I've written about digital versions of full retail games before and now almost two years after I've posted that article I come back to it.

Why? Because both Sony and Microsoft are embracing digital releases a lot more then before. Almost every week now a new title hits Xbox Games On Demand service, and every month a new game lands on the Playstation Store (with a one hour trial for Plus users). I still don't think its enough, however Sony has taken an interesting turn on this issue.

Sony has several games that have released day one (or relatively close) that users don't have to wait. And not small titles either. Mass Effect 2 came out as a $60, 12 gig download and now infamous 2 has done the same.

By providing this content quickly I feel helps legitimize the digital version. A user doesn't have to wait. They can make that choice sooner and fulfill their preference. I don't see why more companies don't embrace this idea. This should be the version that makes the most money with no packaging and shipping. No investment needs to be made on the companies part. A copy is "made" whenever a customer downloads instead of making a copy hoping the customer will buy it.

I still think we are a little bit away from this being a total transition. The bandwidth and high speed internet penetration still isn't where it needs to be, but it will be someday