The thing that services like Steam, Stardock, and Disk2Drive are teaching us is that legally downloading games is a big business. The last time I bought a computer game from a retail store was when I was in college, and that is a loooong time ago. The ease of firing up some software, clicking a buy button, and never having to leave the house is hugely convenient. Hell, you can even download new release games a week before they are out and just patch in a fix to unlock the game on release day.
We are now seeing the big dog of this convenience work their way to the PS3. While we may be far from know the full impact of Steam on the PS3, we can easily speculate that game downloads from this service are sure to follow. After all, you can already download specific games off the PSN/Xbox Live/Wii Stores. What is to stop developers from pushing this same style of offering through Steam for consoles?
All of this convenience comes at the loss some gamers just don’t like. The loss of box art, physical media, and instruction booklets doesn’t jive with some people. Some gamers love to show off bookshelves of their massive game collections. There is something that is extremely satisfying about tearing the package off a hotly anticipated new game. The new plastic smells as you pop the game case open the first time. Not to mention the anxiety that is slapping the disc in the drive and downloading that first gameday patch. All of this is lost at the click of a button on downloadable games.
Now community, what do you prefer? Do you love midnight launches, fondling disks, and walls of game cases? Do you like being able to just click a button and do something else while your game downloads. Tell us your thoughts on Twitter, Facebook, or here in the comments.
Popularity: 2% [?]
2 comments