or internet connectivity service improves in speed.

Here's the thing, though

A DD-only model is necessarily going to lose money because it appeals to a more narrow userbase. There is goign to be at least one company who provides physical media solutions, and all the customers will go to them. You'd have a point if there wasn't going to be any alternatives, but there will be because not every company is blindingly stupid.

Again, if nothing else, Nintendo will be the guys to break that model.

Notice I mentioned on the individual level. So you are talking about a person's actions. Him buying it used or not is the same as him getting it from the internet or not.