While downloadable online content has been around for many years now, only the last couple of years have seen measurable differences between a digital and physical product. It wasn’t necessarily because it was “before its time” or even too expensive, mainly it was because it was simply easier to stroll down to your local electronics retailer/used game store and pick up the game yourself. However, times are a changin’. Xbox live ushered in an entire new era to gaming with not only the actual game play itself but also with the Live Marketplace offering users ways to download content like never before. Yesterday at E3 Microsoft took the wraps off of their latest enhancement to the Live service: Full retail game downloads. Now that a major service and manufacturer of traditional physical hardware has moved on to supporting even more digital content, could one view this as the beginning of the end for physical gaming media? Stimulate your brain and enjoy a conversation or two after the click
While the full retail download catalog will be kinda sorta small at launch, 30 titles total, you can be sure that the list is going to grow. It saves Microsoft money in that they don’t have to stamp millions of DVD’s and purchase equally large amounts of game cases and other retail related materials. Instead, one simple file (ok many files but you know what I mean) on their server can now serve millions. It appears as if Microsoft has tapped into what will be the future of gaming – and it’s about time. Being able to download full games will be so much simpler and easier for customers as they won’t have to worry about lines or unavailability, problems that often plague brick and mortar stores.
But what about businesses and companies who make a living off of physical media? Gamestop anyone? That company in particular lives and dies by the amount of used and new games that are resold/sold for profit. With the move to digital downloads, all of a sudden the old buy, use, resell method somehow doesn’t transpose to a digital copy. Reselling a digital copy is illegal (don’t even get me started…the double standards and hypocrisy are beyond words) meaning no more used games flowing in to Gamestop and other stores of that nature. New games will continue to be made on discs for quite a while as not everyone has internet service. Again, discs and their physicalness aren’t going anywhere in the near future, but, what about 5, 10, 15 years into the future. At what point does the market finally move to all digital downloads. What if you stopped selling physical games in stores and took care of non internet users by mailing their games to them directly? Do you think that would appease the non internet users?
For techies, the move to all digital is an exciting one that means more convenience. However, with it comes less freedoms. One possible setback I can already foresee is the lost ability to bring games to a friends and play it on their hardware. Sure you can bring your entire Xbox or hard drive, but bringing a disc is so much easier, not to mention, in regards to moving the entire Xbox a lot smaller.
What’s your take? Are you all for digital downloads, the faster they get here the better? Or are you calling out “woah Bessie” as you pile all of your physical games into a corner and rock back and forth nervously? Have we finally reached the beginning of the end for physical media? MP3′s haven’t fully done it. Online video downloads/rentals haven’t yet done it either. Will the move to digital full game downloads be the last needed push to bring the market over into the digital age?
Source: Alley Insider, Image Source
