Getting digital only ?

Hey guys, i want to know your opinion on buying digital games only . I know many PC gamers ( like myself) are used to buying their games that way, but what about going full digital on consoles and everything in between ( movies,tv,music..) Im planning to do this with the next gen consoles and games in general, i think collecting boxes just take up space.

Please let me know your saying in this topic.

I probably would do it, granted that digital have wide support by console developers, but sometimes the prices are far worse than what you can get in a shop.

Having a game in your hands always feels nice, but if I buy digital it's because it's usually cheaper. The moment both types of distrubution cost the same, then it's pretty much up to whether I'm really interested on having a physical copy of the game (e.g. Diablo III, Borderlands 2 VHE) or just want to play it.

I never buy in local shops, though. Retailers like GAME and GameStop are shit. Amazon, always Amazon.

Only if the consoles decide to come with a big HDD out of the box. 
I can't be bothered buying one for a console anymore since all of them just go in my PC.  
 
But I'll still be buying boxed copies too, just to have them. 
I've been going down that path for decades and see no reason to stop the madness now

Despite being all digital on PC for years now, I have not bought a single digital console game and doubt I will. With consoles every 4-5 years they expect you to throw out the system and buy a whole new one and there's never any promise that you will be able to play your old games on the new one. With PC, no matter how old the game is you can always play it as long as you got windows. Sure, some older games you might have to jump through some hoops to get patches and edit some files to get it to run correctly, but you can almost always keep playing the games. Not so much with consoles.

If this next gen they release some way for you to always have access to the older stuff that you bought digitally then I might break down and buy a couple, but as is I'm sticking to physical disks for consoles so I know I can always play them as long as I have the system to plug into a TV. Which sucks, because fumbling with disks sucks and it takes up a shit ton of space. Plus the digital stores on console sucks really bad, and overcharge for stuff long past when they should have price drops that match/surpass what you can find in stores. The only good thing they have done better is Sony and the PS+ free game every month thing. But even that's hit or miss on if it's going to be a game you actually want to play or not.

On consoles, mostly physical unless the digital is really cheap.

I mostly buy digital on PC because it's really cheap. And that's fine with me. I'm getting to play the game at a great price. But I have to wait a long time from buying the game to actually play it because games today are big and my internet connection is good enough, but not great. If I had all physical PC games, I could uninstall a game without worrying about wanting to play it later and realizing it's not there. As it stands, I can't just play a lot of my PC games "on a whim" because they're not downloaded or installed.

This problem can be fixed by buying enough storage space for all of your games, but I don't really want to spend that money.

So, yeah, one of the advantages of consoles is that I (mostly) can just toss the game in the disc drive and I'm playing pretty quickly. Again, having to download stuff is a small price to pay for the cheap prices, the faster framerate, the higher resolution, better graphics, all that fancy stuff, but just having it there at all times is something I kind of miss.

Full digital on PC? Yeah, I highly doubt companies (other than EA) are going to invalidate your purchase.

On consoles? I don't trust those fuckers AT ALL.

The only way I would go all digital is if prices stay consistent with retail versions of the games. It would also be great if digital versions would be available on other shops other than XBL or PSN, like if amazon would be able to do digital sales, that way games could go on sale and wouldn't stay at 60 dollars for three years.

I'm totally down for it. I agree on the saving space thing. It can become an issue pretty quickly with me personally.

If the price is comparable and I have room in my I buy digital. This is already the case for me with my Vita and PS3 (and even more so on PC).

The problem for many people is that the Internet is simply not fast enough or bandwidth too expensive to accommodate this transition yet. In Australia, my family has one of the fastest and largest internet plans among my friends, and I still have to space out my Steam downloads (I'm somewhat concerned about the amount of games I have to download when I get back to Oz).

@mandude said:

I probably would do it, granted that digital have wide support by console developers, but sometimes the prices are far worse than what you can get in a shop.

Only if you count used copies, which is silly to compare.

Digital all the way for me. Cheaper, more convenient, less risk of loss (I'm more likely to lose a disc than Steam is to go out of business before I stop giving a fuck about my Steam library).

The only time I can think of that being different would be if I end up deployed in the Middle East at some point, where the only thing slower than mail is the internet, if you're lucky enough to have access to it.

I don't care either way. Once I'm done with the game, I'm probably never going to play it again, so it's just a matter of prices and resell value.

Until they find a way to let you resell digital copies or a service like OnLive is executed better, I'll stick with physical copies. I don't want to buy something that I'll play once and then be stuck with it forever. I like to resell or rent my games, so until digital allows you to do either, I won't make the switch.

Until consoles start pushing for a all digital future I'll keep buying discs more than downloading them. Also I like collecting games as well and that leads to me buying physical more. But for every thing else its almost all digital except for buying a few blue ray discs.

Unless digital sales on console are comparable to Steam where everything's intermittently on super-sale, I don't think we'll see wholesale adoption of digital-only purchases on consoles. Also keep in mind that high-speed, non-metered Internet service is sadly not ubiquitous in the first world. I think that's one of the major stumbling blocks in the way of an all-digital future.

Borderlands 2 is £60 on PSN, it's probably £30 in Game or on Amazon. All digital consoles ain't hapnin' soon, unless Sony stops letting publishers set the prices and makes everything affordable.

I only buy digital PC games (via Steam and GOG.com) and music from iTunes. Films, TV boxsets, and console/handheld games, I want the physical product.

@AlexW00d said:

Borderlands 2 is £60 on PSN, it's probably £30 in Game or on Amazon. All digital consoles ain't hapnin' soon, unless Sony stops letting publishers set the prices and makes everything affordable.

That's not the Publishers or Sony's doing. That retailers telling the console guys that they cannot charge less than full price for games.

Also I like going digital. There is something about just having everything available at your finger tips that's so convenient.

The consoles would have to open up their platforms to competition like steam/amazon/origin or I don't see it working.

Nothing like going to the Playstation store or Live marketplace and seeing 5 year old games going for $59.99...

Other than that, I'm all for it.

I would love to go all digital, but my broadband, which is about 2Mb, means newer games in particular take a torturously long time to download.

depends on situation. I still buy some PC games boxed (very rare though) and they are usually game I am really excited for (i.e. Total War Shogun 2, XCom, Skyrim) sometimes I like having the box for a game. On the other hand I recently wanted to play some older games on the 360, looked for them digitally and they weren't available so I bought them box copy. If the game is something I just want to play in the moment then I would much rather just get it digitally. Although if we ever did go to an all digital market for games, you wouldn't hear me complaining. The used game thing doesn't factor in for me since most of the games sold to used game stores around me are either junked or artless, which means I'm not interested.

@mikey87144 said:

@AlexW00d said:

Borderlands 2 is £60 on PSN, it's probably £30 in Game or on Amazon. All digital consoles ain't hapnin' soon, unless Sony stops letting publishers set the prices and makes everything affordable.

That's not the Publishers or Sony's doing. That retailers telling the console guys that they cannot charge less than full price for games.

Also I like going digital. There is something about just having everything available at your finger tips that's so convenient.

But that's 150% of full price. I would understand it being the regular RRP of £40, but £60? That's a ridiculous rip off.

I'm full digital on PC and mostly digital on PS3. Call me an optimist, but I think Sony will allow the digital games I'm currently buying to carry over to the new console. I'm a PS plus subscriber and I can imagine a scenario where they allow people with the service to carry over save and game downloads, maybe I'm completely off base.

I didn't always use to be download only, mainly because PSN download speeds sucked, but I've noticed a huge improvement this year. I've also moved away from playing "AAA" titles to more "indie" games which are mostly available for download.

I'm totally ready to embrace download only. They just need to have an interface that manages a game library. PS3 does not have this. There's a lot less clutter because of my lack of game disc, I have no attachment to the physical media as an object, its more convenient because I don't need to go to a store to browse, and you can swap in a new HDD on a PS3 for easy upgrades.

I love having boxed copies of everything, as I do have a pretty bad collector's habit. I always make sure I get the boxart and manual with every game I get though, the whole manual thing has unfortunately been dying out recently. I've said in the past that as long as I can get a disc, even if it costs more (to a reasonable extent), I'll get a disc. 
That being said, PS+ has got me to get a lot of retail games digitally, simply because they were free, and I'm not going to rebuy them to have them on disc or anything THAT crazy. 
And for awhile there, I was buying CDs for music, but Amazon MP3 has converted me too (a million times better than iTunes by the way)- though I still get physical CDs for my favorite bands, simply for keepsakes.  
Pretty much all of my movies are DVD/Blu-rays though; I can't think of any of the top of my head that I have digital only.
 
So I don't know.

You can't go full digital on console because Sony and Microsoft are charging extortionate prices for new retail releases right now.

Unless you like being ripped off.

Edit: Hm actually I find Sony quite fair on Vita pricing, but they still have ridiculous prices for newer PS3 games.

My two cents is consoles are not really their yet for me to support digital only. The big two reasons is one digital copies on consoles are normally not discounted or have fire sales promotions like say steam would where you could get a game 50% to 80% off the normal price. Digital games are often same price or maybe 10% cheaper, when in turn store deals which are pretty often have reasonable sales and promotions.

The second reason would be space size on consoles are not that great and on the current gen front only PlayStation 3 allows you to freely upgrade your hard drive to have a decent shot a going all digital if you buy games often. Because when most games are anywhere to 8 to 12 Gb easy you will eat up anything lower then a 640gb hard drive. I have a 1tb and if i had all my games digital i would be worried even then.

As a bonus point i think worrying about these digital games being lost or not transferable to a new or next gen system is also a very valid reason also.

@AlexW00d said:

@mikey87144 said:

@AlexW00d said:

Borderlands 2 is £60 on PSN, it's probably £30 in Game or on Amazon. All digital consoles ain't hapnin' soon, unless Sony stops letting publishers set the prices and makes everything affordable.

That's not the Publishers or Sony's doing. That retailers telling the console guys that they cannot charge less than full price for games.

Also I like going digital. There is something about just having everything available at your finger tips that's so convenient.

But that's 150% of full price. I would understand it being the regular RRP of £40, but £60? That's a ridiculous rip off.

Again Sony wanted to give us a discount for buying the games digital. That's what they wanted to do with Warhawk but the retailers threatened to stop selling PS3s and it's games if Sony did that.

I'd have no problem going 100% digital on the Vita, but I'm not paying effin' $80 on a big memory card. Why are SD cards so unfeasible?

@mikey87144 said:

@AlexW00d said:

@mikey87144 said:

@AlexW00d said:

Borderlands 2 is £60 on PSN, it's probably £30 in Game or on Amazon. All digital consoles ain't hapnin' soon, unless Sony stops letting publishers set the prices and makes everything affordable.

That's not the Publishers or Sony's doing. That retailers telling the console guys that they cannot charge less than full price for games.

Also I like going digital. There is something about just having everything available at your finger tips that's so convenient.

But that's 150% of full price. I would understand it being the regular RRP of £40, but £60? That's a ridiculous rip off.

Again Sony wanted to give us a discount for buying the games digital. That's what they wanted to do with Warhawk but the retailers threatened to stop selling PS3s and it's games if Sony did that.

I don't know if i buy that because war hawk was already 40 digital and at retail it was 60 which included a headset to offset the 60 dollar price tag. Not saying it untrue but i don't think it a good reason to say why digital prices can be a bit more competitive. PlayStation plus is a prime example of them moving in the right direction.

Also i do understand there are some retail pressure to slow down an all digital age but they are not even playing on even playing fields at the moment. Even with the retail pressure the consoles should have ways around these by offering their own deals for digital sales.

@MordeaniisChaos said:

@mandude said:

I probably would do it, granted that digital have wide support by console developers, but sometimes the prices are far worse than what you can get in a shop.

Only if you count used copies, which is silly to compare.

Digital all the way for me. Cheaper, more convenient, less risk of loss (I'm more likely to lose a disc than Steam is to go out of business before I stop giving a fuck about my Steam library).

The only time I can think of that being different would be if I end up deployed in the Middle East at some point, where the only thing slower than mail is the internet, if you're lucky enough to have access to it.

Not really. Older games generally go down in price much more frequently and significantly than their online counterparts. Just check out PSN; they have five year old games still going at full price.

I can still buy boxed retail copies of games for about 15-20€ cheaper from stores on release day than anywhere online no matter what pre-purchase sales etc. there are on Steam or other digital stores.

It's fucking nuts.

@phantomzxro said:

@mikey87144 said:

@AlexW00d said:

@mikey87144 said:

@AlexW00d said:

Borderlands 2 is £60 on PSN, it's probably £30 in Game or on Amazon. All digital consoles ain't hapnin' soon, unless Sony stops letting publishers set the prices and makes everything affordable.

That's not the Publishers or Sony's doing. That retailers telling the console guys that they cannot charge less than full price for games.

Also I like going digital. There is something about just having everything available at your finger tips that's so convenient.

But that's 150% of full price. I would understand it being the regular RRP of £40, but £60? That's a ridiculous rip off.

Again Sony wanted to give us a discount for buying the games digital. That's what they wanted to do with Warhawk but the retailers threatened to stop selling PS3s and it's games if Sony did that.

I don't know if i buy that because war hawk was already 40 digital and at retail it was 60 which included a headset to offset the 60 dollar price tag. Not saying it untrue but i don't think it a good reason to say why digital prices can be a bit more competitive. PlayStation plus is a prime example of them moving in the right direction.

Also i do understand there are some retail pressure to slow down an all digital age but they are not even playing on even playing fields at the moment. Even with the retail pressure the consoles should have ways around these by offering their own deals for digital sales.

I'd be shocked if it wasn't better the next time around. The Wii-U, for all it's fault, does allow devs and publishers to change the price of their games almost at will so it wouldn't surprise me to see Steam like sales on Sony's and Microsoft's next console.

Only annoying thing is the price's on games on some of the console online stores sometimes can be excessive compared to retail if its a general full priced semi/big budget games, and the online stores for consoles probably wont be competitive until the majority of us are buying online and when or if retailers slow down or die out which we will be all living in space by then.

@deano546 said:

I would love to go all digital, but my broadband, which is about 2Mb, means newer games in particular take a torturously long time to download.

That's the major thing a lot of digital distribution enthusiasts forget. Even if they've got great internet speeds, the rest of the world and indeed the gaming community most likely doesn't.

@Terramagi said:

Full digital on PC? Yeah, I highly doubt companies (other than EA) are going to invalidate your purchase.

On consoles? I don't trust those fuckers AT ALL.

This is basically what it comes down to for me.

The only time I buy digital on consoles are for games that do not have a physical copy. I don't trust Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo to still allow those games to be downloaded. Game already randomly disappear from servers and can't be re-downloaded sometimes. I think Fable II did this recently. On PC I always just go for digital when on Steam. I am gambling, but I have faith since the platform is a PC and not going anywhere. Consoles are a little too proprietary to trust with that kind of service. The Wii-U has to boot into a Wii mode in order to play the old Virtual Console and WiiWare games doesn't it?

I find it hard to buy full £50 games digitally but I have no problem buying £10 games digitally. Basically if it comes in a box I would rather have the box, I need to get out of this silly mindset.

I love owning a physical copy, ahh that new game smell!, but would purchase digitally if the price reflected the lack of effort in the method of delivery.

I love having boxes, and I hate having multiple hard drives.

But I welcome this future at this point.

I think the next gen is going to be digital friendly and allow all the games and save from this generation, but like many of you said...price is an issue, if they dont change that, then amazon better start selling points cards on the cheap.

I like to go digital because then I can just boot it from the hard drive/SSD of the console or PC without the need for a disc but the prices also matter which I really hope the console manufacturers can get right by next gen.

PC: no problem going all digital. Consoles: no way in hell

I'd be fine with it if my internet wasn't so shit.