Digital Distribution

Digital Distribution is what the future holds. GameStop doesn’t think so though and they are planning to stay around for a while. People at GameStop also believe that once Digital Distribution is an option, that only 25% of their customers will have fast enough internet speeds to consider the option. GameStop doesn’t see what is right in front of them, people have been buying more and more games from the downloadable service like Steam since the turn of the century, and it’s only growing in popularity. More and more companies are putting their games on Steam because of its ease of use and low piracy rates.

I think that Digital Distribution will be the future, but the people to really make that decision is the console makers. Nobody will every download full games made for the Wii because there just isn’t enough storage. I don’t mean Virtual Console games, I mean games that come with a physical case that has a Wii logo on it. Also with the XBOX 360, the average game takes up about 7gb if you include ripping the game to your hard drive and the data. This means with even the highest sold capacity for the XBOX 360, you can only have 17 games on it. For the PS3, the average game disk holds about 17gb of date (Blue Ray disks can hold up to 25gb) and they have a hard drive that is only 120gb which leads at about 7 games. It may seem like a lot, but hardcore gamers have a lot more than 7 or 17 games in disk form.

If Digital Distribution is the future, we need one of two things to happen. One is that consoles need to come with more storage. Computer hard drives these days are extremely cheap and consoles usual use the same kind of the hard drives. What would be cool is if you can swap hard drives in and out as you wanted. Like have an entire hard drive with your shooters on it and another with driving games. The ability to swap hard drives in and out with a loss of content would be a new feature to consoles.

The other thing that needs to happen for Digital Distribution to work is the same thing that Steam has had for years: An online account that keeps of a record of everything you buy. With steam, I can download a game and then delete it and still know that I can download it again without paying for it a second time. What’s even more forward thinking on Steam’s part is that you can’t have the same Steam Account logged in on two different computers at the same time. If you login to you Steam Account, it will logout the other computer if there is on with the same credentials logged in. This makes it tough for people to share a Steam Account. The only problem with copying the Steam model over to consoles is that I can make a backup of Steam games I have installed to CD or DVD. This is a problem for consoles because they can’t burn a disk.

The real question to this whole debate is will Digital Distribution take off for hardcore gamers? We gamers enjoy the feel of a new game, the satisfaction of being able to touch what we own, and to let our friends borrow the game. To me, nothing in the gaming world is better than to be able to touch the case of a game, to know that you own it and that no one can play it without your consent. Although I do like Steam and have close to about 30 (if not more) games from the service, I enjoy looking at my cases and ,especially, have them scattered around the house or in a book case to show off. I think this will be hard for the hardcore gamer to give up, and it might end up being that in the future there is downloadable games for the casual gamer and physically games for the gamer who need reassurance that they own it.