@skywake
There's always going to be a large market for physical copies of games, and I think if anything, games (At least on the PS4 and Xone) have shifted away from digital, with 50GB launch titles. Good luck downloading that with any sort of a bandwidth cap, or a slow internet connection. Even with music, you can still buy an album physical if you want. There's nothing, that I can think of, that's ever going to replace an old-fashioned tangible copy of your favorite games.

Not to mention, a pure digital gaming would just be a hollow shell. Imagine if older consoles had been pure digital machines, A Link to the Past, Symphony of the Night, Final Fantasy VII, would basically be ghosts, unplayable by virtually anyone today (Unless they happened to still be on somebody's hard drive). People who want to keep the games that they love for the ages have only one choice, and that's a physical copy that isn't tied to servers. Not to mention the people who want to loan their games, the people who want to rent their games, people who want to trade their games, people who want to sell their games, among others. Unless digital distribution as we know it changes completely reinvents itself, these people will continue to buy solely physical games.

And at the core of things, in what way is digital a superior format than a physical copy? It's slight convenience at the expense of only partially owning your games.

Do I think digital will go away completely? No, not that I can see of, but I think if anything, the "digital only future" will seem pretty silly to gamers 30 years from now.

In 30 years games will be way too huge to run off slow disc drives. You can see how lame framerates, glitches and load times are nowadays so it will only get worse unless they make super sonic speed disc drives... The only problem with that idea is the heat produced would melt your CD's and consoles

You're thinking about right now rather than in the medium term and you're talking to a person who lives in Australia. Australia's the land of slow internet connections and bandwidth caps so don't go acting like I don't understand. I did also mention that I still buy physical copies of music and movies did I not? As I said, games are a different sort of media. There's no degradation in quality, there's less attachment to the content and there's a very strong grey market that's chewing into long term sales. So yes, that's where we're going and I think it would be foolish to ignore the inevitability of it.

Sounds like a bit of paranoia more than anything. I own my copy of Portal just as much as my copy of Super Mario Galaxy and I can still play both of them. I can also still play my copy of World of Goo that I got on WiiWare when that was a brand new thing. Digital also allows me to download games like A Link to the Past on VC so it's hardly something that's "lost" because it's not physical. If anything physical disks are more vulnerable than the copies stored in RAID on random servers that are duplicated across servers in server farms that are also duplicated.

Also if one company is particularly restrictive with their DRM, like EA's constant requirement for online in Sim City, then I'll simply refuse to buy content from them. That's what competition is all about, if we don't like what someone offers collectively then someone else will do better and the first guy will lose our business. See XBone. Valve in particular are fairly saintly in that regard.

Convenience yes, that's the majority of it and not a trivial thing. Also flexibility: http://store.steampowered.com/sharing/

I have not, but I know people who have. I do have a 2TB external HDD for my WiiU, but have yet to need to use it (I have four pages of games/apps on WiiU also). I prefer discs.

I will never buy a digital version of a game I can buy retail - I can always buy the games cheaper in store, I can sell the game, if I am done playing it, or I did not like it (though I rarely sell anything, maybe every 30th game). If we will be forced to buy digital only, I will abandon consoles and switch back to PC, where the digital sales are at least for competitive prices. How else could MS still be selling Halo Reach for 149.99€ or Nintendo making a huge price cut for SC: Blacklist making it finally at least the same price as it was in retail stores at launch. So unless there is a huge change in selling policy I will gladly stick to the good old

I'm finding some great deals on physical copies of Wii U games that I doubt I'll ever get digital. (Nintendoland for $20, and my brother found Resident Evil: Revelations for $15.)

Just to clear up the confusion, Ubisoft is in charge of SC's price

The fact that there's less overhead on digital is precisely why Steam can have their prices as low as they are. As it is the console manufacturers have to keep retailers happy by not undercutting them. If they started to undercut the retailers then they'd stop selling as many physical copies. Less physical copies sold means less shelf space and shelf space is everything when trying to convince potential buyers your platform has content. PC gaming doesn't have that problem, it's an open and ever evolving platform that people are already invested into.

Same with the used game sales argument. Used games kill the profitability of certain kinds of games which creates this continuous release cycle model we see and also bumps up the price. It is technically possible to have a digital licencing system that allows you to "sell back" your "used" licence after purchase. Then the next guy buys a "new" copy but with higher discounts on "new" and with all of the money going back to the developer. Valve is pushing this sort of model already, if it proves popular expect it to stick.

I am not 100% digital but there are some great games digitally. Many games that are available digitally wouldn't see the light of day on disc. If there was no digital platform then 3DS owners wouldn't have gotten to play the new ace attorney. I think once companies understand digital Wii U might get more attention as companies won't have to waste money on boxes and store shelves.

why would anyone go digital?

probably because they feel like it.

it's a valid enough reason. that's my reason for not having gone digital, because i don't feel like it. it's part of having the freedom to choose :3

I have only purchased two digital games that were available at retail.

Super Luigi U, as its just glorified DLC, and Animal Crossing for the 3DS. Though it was handy at the time, after about three months I was so completely tired of Animal Crossing it made me regret I went digital for it. I could have sold it in August for $25-30 easily online had I went retail. Oh well, that green leaf icon will continue to sit on my 3DS home screen as a reminder to never purchase a retail title in digital format again!

@skywake
So PC physical copies are already basically dead, then? I understand physical copies will always exist at retail, but that's beside the point that PC has already been in a similar situation. The only difference is that people weren't throwing as much of a fit for PC.

The reason why Steam is so much cheaper is because it's a digital only platform. As you can see here, not everyone wants to buy digital copies from a home console because it can't compare to Steam pricing, but Steam is how it is now, because it gave up physical copies for the most part.

For 1st party games I think going digital makes a bit more sense. Nintendo's games don't tend to drop quickly in price or very much(if at all):

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword...

However, they usually have a lot of replay value so people don't sell them as quickly.

For 3rd party games, buying retail makes sense. Price usually drops a lot faster and replay value isn't as high.

I've bought a couple first party games digitally since they'll pretty much never drop significantly in price, and I like the convenience of owning games digitally.

I can see the convenience of digitally downloading games. However, I am not one to do so and I only download games when they aren't available elsewhere. I work right next to a Gamestop and if I ever want a game I know is coming out soon, I simply walk there and preorder/reserve it.

I like having physical boxes of my gaming shelf _{mainly because I've been doing this my whole life....heck - I still have some NES games on display}. Whenever I have company over, I like for them to notice my...."physical media" :winky: _{I also have my DVDs and books on display in the same manner.}

I will buy digital if that's the only option for a game. If I had known this game was being made as a physical release I would have waited on it. But, at the time, it was digital only - so I downloaded it.

Anyways, it's just personal preference is all.

The ducktales game is still just a download code in a box right?

You could keep the box and give the code to a friend or something.

if they started doing it like this I'd probably go all digital. since the manuals got useless and boring only boxes(and the fact you don't need to "upgrade" the memory) make phisical worth it

I'm all-digital on the Wii U and it rocks. The digital deluxe promotion is awesome (constant 10% rebate on all purchases, basically), and if you wait for sales just like you do for a retail store, you can come pretty darn close to paying as little as some of the best sales I've seen. Sure, the eShop is no Steam when it comes to daily specials, so you do need a bit of patience. It's wonderfully convenient having all of my games in one place and not having to swap out discs all the time, and with so many smaller digital games becoming popular, it's not uncommon for me to spend 10 minutes or so on three or four different games in a single play session.

I know what you are referring too and, apparently, this isn't that. This is actually a physical disc release. http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/11/ducktales_remastered...

me too, I actually went out of my way and sold nintendo land and then downloaded it just cause I wanted all digital games. I think it's great, if there is a game coming out that I want then there is no need to preorder and then hope they have the game in the store on release day (that happened to me before, i didn't get the game for a few days later). I just stay up to midnight, buy, and go to bed. Then next morning, BOOM! Right on my home menu. Easy as pie... Or mayonaise...