Video Games Going All Digital
29 October 2013
For this to happen, the price really needs to reflect the lack of physical media, and its physical distribution methods.
As it stands, some distribution services charge more for digital games, than their physical counterparts. This is just plain
insanity. Okay, so you can argue that convienience is worth the extra 5 or 10 quid, but is it really?
In my case, it is not, and I'm sure the majority would agree. Lets say, for example, I were to buy the digital version of
Call of Duty Ghost on pc. To download 30 gigabytes would take 10 hours on my connection. I could very easily walk to a store,
buy from the shelf, return home, and have it installed in a tenth of that time.
Now onto the cost of digital. How can they justify charging at least the same as the physical product, when the digital version is
lacking media, packaging, shelf space, and distribution methods that involve transit across the road/rail/shipping network?
I expect a digital version of a game to cost at least 10 quid less than its physical counterpart. Other than the
massive download time, lack of physical item and the physical distribution methods, I firmly believe that 10 quid is a reasonable
discount for digital due to one other factor; bandwidth.
Many people have very low bandwidth allowances, the size of modern games would destroy the bandwidth allowance in no time. In my area, with just one isp provider, unlimited bandwidth is between midnight and 6am. So to download a 30 gig game would actually take around two days if you had to be careful of your download allowance.
So is going all digital actually worth it yet? For me, thats a resounding no.
note* I do have a very large digital library on steam, due to their incredible sales. I will not however, justify paying anything near full retail price for a digital pc title.
