Earlier I read, over on IGN, that the digital sales of Mass Effect 2 on the PS3 were a good sign that simultaneously releasing a new game in the shop, as well as the Xbox Marketplace or Playstation Network could become a more regular occurrence.
Personally I don’t like the idea of buying and downloading all of my games. I'll buy a game from the Xbox Live Arcade every now and then, but when it comes to games like BulletStorm, Fight Night, Homefront or any of the other big releases coming up, I want a physical copy in my hands.
Mass Effect 2 was priced at £47.99 on the Playstation Network , I paid £39.99 over a year ago for a new copy for the 360, it is also a 12Gb download, that is roughly 1½ hours for me to download plus installation time on the PS3, . I can be in town and in my local GAME within 10 minutes of leaving home, then another 10 minutes for the walk home, then I can pop it into the console and can be playing. It also gives me a solid 20 minutes of fresh air.
Maybe its the hoarder in me, but I like to look at my bookshelf and see the game cases staring back, having a collection, be it games, books, or little china cats in funny costumes, is partly about the ability to look over it every now and then. It doesn’t have the same feel looking at your 360 or PS3's hard disk space screen as looking over the row (or row's) of cases with some really nice artwork, at time they can be downright hideous though.
If digital copies are the future of home entertainment, I'm not sure how I would react to that.
I'd still play my games, but would look back longingly at the bare shelf space thinking of the good old days...
Am I alone in thinking like this?
Completely agree Gaz. I always prefer a hard copy to fall back on, as you say, sizes of games are huuuuuuuuuge and there's nothing like getting the actual game in your hands on release day. I do the same with CDs, always buy an album on disc rather than a digital copy.
ReplyDeleteAnd it would be physically impossible to supply a hard drive big enough to handle every game you could want to purchase.
ReplyDeleteYes you could delete games to make space and download it again, but what if the company who made "example game" go bust, you would have to keep that game on the hard drive until it dies, but then what? Hard drive failure and you have lost.
With physical software you can keep the disc forever.. Well within reason.