Digital Downloads: Great thing, or the Greatest thing?

What do you guys think of the idea of having future consoles that solely work on digital downloads, with no physical media to speak of?  I believe at one point Microsoft claimed that they intended for their next Xbox to be based on digital downloads but that seems like it would cut off a large part of the consumer base.

Digital distribution is great, but there are quite a few things you will probably never be able to do with DD, like lending them out. Not everyone has access to them either, so physical copies will be the main form of games for the next several years.

haha consoles have crappy hard-drives, no.

Greatest thing.  Physical media deteriorates, but data can be transferred between servers as console generations go on.  Eventually we'll have something like the virtual console for everything from Atari to PS3.

As long as the hard drives of the consoles are expanded quite a bit than it's the greatest thing. If not....well that would be extremely unfortunate.

The greatest.

well you would think so wouldnt you?

Phantom

The greatest thing. Going to be a while till there is a console that everything is sold through downloads because not every one has there console online yet and people still like to buy a physical thing.

Ah the Phantom... 

Am I the only one that likes to actually have a physical box and disc for my games? It's good to be able to clearly see your collection of games on the shelf.

"Am I the only one that likes to actually have a physical box and disc for my games? It's good to be able to clearly see your collection of games on the shelf.

"

"Am I the only one that likes to actually have a physical box and disc for my games? It's good to be able to clearly see your collection of games on the shelf."

For me it would be a horrible thing. I prefer physical media in every aspect and hope that the day never comes where it's solely a digital download business. I wouldn't mind if they had both options, but I don't want to be forced into the digital download group.

Give me affordable solid state hard drives and all downloadable content.

It's past time we stopped relying on optical media and got comfortable with a petabyte world integrated seemlessly through the Internet.

Not great at all. I prefer physical media. Unfortunately, if the world survives long enough, I think we'll be seeing digital downloads becoming the only way to obtain something... This is probably 10 years down the road, but it's slowly starting to convert already.

Man, I'm really going to miss boxes and manuals for future games and movies. :(

I think today's consoles aren't really capable of handling it, but I'm sure the next generation will make it pretty awesome!

We would need massive hard drives, people would find a way to just copy everything to their HDD for free, and it's just more comforting knowing if anything happens, you still have a hard copy of the game. Digital downloads are nice, but I don't think they should be the way of the future.

I think we should stop physical distribution of software, It would encourage ISPs to increase the speed of internet connections for the average user plus save a lot resources.

no credit card=Not good for me

its a great idea. both physical copies and digital download have their advantages and disadvantages, whichever you choose should depend on your circumstances.

Both disks and download have their advantages and disadvantages.  I for one wouldn't want to see games not appearing on CD/DVD anymore.

Physical disks can be used on any PC and any specific type of console.  Digital downloads are often tied to an account or a specific console.  Digital downloads are great but I want to see more flexibility.

Its great, I used to use metaboli a while ago and enjoyed it, however I cant live without having a nice shiny row of boxes on my shelf :)

As someone who now lives with very poor internet and has had a history of having very poor internet, this isn't very appealing.
Also it would probably ruin a lot of retail industries, especially if movies took a similar step.
Its a good idea, I don't think everyone is quite ready for it yet

I'm thinking that digital distribution could really be beneficial to small indie developers ala Braid obviously, with big ideas but without the backing to get much further.  On the other hand, Braid really is one in a million compared the vast majority of other crap the gets released on the arcade.  It might be better to just keep physical media as simply a barrier of entry to prevent everyone and their brother from trying to make their own game and diluting the system.

"The greatest.

well you would think so wouldnt you?

Phantom
"

I like being able to buy used games. I like being able to rent games. I like having a collection of video games on my bookshelf.