360 gaming blog.

Is Digital Distribution a good idea?

Lots of great changes have happened to our consoles in the last few years but one I’m particularly interested in is Digital Distribution. I don’t think its full potential has been reached yet. It has been a great success on the XBLA but can that success transfer over to full retail games? The games on demand service has introduced this idea but what I’m interested in seeing is games being released digitally the same day that they are released in stores.

The pros and cons of Digital Distribution:

Pros: No game disc to break/scratch, less strain on the console as it doesn’t have to read a disc, console is quieter, can be bought anytime day or night, more money goes directly to developers, reduces clutter and more environmentally friendly.

Cons: Collectors like to have psychical copies, less competition on price, companies may delete from console e.g. Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, could take a while to download if you have slow broadband connection/limited bandwidth, might see the end of special editions, need a big HDD to install lots of games also what if your HDD fails?

So it seems like there are more reasons to be against Digital Distribution. But if you have a good internet connection and a 250GB HDD then it seems like just as good an option as buying a hard copy. That really interests me as I am constantly trading in games that are just taking up space on my shelf. Granted I wouldn’t have all that money from trade ins but then I would choose what games I wanted to buy more wisely.

Also for it to be a viable option in the future they need to drastically lower the price of digital games to at least match the price of games at retail if not a bit lower.

Another point I saw some people arguing about online was would you still play games if they had the same graphics as they did in the 70s/80s? And will graphics just keep getting better or will there be a point when they can no longer be improved? What if they have already reached that peak?

Arctic Hydra 87