Yes, I’m sure Valve will at some point be absolutely disgusted with raking in piles of cash and fuck over every consumer on their service. Maybe they’ll have so much god damn cash that they can no longer walk from their offices to the coffee machine without getting lost in hallways that have overflowed with cash, getting papercuts everywhere. “Shit guys, we have so much god damn money, let’s just close everything down, fuck the gamers.”
I’m all-digital for PC games, and I order all my console games from Amazon, so I guess I’m more anti-brick than pro-click.
Your strawmen simply have the most darling ribbons and bows.
SHHHHHHHHHHH! SH! SH! SH! SHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Not really - some software like Space Rangers 2 come stripped off the obnoxious Star Force DRM for example. The last thing I want games to do is to install different types of CD-checking rootkit software. I’d rather be online, though I understand that’s not really an option for those without a good/constant connection.
I should described option 3 a little better, but it’s meant to cover what your situation (CEs and other goodies that only come with the boxed set). However, I would probably discount these simply because these are minority releases.
To address some other posters’ issues on discounts - Modern Warfare 2 is now at 50% off at Steam, Trine at 75% off. I don’t see myself getting off the Steam wagon soon.
On whether click is faster than brick - I find a game I want to buy, I commence the download before I leave for work, and back in time to play it. Plus I can buy it whenever it strikes my fancy (I don’t have to find the time to get to a store or wait for it to open). I don’t have to make a side-trip to a games store, so it really fits my mode of purchase. I can imagine there are people who have the time on their hands to be able to hop over to a game store at any time of the day and head straight home to install and play it, but for me, I save myself an hour of commute.
I’m done with discs. Even with the xbox it has to be something special formy to even consider a disc release vs waiting for it to show up on market place. I’ve even stopped playing my store bought backlog in hopes of picking up those titles on sale on D2D or steam.
I don’t like digital distribution at all, especially for consoles (although it’s much better for a PC).
Suppose my Wii breaks and I lose the ‘rights’ to all my VC games. Well, I have to go through a lot of trouble to get them. Suppose in ten years that happens. Will Nintendo still restore them? Will Nintendo still allow them for download? Thirty years from now, do I get to download a Wiiware game from them that I own? Xbox Live has already shown some digital games simply disappear and you can’t get them again. Same with DLC.
I also like to have a physical representation of what I just spent a lot of money on. If I’m spending $40 on a download, or $40 on a hard copy, I’m taking the hard copy. I also have that collector spirit from when I collected little toys as a kid.
Digital distribution takes more hard drive space, and since I want to switch to solid state hard drives soon, which are exceedingly expensive for their space, I would rather have games run off of a disc and not completely on the drive. This is more for consoles than PC, since you have to install on PCs anyway.
So far I’m neutral on PC digital distribution, and definitely not a fan of it for consoles.
No Steam for me, thanks. I prefer not having a middleman when I play my games.
Why?.
Good luck getting your 30 year old Wii to work.
I have more faith in services like Steam and GoGamer keeping games compatible with newer operating systems than I do PS20 and XBox 2160 being backwards compatible.
Nerds around the world work together to keep old games playable. If you can play something on XP via emulation, and you can even emulate XP, I think we have a good shot of keeping that going for decades. The only hope for consoles is emulation as well, and they sure don’t make that easy.
I try to minimize clutter in my life, so I’ll never purchase physical media when I have the option of a digital equivalent. That goes not just for games, but for music, movies, and books. Not having to deal with a physical copy of a product adds enough value that I would routinely be willing to pay 25% more for it.
Good luck getting your 30 year old Wii to work.
Well, my 15 year old Saturn works, and my 25 year old NES works. I don’t put faith in the idea I buy a game and Nintendo will provide it to me for as long as I want it, who says they’ll even stay in business? And if they do, they will just hope I give in and buy it again, that’s more profitable. I also imagine people will be able to reproduce their own Wii hardware in 30 years, but let’s suppose Nintendo found a way to prevent anyone from ever pirating their software, some ultimate DRM, and the only way to ever play the game was through them. Does that sound like a good scenario, to have to HOPE for piracy for the safety and backup of your own software? Some people have to spend 30-60 minutes talking to Microsoft employees just to get their downloaded games restored to their 360, and sometimes they don’t even manage to get them all. 360 isn’t very old at all.
I like retail copies because modding is still easier that way than with STEAM.
It depends on the game, if they’re the same price, I don’t want the CE, and Steam doesn’t stop me from modding I’ll get it on steam. That sounds like a lot of qualifiers but most games are the same price or cheaper on steam, only a few games come out as CE’s and even fewer of them are games I want, and most games mod perfectly well.
So why not?
Why in god’s name would any sane person pay more for less? If you’re that phobic to physical media, you may as well just buy a physical copy of each game, then download a cracked version, then throw away the original. Extra crazy style points for not even breaking the shrink-wrap before tossing it.
You must be trolling because the reasons have already been mentioned, but I’ll bite:
- Easier to buy digital
- Cracks take effort to find one that’s not virus riddled, works and you aren’t even guaranteed they’ll crack patches as they come.
Agreed.
I buy whichever is cheapest. Due to the “long-term rental” nature of most digital outlets, I press for a larger discount.
Oh hey, arbitrary internet aggression guy is talking at me. In answer to your question, I would say that clutter consumes your life in countless little ways. Every time you move out of your apartment, every trip to the store, every time you organize your catalog of games, every time you go looking for an old game in your collection (which became spontaneously disorganized when your back was turned), you are loosing time which could have been spent in more productive tasks. Like explaining yourself to broken people on the internet.
You mentioned piracy as a potential solution to this, but then all the time you save not dealing with clutter is spent trying to get the damn thing to work. I’m not paying more for less, I’m paying more for not having my time wasted.
Ayup.