But if the price is right, I'll go for DD like Steam, Impulse, D2D, etc.
So, I always prefer disc/or DRMless DD (I don't give a rats ass about the disc, just the freedom it entails, I throw away all boxes, keep discs in a big folder, and keep manuals in some box in my garage). I own a shitton of games on Steam, because all of them I got for such a cheap price I was okay knowing someday I might not be able to play those games anymore. Not to mention username/password problems.īut, if you reduce the price enough, I'm willing to give up those freedoms for the savings they entail. D2D has activation limits, and eventually you have to ask their permission to keep installing your game, who knows how long it might take for them to get back to you.
People like saying Steam allows offline play, but truth is that feature is broken a significant amount of time, and is flaky all the rest of the time.
Plus, when you rely on someone else to let you play your game, their are always going to be problems. Some have a lot of freedom (Steam), some have less (D2D), but all limit my ability to play my game in some way. With DD (except GOG), that freedom is not available.
This is very valuable to me, and is a significant factor when I buy new release games at full price. And you can make backup copies of it too to even eliminate the possibility that the disc will wear out. When I buy a game on disc with normal DRM (cd key, cd check), I can play that game whenever I want on whatever system I want for as long as I take care of the disc. Might be awhile, 5, 10, 20 years, but it'll happen.įor me, it is a cost/benefit analysis. 100 years after we are dead all those millions of copies of Gears of War 2 will still be lying around in landfills somewhere since there probably won't even be consoles to play them on or TVs compatible with them anymore.Īt least until whatever digital distribution platform you are using decides it's no longer profitable to provide that game for downloading. I also am trying to be more environmentally conscious and every bit of plastic that is saved helps. Especially with a game that big, I like the ability to boot it up anytime between other games or when I'm waiting for friends. I just bought Fallout 3 last week because it was finally on the DD service. I personally will often wait until something is available on digital to buy it on 360. And in that case, it is little different from keeping it on a disc permanently.
It's technically possible they will shut down your ability to redownload it in the future, but that doesn't stop you from just keeping it on the HD permanently. It's not like those companies are going to come to your house and delete it off your harddrive.
With DD you can redownload it to any hardrive, or even another console.Īnd for the paranoid crazies that think big bad Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft are going to take away your games, you can always download it, rip the CAT5 from the consoleand never hook it back up to the network. If anything, the physical copy is more restrictive because it is limited and locked down to that actual disc. With a physical disc, if you loose it, scratch it or break it, you are fucked. You can still pop the harddrive off and take it to a friends in the same way you would a disc. The only real advantage to the disc is lack of the ability to resell it.
I don't see how "owning" a game on a Harddrive is much different than "owning" it in physical media. I suppose its all speculation at this point however. In time I would expect prices to drop significantly as packaging/manufacturing costs go away and cutting retail stores out of the equation should further reduce prices over time. It seems to be the most fair system to them as they obviously are not happy with the used/resale market.
One thing I like about DD is more money goes to the developers. Naturally I dont think the industry is going to fight for something like that but I suppose we can dream. Ideally there should be a way to sell things back or trade in the DD market, I dont see why DRM could not be used to manage these types of exchanges. I dont ever buy a game with the idea of selling it back in mind so my freedoms remain in tact. I like most people here do a ton of research on the games that interest me so I make smart buying decisions. I'm kinda in the same boat as in the last 10 years I've only re-sold a single game. A DD system is ideal for him, convenience is something he values more than the ability to resell a game. In his defense its not an issue to him, he's not giving up a consumer freedom because he does not exercise the right to sell the games he buys.