…only the (some) lack of digital delivery is what I’d need.

I don’t need new geforce every 6 months ;)

This card is about 10 times more powerful than the PS3 or XBOX360, and still it’s already 6 years old, and costs about $30 if you can still get it somewhere. So PC gaming has been always cheaper over time. You can’t buy a PS3 for $30 today, and when both came out, the PS3 wasn’t even much cheaper then, just about the same price.

The only thing which consoles keep over time, is their price. Their technology has been obsolete for over 6 years now.

I’m so certain that bandwidth is much less expensive than shipping the things across the planet. I think it would make more money to publishers, but since I’m not that familiar with the console world of publishing of games I cannot tell… who knows what kind of deals they do with shoppes and distributors.

Also, if they can do it for couple of big AAA games, how come they cannot do it for all big AAA games?

Also, I’m not saying that digital download should replace completely physical media. I also like to collect for example movies. I just think that all games should be at least provided in digital format.

Digital delivery has couple of issues:
- one is sharing the discs that you mentioned, that indeed is an issue
- being afraid that “I cannot get my game if something bad happens”

The first one won’t be solved (and it’s bad, but I think the benefits are greater).

What comes to the second point: I’m much more afraid that I scratch my discs.

In almost everything else, digital format beats physical media.

The PS3 (I can only speak for PS3 and PC) has some games available for full download (inFamous, LBP, SOCOM, Warhawk, Burnout Paradise), and a large range of other games available as well. Given that full games are available for download, I suspect DRM isn’t the main issue, and I wouldn’t be surprised if cost came into it somewhere – while it’s tempting to think otherwise, both upload and download bandwidth isn’t free. For larger games (God of War III is upward of 30 gigs, for instance), I wouldn’t be surprised if the upload and server maintenance costs weren’t comparable, if not more, than for purchasing at a bricks-and-mortar store.

I also suspect that, outside of a few niche consumers, there isn’t a huge demand there. There are no file size limitations on the PSN – if EA want to make NHL 2010 available over the PSN, they can (like they did with Burnout Paradise). There are some games on the PSN that were originally planned as retail releases and then became download only. But its not the console holding back what’s available, its the publishers. Given that publishers want to make money, it’s likely that they consider the costs to outweigh the benefits at this stage.

hopefully sony will get smart next gen, why waste money on paying the discmakers and shitholes like gamestop?

note how i fail to mention ms or nintendo? theyre both screwed, ms has no 1st party studios left and nintendo devs are only familiar with making cartoon games on decade old hardware

But, I still prefer having the disc for console games. Heck, even for most PC games. Why? Because then I can share it. I’m not tied down to only the console (or account) I bought the game on, I can let my friend borrow it, it won’t suddenly stop working because they no longer run the DRM authentication servers, etc.

Buying digitally, I’d have to go pirate the game in order to be assured of my ability to play it years from now.

Sure, Steam and others promise to release patches if they ever shut down, but that’s a promise easily broken. Reflexive Arcade made the same promise, and a while after Amazon bought them, they were shut down. Guess what? No patches. There were people who had spent hundreds of dollars on those games, who will no longer have what they paid for when they have to get a new computer.

So, yeah, digital downloads are great. But I dread the day when that’s all we have.