I don't have either of the new consoles but my digital copies of Yakuza 4 and Mirror's Edge on PS3 work perfectly fine offline.

All my PC games work offline too (well except Diablo 3).

I'm not gonna claim to be an expert, but I don't think PC infrastructure is as centralized as consoles are. Steam can go offline and you will still be able to play any number of multi-player game if the game's matchmaking services is up, whereas console matchmaking seem to rely on PSN or XBox Live.

Hell a large number of PC games use player run servers so they could theoretically be playable forever.

I dunno how long you've had your PS3, but the number of games I have... There's NO WAY IN HELL they'd all fit in the hard drive, or even in a 1TB. We see this with people's Steam collections and, as time goes on, we're going to see this issue with PS4 and Xbone.

Don't even get me started on always-online... Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 for the PS3 had that shit, and was thus unusable during the 2011 outage.

While not ALL of PC gaming can be quite as easily affected, it's entirely possible to stop people being able to install their games, and as Steamworks and VAC become ever more common, Steam becomes a very desirable target. Even an individual game can be affected by attacking its master server.

The all-digital future for consoles is a dystopic one indeed. Though presumably Sony and Microsoft would have more measures in place to help them deal with these sort of DDOSing (though I don't actually know how much can be done).

But yeah, the moment consoles go all digital is likely the moment I'm out (lest I can buy things at a significant discount), it's bad enough that games are being released barely functional without a day one/day 50 patch. I prefer to actually own my games, thanks. I'd likely stick to my old systems and maybe build a gaming PC where I'd try to make most of my purchases DRM-free (though I feel less bad about barely owning games when purchasing them for $1-5 and so already have a sizeable Steam library in spite of the fact I barely actually play games on my awful PC :P).

It depresses the shit out of me whenever journalists talk about the all-digital future that they've already bought into - disregarding the desires of those who don't want to be stuck without options. I hope physical will continue to be an option for a long time to come. Look at the other entertainment industries where, while digital is certainly a large part of the market, you can still fucking buy a CD or a Blu-Ray. It would be pretty fucking shitty if digital were your only option for gaming.

@yukoasho: I've had my PS3 for 3 years now (got it Boxing Day 2011) and yeah I agree. I haven't gone digital only on it and the games I do have digitally are because of deals (Yakuza 4 for $20, Mirror's Edge for $0).

Yeah, this is one of many reasons I was very disappointed when it was suddenly announced Elite: Dangerous wouldn't have an offline mode. When you have a local, offline capable game you have one point of failure - the user's machine.Discussions about the problems are often shut down with "oh everybody has Internet at home nowadays" or similar arguments that seem oblivious to how the entire infrastructure works. Making the games need to access a remote server to play doesn't just add another point for potential failure, but multiple - the user's connection, the server computer, the server connection and whatever route the data has to take inbetween, which can be anything from DNS servers, top domain root servers or even the physical cables inbetween these points. If any of these points fail you're unable to play. The link between the US and EU has gone down on multiple occasions over the past few years for example - Internet was still available for sites and servers on both continents, but you couldn't connect to servers on the other continent..

I think we don't have to worry about physical going away any time soon. Games are huge, and the discs are still flying off the shelves. Seriously, I did a double-take when I saw that Killzone: Shadow Fall required a 45-gig install. I can't imagine having to wait the hours needed to download all that instead of just going to the local Gamestop and be back and playing in maybe half an hour. Games press evangelizing digital-only used to bother me, but I've learned to roll my eyes and move on. If the last few months have taught me anything, it's that the press doesn't view the concerns of the audience with much regard.

I also love that comparison to other industries. Music is the only one where digital outsells physical, and that's probably because all music is sold DRM-Free now. For anyone to expect gaming to be the special snowflake is ludicrous. How'd that PSPGo go?

I've actually bought the majority of my games this gen digital, purely out of convenience, and it hasn't really been a problem. Even now, I can play the majority of the games offline just fine. The exceptions are games like Destiny and Warframe, which require an online connection to play, but that's not really an issue of them being digital purchases. The problem is not digital so much as the idea of being "always online".

@corevi said:

Mirror's Edge was a Plus title then, was it? I don't keep up with Plus since, let's be honest, I have a big enough backlog without freebies I'm never going to get to. :P Me, I've had the PS3 since 2007, and since I don't trade games in unless for GOTY versions... Yeah, it's dizzying how many games I have for the fucking thing.

I love the flippant put-downs whenever dissent against the all-digital-future idea are brought up. It's the sort of "let them eat cake" mentality that exposes their ignorance. Ignoring the fact that not all home internet is created equal (as I'm sure our friends stuck with Comcrap will tell you), you're right about how many points of failure can affect anything on the internet. It's kind of like the transition from cartridge to optical media. The introduction of moving parts means that disc-based systems will naturally need repairs sooner than cart based systems, which is why the PSP was such a flimsy joke compared to the DS. Hooking everything up to the internet without any offline functionality is the equivalent of adding a shit-ton more moving parts.

Exactly why I use PC as a primary platform. In all honesty though, as time goes on things like basic DDoS attacks will become far more preventable , and this is hardly a reason why all digital is bad. I don't entirely think its there yet, but more time than not it is fine.

Well, there's not only the whole "being able to fit it all" that will eventually be an issue the way it is with the PS3 and 360, but what happens when the older systems are left behind? Not a whole lot of people know this, but the original Xbox had an Xbox Live Arcade. It was full of really small titles, much like the sort of stuff we saw in the early days of the Xbox 360 XBLA. When the original Xbox was pulled off Live, all those games went bye-bye. This will eventually happen with the 360 and PS3, though I imagine not quite as quickly as it did with the original Xbox.

They did attack Steam a couple of weeks ago, They were only able to interrupt some servers. I was still able to play and install games during that time. Eliteness remains intact ;)

@yukoasho: Nah it was completely free as part of the Playstation Experience along with Need For Speed Most Wanted for Vita and PvZ Garden Warfare for PS4.

I'm not really sure how preventable a DDoS is. It's literally just a ton of computers hammering a server with hits. It's like saying that we can prevent a store from being packed to capacity without forcing people to wait in line, only with this, a smaller group of people can use the careless downloading habits of many more people to create an army.

I'm not sure if I'd go as far as to say ALL digital is bad. I LOVE GOG.com and the DRM-free offerings on humble store. However, requiring the internet to install a game, or in extreme cases to even play it (Hi Ubisoft!), presents hackers and script kiddies with too juicy a target. Also, while it's not the topic of the original post (or indeed the site), businesses that don't have enough redundancy can be vulnerable to attack. I seriously can't believe Sony Pictures had pre-release movies and corporate communications floating around on the general internet. You'd think the mega-corps would have the sense to make their own corporate intranets...

If they ever go digital only, I'm out on consoles for sure. With the exception of the rare instances where I play something on launch day, I buy almost all my of console games used (often for less than half of the retail) on sites like half.com. I am buying a physical copy of the game, not merely a license to play it. Also, there is literally no chance I'm giving up my right to resell something that I supposedly paid to "own." It is impossible to completely divorce the concept of private property/ownership from the irrevocable right to use or transfer. In short, absolute restraints on alienation are fundamentally unfucking American.

You're right. We should abandon any thoughts of a digital everything future because of the few days we can't access our digital video games thanks to some mischievous troublemakers out there having a digital wank at our expense.

This digital zealotry must be expunged from our gaming culture, and a return to physicality in all gaming endeavours reinstated as the only acceptable norm moving forward. Never again shall we leave our video gaming desires to the whim of the fates (or DDoS attacks). Yes, bad things can happen to physical media, and it can be a modicum less convenient at times, but let us never forget about those times during the year that we maybe won't be able to play our digital video games, especially during the overwhelming majority of the year when we can.

I know that isn't always easy to do, especially when you're having fun with video games, and that's why we must make efforts to stop this trend while we currently don't have access to PSN, or Live, or whatever's down at the moment. I'm not sure because I'm just watching Firefly on Netflix (great show; always wanted to check it out). If the service(s) comes back, I fear we'll lose this momentum, as people from around the world slowly start playing their console video games.

I urge you all to change your avatars in solidarity of physical-only video gaming, and think of a clever hashtag that we can use to spread the word. We cannot afford to leave our ability to play video games to luck. As in "we're lucky we have power", or "we're lucky we didn't have to go out", or "we're lucky that my PS3 still reads discs".

Especially with the tone. Sounds like he's scared for his life.

I'm willing to accept all the problems that will come along with Digital only. It is kinda ridiculous to not attempt to push forward because of a few problems. I was once like you actually, I did not want a digital future but after getting into PC gaming last year where it is far more convenient to get games digitally, I prefer it. The sense of ownership that you feel like you are going to lose was a problem for me as well. It ended up not being a problem though, I don't feel like I own my games less. The storage space problem is only a problem on consoles. Right now, I could buy a 4TB hard drive for my PC for around £100 which could probably store all of my games so I never need to download from servers again. I haven't done that because I've yet to experience an outage on Steam/Origin/Uplay that was longer than a few hours.

First off, thank you for being the only person on the pro-digital-only camp not to come off as dismissive of my position. It's quite refreshing to be able to look at someone on the other side and not have my blood boil, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Funnily enough, I came to my position over the course of time as well. I had a Steam account and didn't really think much of it. In... 2009 was it? Long while ago, but somewhere around then, Steam servers got knocked out because of a thunderstorm, and instead of going into offline mode, the client just wouldn't let me start my games. It was then that I started having doubts. The 2011 PSN hack pretty much cemented my decision to pull back from DRM-based gaming. I've replaced nearly all my Steam games with either physical console releases or DRM-free alternatives such as GOG or humble store games marked DRM-free. It's a bit more of a hassle, sure, but I feel a hell of a lot more secure in the knowledge that I'll be able to play my games regardless of what goes on online. While I certainly respect people's liking digital, I don't see why so many people find it so offensive that some of us would rather not have that be the only option.

Well, to be fair, you can make local backups of your Steam games if you really wanted to. Either way whether digital all not every option always has their own limitations.

@yukoasho: I think other people were dismissive because you came off as as a bit of a dick in your original post. "PC elitist bastards" isn't a great way to start a dialogue.

I tried to do the backup thing. You have to log into your account to install the backups, and unless they've fixed it, installing from backups is quite slow compared to installing from stand-alone game installers. And yeah, everything has its issues; I just think there has to be a serious discussion instead of "it's the future, shut up!"

I agree mostly. I don't think PC is the same issue, as generally as hard drive sizes increase, they are easy to upgrade whereas consoles usually only support up to a certain size limit of external drives. And the servers for PC games are often not a single infrastructure for all Steam games, like PSN or XBL. All that said, I bought 4 digital games this gen so far and regret all of them. Two because I didn't like the games, and the other two because I can't play them right now with the PSN down (Injustice and NBA 2K14).

Also, US Internet infrastructure is crap. I live in the south. Near the large cities, there's Comcast and Uverse. In cities with populations less than 100,000 (which is all but a handful), there's typically one local provider with speeds below 15Mbps at the highest tier for $50-60 a month. So there's no way discs can go away in the US within the next 10 years.

I'll admit I could have been more diplomatic. Lesson learned, don't blog immediately after reading a comment section. So many PC gamers mocking console gamers having to put up with this, it's actually quite infuriating.

I love the posts of people saying they are out when all digital happens. It's already happening. It will be standard next time around.

And I'll be out. What do you "love" about that exactly? Just because it's going to happen doesn't mean I have to like it. Seems like a really weird and misplaced sense of schadenfreude you have there.

I just simply don't understand why people aren't all for options. If you're into all of your games being digital purchases, that's fine, I totally understand that you love the convenience and all of the positives that come with it - why that has to mean that everything must be digital is beyond me, though. It'd be nice if people stood up for us all having options.

I was able to play my all-digital Xbox One games just fine yesterday (to be honest, I'm not sure how the PS4 handles that issue, but it was no problem on the Xbox One which was nice). Sure, if I'd wanted to download something, I would've had to have waited a whole twelve hours for the servers to come back online (oh, the humanity), but otherwise playing my digital games offline was absolutely no issue at all. Microsoft and Sony both also allow you to download system firmware to an external device and update through that method, so the idea that new Xbox One's were merely paperweights yesterday is laughable, as anyone with a computer and a thumbdrive could update their console.

You seem needlessly vehemently opposed to digital games, much beyond the point of rationale, and your post certainly doesn't boast a strong understanding of networking. The way your post is written is as though all game hosting servers are constantly down, but it's just not the case. On moderately rare occasion servers go down for less than a day, and then things return to business as usual. It's foolish to try to DDoS attack a large host such as Microsoft/Sony/Valve for a prolonged period of time as a botnet consists of a limited number of hosts, even if it is a substantial number, and that's why we never see anything go down for long; malicious traffic can be mitigated given enough time, and APDoS is highly unlikely given the source of the attacks. Prolonged outages due to a substantial back-end hack like the Sony outage of 2011 are very unlikely to occur in that fashion again, both due to advances in security since the PSN back-end was likely written in 2005-2007, and especially considering that now for both leading competitors their online services are a source of profit and not a point of cost.

Physical and digital distribution methods both have advantages and disadvantages, and realistically for most people they're going to be pretty even. Honestly, the best argument you can make for physical games at this point doesn't have anything to do with a loss of access to installation for two days out of the year, but rather game preservation for the future (assuming playing your games from generations past is important to you). Truly, the sensible thing is to keep both methods of acquiring games an option; there's not a right or wrong answer as it's a case-by-case basis.

I don't really need to hold every game on there at once though. I generally avoided buying many big memory hogging titles on the PS3 because the 120GB hardrive it came with couldn't actually hold that much, and the download and install speeds were not good. (Plenty of people complained about download speeds on the PS3, but I thought the install speeds were the real problem.) Unless game sizes increase dramatically the standard hard drive in the PS4 can hold a lot of games. Probably not every game I ever buy, but enough that I shouldn't feel like I'm playing inventory management and constantly clearing space to hold a few games.

Someday when it looks like all of this data might disappear for good I'll probably invest in a much bigger harddrive to store it all, which by then you should be able to buy several terabytes of storage for nothing. Again, it's still the always online games that are worth worrying about. Once those servers go down games like Destiny will not be playable even with a disc. The rest of it I'm not that worried about.

Going all digital is not the problem and the PSN/Xbox Live outage doesn't prove that going all digital is a problem. I bought most of my games through PSN and with the exception of online only games like Destiny, I can play most of them. Yes, if you bought something and while it was downloading/installing and the network crashed then of course you won't be able to play it, but then again going physical isn't going to help when there's a day one patch you need to download and you won't be able to. You might still be able to play the game, but if it's like the case with a pre-day one patch The Evil Within, you'll be playing a lesser, inferior game.

I think that's an assumption. The problem with the generation previous to that is that the online infrastructure was largely built around those consoles. The Xbox Live Arcade you mentioned was a disc you had to send in for, not a system level feature. It was a clumsy, ineffective, and new technology. It was actively holding back the following generation of consoles by being poorly integrated at a system level. Those flaws were largely addressed by the time the 360 and PS3 launched. And while I can certainly see online servers continuing to be pulled for multiplayer games, maybe even some features lost as time goes on (trophies for PS3 might go away as they seem to be holding back PSN), I don't think it's unreasonable to expect support for downloading purchased games and DLC to be available indefinitely.

I agree it's important to have physical media available, but I don't look at digital with the same doomsday theory some others do. A hybrid market is the best outcome here. Physical media available for those who want a collection for definite posterity, digital for the immediate accessibility and convenience.

Oh I still play old games. Games don't stop being fun once they're not new.

And I think everyone would agree that a hybrid market (a TRUE hybrid market, not just putting codes in stores or requiring online activation for physical releases) is the best, and honestly likely, outcome. There are going to be people, as you mention, for whom digital is fine. Good on them, and if DRM in games goes the way of DRM in music, I might welcome it a bit more. However, the prevailing ideology by digital-only zealots and much of the gaming press is that one has to preclude the other, and much like @meatball, I feel like it's little more than reveling in the idea that other people's needs will be ignored. There's certainly no reason not to have both, if only so people can buy a more permanent version of that game they bought for $1 on some Steam sale and ended up enjoying...

"rotten"

there's that hyperbolic negativity again!

@nesa:

1. If Xbox Live is down, how does being able to download firmware to a flash drive solve anything? If you can't pull down files on the consoles, you likely can't from a PC either. Also, there are still a lot of people who get consoles as COD/FIFA/Netflix devices who don't know/care to do that.

2. No one is "needlessly vehemently" opposed "beyond rationale". They backed up their position with opinion. You may disagree, but that doesn't remove their rationale. A rationale is a reason for opinion. And they have one that they stated. Maybe you meant "beyond reason" or "rational", which would still be wrong, as they are entitled to an opinion much as you are, and what you'd consider "reason/rational" is subjective.

3. Sorry not everyone here is a Cisco certified expert in networking technologies for media companies. That in no way means his points are invalid. Also, you can't claim that we have made great strides in back end security when most companies have failed to implement those standards due to cost and general disinterest (example: Sony Pictures).

I'm not even the OP, but even reading your post as a general commenter just seems combative and dismissive.

Your argument would be a lot more persuasive if you didn't use words like "zealots", "raving fanboys", "elitist bastards".Those words tend to attract a scummy crowd that will do nothing but berate you, and you will deserve it. All of those "all digital or bust" and "only the good old days" types, fuck 'em! They don't even matter. They just wanna spew shit at each other and make no real progress on the debate of legitimate hurdles to the all-digital future and whether or not that's actually the desirable end-goal for video games.

On the actual topic itself, I don't think one little setback like this is enough for a 180-degree turn back to how things used to be. Yeah, it totally sucks that people can't download their games when the networks are broken, but this problem is going to be fixed soon, and during the 99% of the time that the networks function properly, having digital games ends up being much more convenient.

You can still buy a disc, though. These problems that I call "little" are still too big for justification of removing all physical media for purchase. I myself may have already bought into the all-digital future, but there are still major hurdles to overcome before everybody jumps on board. That's the mistake Microsoft made with the Xbox One; they assumed everybody would be totally cool with their supposed vision of the future, ignoring any factors as to why they actually wouldn't. It's the hubris of big companies and the frequent attacks on their infrastructure by script kiddies that produce skeptics like you. If we're still having major DDoS attacks like this 10 years from now, and companies are still touting the big all-digital future that everybody should have gotten behind yesterday, then they need to do some deep rethinking.

Last digital game I've purchased was maybe Metal Gear Revengeance about 2 years ago and all I can say it's pretty liberating knowing I can just pick up games on the fly without the hassle. I do agree that the two biggest issues can be harddrive space especially with how large games are on current gen and possibly losing access to the game online but at the same time you can easily lose out on all your physical games if a giant fire hit and destroyed them all. Too many more important things to worry about in life in this day and age then if digital or physical discs are the way to go.

Never had any problems with Steam.

Part of me finds it a little funny that PSN and XBL got taken down over Christmas. I can imagine how pissed off 14 year old me would have been to be unable to play online.

1. The support site is almost guaranteed to be hosted separately from the login and game servers, and even in the event that it was also being DDoSd, you could get the firmware elsewhere with ease (and probably run an MD5/SHA sum if you were worried about its validity). As for your generalized casual group example, while I'm sure there are those who are too technically illiterate to handle the issue, I'd think most people who are downloading games digitally, and don't want to wait the few hours for the servers to resume normal functionality, could handle Google searching the issue and immediately find the simple remedy to their issue (it's a step-by-step, very simple to follow process).

2. I did misspeak and indeed did intend to write "beyond reason", and I don't think that's that far of a leap based on certain statements made within the original post. Whilst his or her subsequent posts gave the image of a more reasonable approach to, and understanding of the issue, at the time of writing my response solely with the original post in mind ("PC elitist bastards", "raving Xbone fanboys", etc) I don't feel that that was totally out of line given the context. Their response to my post was completely fair and reasonable though, I certainly didn't mean to come off as a 'dick', but rather was just presenting my point in a similar fashion as the original post was written.

3. My intention wasn't to imply that companies are magically insusceptible to hacks because it's 2014, but rather that the reasons the 2011 attack debilitated the Playstation Network services are highly unlikely to exist in the same fashion for any of the leading game companies, given what we know about the general infrastructure of the new systems.

As for the point, "Sorry not everyone here is a Cisco certified expert in networking technologies for media companies. That in no way means his points are invalid.", I'm not really sure I follow. If somebody's incorrect as a result of a lack of technical understanding, it means that what they stated is still valid because they don't understand why what they said isn't true? Obviously it doesn't invalidate every single thing they said because he made some invalid points, I never said, nor did I mean to imply that, but certain aspects of their argument certainly don't hold much water.

While I wouldn't ever expect it to happen, it'd be great if a digital copy/digital rights would just come embedded within the physical copies of games. As in, if there was just some local execution from the disk that would associate the game with your account, allowing you to download/run the game without the disk in so long as you were signed into your account (or on the same console as the account), then you'd get the advantages of both. Ideally, if you wanted to sell the game, or lend it to a friend, then the single active account would be able to be unauthorized from the physical copy and associated with the new owner.

Regardless, because of the reliance on the physical market currently for distribution as well as the used game market, it's hard to see the aspect of disks for console games going away soon. I don't think there's really anyone wishing away one form or the other though (as you refer to them, "digital-only zealots"), as any sensible person would agree that having the option to do what best suits the individual would be preferable over an absolute for everyone.

As for Nesa's point about the old games, I think their intention was that most people don't care. I'm sure a lot of people using a dedicated gaming site like Giant Bomb do, I certainly care myself, but I'd imagine if you look at most people who are buying games these days, they're almost never going to want to go back to older generations.

I've basically become a digital only person by de facto when I came to a couple realizations about myself

1. I rarely ever replay games
2. I almost never play games on my old consoles, some I haven't turned on in years.

Once I became ok with the idea I don't really actually care if I "lose" most of what I bought in trade for the convenience, instant gratification, sales prices etc.

But yeah totally events like this are proof of why consumers of all digital media deserve a "digital bill of rights" being completely transparent about what a gamer is exactly getting in return for her/his 60 dollars (explicit promise on how long the game will be available for download, what the minimum contents of a Season's pass of DLC will be and when it will ship, money back guarantee if the game doesn't work, etc etc). If gamers are going to surrender some degree of practical ownership than they should receive performance guarantees in return.

And also a reason why a purely digital only future is not a good idea or viable at this point.

Not sure who these supposed "digital zealots" are that OP references, the vast majority of people I've read seem to have their preference for physical or digital but don't begrudge others their preferred method.

The only commercial problem I see with all digital is the pricing. New releases on the current gen digital platforms are despicable. To the point where, if people vote with their wallets, the new releases would see meager sales in the first week. The only way around this would be if retail still continued as a place to buy codes cheaper.

That said, I still prefer physical but I'm buying things more cautiously so the lure of having something I can trade back is not what it used to be.

@ripelivejam said:

Eh. I prefer rotten to "problematic" or "toxic".

I got an Xbox One for Christmas and I am astounded by how many simple things are just non-existent if you aren't online. You cannot even view your achievements points without being online. You still earn them but without being connected you can't even view them. WTF?

I prefer physical because if the game sucks or you don't like it you have the option to sell it. Digital you are shit out of luck.

These service outages arn't the worst thing in the world, for a child maybe but i don't mind not having access for a few days, i've usually got plenty of things which would still be playable.

The thing you should be more scared of is hackers stealing important information.

All my digital Xbox One games work perfectly offline, besides their online modes of course.

Yeah, this is the real worry with all the hacking shit.

You can make physical backups of all your games on Steam. Not sure how the PS4 and Xbone handles it, though.

I agree, there are people like me who have bandwidth caps who can't download every single game they want.