One recent debate that has been brought up in the gaming industry is the impact of digital downloads. Since games have entered the current console generation, downloadable content has become the standard. DLC has touched every genre, nearly every game on almost every major gaming platform. Entire games can now be downloaded in a matter of minutes, from Xbox Live's Games on Demand to Nintendo's Virtual Console. With all this advancement of DLC, the question is raised at what point do we stop purchasing discs all-together and move to an entirely digital medium?
Gamestop has even been bracing itself for this potential threat by offering downloadable content as an in-store sale. They even went as far as to hint that DLC could be traded in and purchased pre-owned sometime in the future. Pre-order bonuses have also taken a life of their own, with Dragon Age 2 pre-orders recieving free upgrades or Halo: Reach pre-orders getting bonus armor. The threat is fairly evident when other retailers in similar industries, such as Blockbuster, have been nearly destroyed by Netflix and the movies on demand you can purchase or temporarily rent from your cable provider.
Digital downloads have a number of advantages. One advantage is effort. Human beings are often lazy: now I don't want to generalize people with negativity, but I don't believe for a minute that if you could instantaneously have a copy of Black Ops teleported into your home that you wouldn't do it over having to actually go out and drive to your local game retailer. Digital downloads are cpable of removing the "shopping" element from purchasing games. Have you ever been looking for a title at a store that was out of stock? I tried to get a copy of Split/Second at Gamestop a few months back and was disappointed when an employee told me they didn't have one. You would never have to worry about a game being out of stock with downloads. You also might never buy a bad game again: community ratings, while abusable, still reflect the general consensus of thousands of people and are a fairly decent indicator of whether a title is worth playing, and they appear next to every download I've ever seen. And downloads have the advantage of being playable right off your console: this means your disc can never get scratched and you never have to change discs. A friend of mine ruined his copy of Reach by accidentally nudging his Xbox while his game was playing and the lens carved and irreparable ring into the shiny surface: needless to say, the disc never played again. A digital download is immune to this problem. Are you tired of having to get up and switch discs every time you're bored of Dead Space 2 and want to earn some more kills in AC: Brotherhood? My game collection is technically in a different room than my consoles and PC. I'm not saying this is a huge problem, but CD systems had 5 disc compatability for a reason.
However, digital downloads have a number of disadvantages too. For one, accessibility. In order to sell downloads, you need the capacity to actually download them. Not everyone has their Xbox or PS3 connected to the Internet, for a number of reasons such as cost, Internet speed, and connection issues. Assuming digital downloads take over in a future where everyone and their dog have full wifi connectivity worldwide, this wouldn't be a problem, but in a realistic present day and near future it's totally impractical for developers to create a product that a section of consumers can't purchase. Secondly there's the space issues. I'd say the average "hardcore" gamer has a respectable collection of games in their collection, maybe somewhere around 30 - 50 individual titles. Arcade and indie games, as well as add-ons and expansions, don't eat-up too much hard drive capacity, with most DLC barely hitting 1 GB. But imagine every game you owned, which equal several GBs of memory, were all on your hard drive. Even the mighty 250GB 360 Slim HD couldn't stand up to that much content. Again, in the future we might be running hard drives with hundreds of terrabytes of memory, but regardless, there is a finite number of games you can own with digital downloads. You can argue discs and game cases take up physical space, but any reasonable collection of games could not actually become cumbersome to store in your place of residence. And finally, downloads are susceptible to being completely deleted all at once. Imagine if your hard drive was lost or broken, or a server crash caused all of your account information/profile to be deleted. You could potentially lose thousands of dollars/euros/pesos/whatever in an instant with no record of having ever purchased it. Granted, your disc could get ruined, in the case of my buddy's copy of Reach, but he had that copy exchanged for a new one using the reciept he recieved for buying it. You could also lose your game collection in a fire, but that's what homeowners insurance is for. Losing your profile or hard drive means your download history is gone forever.
I've presented the two sides and now I'd like to hear what you think. Please, take the poll and leave a comment.
Gamestop has even been bracing itself for this potential threat by offering downloadable content as an in-store sale. They even went as far as to hint that DLC could be traded in and purchased pre-owned sometime in the future. Pre-order bonuses have also taken a life of their own, with Dragon Age 2 pre-orders recieving free upgrades or Halo: Reach pre-orders getting bonus armor. The threat is fairly evident when other retailers in similar industries, such as Blockbuster, have been nearly destroyed by Netflix and the movies on demand you can purchase or temporarily rent from your cable provider.
Digital downloads have a number of advantages. One advantage is effort. Human beings are often lazy: now I don't want to generalize people with negativity, but I don't believe for a minute that if you could instantaneously have a copy of Black Ops teleported into your home that you wouldn't do it over having to actually go out and drive to your local game retailer. Digital downloads are cpable of removing the "shopping" element from purchasing games. Have you ever been looking for a title at a store that was out of stock? I tried to get a copy of Split/Second at Gamestop a few months back and was disappointed when an employee told me they didn't have one. You would never have to worry about a game being out of stock with downloads. You also might never buy a bad game again: community ratings, while abusable, still reflect the general consensus of thousands of people and are a fairly decent indicator of whether a title is worth playing, and they appear next to every download I've ever seen. And downloads have the advantage of being playable right off your console: this means your disc can never get scratched and you never have to change discs. A friend of mine ruined his copy of Reach by accidentally nudging his Xbox while his game was playing and the lens carved and irreparable ring into the shiny surface: needless to say, the disc never played again. A digital download is immune to this problem. Are you tired of having to get up and switch discs every time you're bored of Dead Space 2 and want to earn some more kills in AC: Brotherhood? My game collection is technically in a different room than my consoles and PC. I'm not saying this is a huge problem, but CD systems had 5 disc compatability for a reason.
However, digital downloads have a number of disadvantages too. For one, accessibility. In order to sell downloads, you need the capacity to actually download them. Not everyone has their Xbox or PS3 connected to the Internet, for a number of reasons such as cost, Internet speed, and connection issues. Assuming digital downloads take over in a future where everyone and their dog have full wifi connectivity worldwide, this wouldn't be a problem, but in a realistic present day and near future it's totally impractical for developers to create a product that a section of consumers can't purchase. Secondly there's the space issues. I'd say the average "hardcore" gamer has a respectable collection of games in their collection, maybe somewhere around 30 - 50 individual titles. Arcade and indie games, as well as add-ons and expansions, don't eat-up too much hard drive capacity, with most DLC barely hitting 1 GB. But imagine every game you owned, which equal several GBs of memory, were all on your hard drive. Even the mighty 250GB 360 Slim HD couldn't stand up to that much content. Again, in the future we might be running hard drives with hundreds of terrabytes of memory, but regardless, there is a finite number of games you can own with digital downloads. You can argue discs and game cases take up physical space, but any reasonable collection of games could not actually become cumbersome to store in your place of residence. And finally, downloads are susceptible to being completely deleted all at once. Imagine if your hard drive was lost or broken, or a server crash caused all of your account information/profile to be deleted. You could potentially lose thousands of dollars/euros/pesos/whatever in an instant with no record of having ever purchased it. Granted, your disc could get ruined, in the case of my buddy's copy of Reach, but he had that copy exchanged for a new one using the reciept he recieved for buying it. You could also lose your game collection in a fire, but that's what homeowners insurance is for. Losing your profile or hard drive means your download history is gone forever.
I've presented the two sides and now I'd like to hear what you think. Please, take the poll and leave a comment.
