Digital distribution - the future

I thought I'd start a new thread on this subject so as not to hijack the other thread...

Re: All games will be distributed digitally in the future.

Thinking about this after reading the posts in the other thread, I can't help thinking how the distribution of games digitally - both PC and console - is going to represent a major paradigm shift in favour of both consumers AND developers.

This is really quite exciting.

The industry has been under the thumb of the all-mighty publishers/distributors/retailers for a long time. This has had nothing but a negative affect for consumers and developers, as far as I can see. Developers are restricted as to what products they can develop. Consumers get nothing but samey, expensive games.

Digital distribution looks like it could make the consumers and developers king again! The suited bean-counters are going to have to beg for crumbs. :)

Hmmm, I'm not sure how this will all play out but it's going to be fun to watch!

I think we will see this becoming more and more the standard way of distributing, as we see the broadband lines getting faster and faster..

(hey.. in Japan and China they are doing tests on the new 4G system for the cell phone, getting 100Mbps download in a moving vehicle, and upto 1 Gbps when at a standstill.. :p)

Yeah, I'm not so much interested in the technology side of things - this WILL come to us all in time. I'm more interested in what this will mean for developers and consumers... and the poor men-in-suits who seem to have a strangle hold on OUR industry, at the moment.

It's going to be a revolution, I tells ya! :)

I wonder if in the future when our kids are used to everything being supplied by the Internet, if they'll laugh at our CD and DVD "collections" and say, "why do you need any of those physical objects, look at my clutter free house, it's all about "information" dad!". Maybe they'll be less interest in old computer games and hardware as antiques because you can perfectly emulate it on whatever PCs are around in the future.

Nah, they'll still have the two-tier system they have now. It'll just be a different two-tier system than we have now. Imagine trying to get an Indie game on Steam. There will still be clear distinctions between indie games and games from the big studios. Which isn't necessarily the bad thing some people think it is anyway. Most of the people who buy Doom3, Far Cry and HalfLife 2 were never gonna buy Best Friends anyway.

OK, but Steam isn't the only way to distribute games digitally. :)

TBH, I'm more interested in how the console market is going to be affected, since the PC has started aways down this road already, anyway.

Are we going to see the death of the highstreet game store? It seems we might.

What? You don't buy your boxed games over the Internet?

As for how this is going to effect consumers: Well developers (and publishers) generally don't have consumers in mind when doing their thing. What they focus on is profits. The greatest threat to profits, ofcourse being the jolly roger - which explains why even "pirate proof" games like Half-Life 2 and Splinter Cell 3 don't dominate the sales charts buy an order of magnitude. Or something.

Anyway the customer will continue to take the backseat to the developers' sportscars and the stockholders' mansions. It's not a matter of distributrion or media - it's a matter of perception.

halflife 2 is far from "pirate proof"... it was floating about out there for download within hours of it's release on steam. Cracked and ready to roll.

I would never have purchased HL2 for a number of reasons (because it makes me physically ill for one... motion sickness from games SUCKS!!!) and would never have even looked at steam if I hadn't gotten two free versions of HL2 from buying ATI video cards.

I don't like being told I have to be connected to the mother ship in order to play a game and I will resist this change as long as I can (which means until there's a game I really really want to play I suppose)...

As I posted in the other thread.

Digital distribution,... bring it on!

Crazy licensing methods that don't give you, the buyer, control over what you just purchased,.... Booooo!

Electronic distribution...don't we have that now? Can't you sell your game in download format? But who is going to know to go to your crappy little site? So you need to distribute through Steam to get any exposure. How much of a price cut do they take? How long until the men in suits you despise take over digital distribution? How is Valve different from these men in suits? They publish your game and take most of your profits.

>>This is really quite exciting.
Having already lost digitally delivered products to malliscious and/or incompetent vendors, including the much exhalted Valve, I refuse point blank to buy digitally delivered software if I cannot make a hard copy backup or, MMO's excepted, if I have to connect to the firm to use.

If I need to backup my digital delivered products to hard copy anyway just to protect myself (assuming the product allows me too), where is the progress? If the product cannot be backed up, I know already just how much that hurts.

It's not progress, it's a backward mentallity grown out of a corporate desire to make more money by doing less. It is not exciting, it is hugely worrying and a prime example of how corporate gread can really hurt their customers all in the name of progress (or more usually "anti-piracy", not that a pirate ever got bothered by an anti-piracy measure).

When I buy a commercial game I want maps books and other stuff to make it a more complete experience. Commercial titles should not be just a binary - that's laziness on the publishers part.

Digital delivery is out right profiteering masquerading as a consumer benefit. The problems with services like Steam, and even purchasing a product from an indie developer, can and do cause the loss of legitimately owned products, usually due to ignorance, arrogance, and outright faceless lack of customer care.

I've been bitten too many times by the problems with these services to ever believe otherwise. I want a shop I can take my product back too, slap my receipt down on the counter, and get satisfaction when things go wrong.

It's not nice to be faced with the problem of a "publisher" who does not respond to emails or to be farmed off to an automated support system or FAQ. What it is, is an outright tragedy that we've got to this state and that we are adopting these methods wholesale in the name of consumer liberation.

Utter rubbish.

> I want a shop I can take my product back too, slap my receipt down on the counter, and get satisfaction when things go wrong.


That would be great, where I live that is not really an option, at best an opened software package can be exchanged for the exact same title.

In the future it'll be how things are done. There's no reason to waste natural resources on packaging etc... if you can get the same information/experience without it. With games, music, and movies you really don't need packaging.

I like going to the store as well but I think that's something that won't last forever. Hopefully more social gaming spots will pop up though so there's plenty to do with gaming outside your house.



Do you think that'd be hard? There are a few on there already!

OK, I can see there are downsides to digital distribution (DD) but I think some people are being flat-out against it because of their personal hatered of valve/steam.

I was hoping the discussion could rise above that and talk about DD in the future. I'm not just talking about PC games and the internet, either. Consoles in the future will be able to DL games via digital TV services. Surely the average (casual) gamer is going to lap this up? Most don't care about boxes, shiny discs and paper manuals - they just want to play the games. And if they can get those games more cheaply than trudging down the highstreet...

I was also wondering whether a change-over to DD would mean more autonomy and freedom for developers (the bigger devcos, not indies). I'll admit I'm probably being a bit naive there - I guess the men in suits will always be in charge.

Not now, when all games are being distributed solely like this. When every game which is currently being sold retail is on Steam or whatever other systems are available, the indie games will either be ignored or hidden away in a corner where no one will look at them. And with good reason because the people who are buying retail games will still want those type of games, not the indie types of games.

Plus what Halo said. You're not going to get massive exposure and an equal shake of the stick as the big corporate games unless you're :

(A) Making the same type of games as the corporate devs.

(B) Able to invest in a huge amount of extremely high quality media, so that your game looks at worst second rate instead of third rate.

(C) Prepared to be screwed in exactly the way the retail publishers screw indie developers right now.


Distribution will change. Precious little else will. The idea that suited bean counters will be begging for crumbs is appealing but fantasy.

Digital Distribution is here! Examples inlcude: cellphone games, mp3s, ipod. It is a logical move.

However, IMHO this will not bring about the extinction of Hard Media (ie:DVD), Retail Stores, etc. Nor will it be the end all-mighty publishers who in most cases finance the development of games.

I do see small advantages for some consumers who would opt to download media. Consumers who desire the Hard Media will simply have to pay more for it.

I can visualize that in the near future, Retail Stores will gear up with super download stations and offer consumers to ability download and purchase media of their choosing.

Yes. But they want to play the game, when they chose to, not when it's convenient for the distributors limited (if vast) bandwidth.

Case in point: Asherons Call 2. Once it was no longer convenient (that is, profit margins fell below a certain threshold), the game was closed down, and people who had litterally hundreds of dollars invested in the game lost it all, pretty much over-night.

Translated to "the future of digital distribution": The only games that will be online are Counter Strike and Day of Defeat. Why? Because those are the games everyone plays. Niche games will not get more exposure, because while they won't have to compete for shelf space, they still have to compete for players, advertising space, front page space, and not to mention download bandwidth instead.

And hand-in-hand with that, Digital Rights Management. You know, the brilliant idea that the Eminem song you just bought on Napster ot iTunes, should only be played on your computer or iPod, and not under any circumstances in your car, or your stereo.

It'll be so cool, when you upgrade your computer and find out GameX doesn't work anymore, your "Content Delivery System" account has been locked, because DistributorY *thinks* you might be a criminal (they don't have to actually prove it you see), and you don't have any chance of appeal, because you don't own anything, and they can screw you over as long as they want, as long as you put up with it. Which effectively means, as long as they want.

Then shortly after you've opened another account and bought a new copy of GameX you can play, you discover that it's not compatible with Windows Vista XP 2007 for some reason, and since it's an old game by then, DistributorY won't care if it doesn't work, as it effectively reached the end of its support and maintenance cycle years ago.

So effectively you won't be able to "just play the game" anymore.

Case in point: Panzer General 3D - doesn't work on any of my PCs. Ofcourse it works flawlessly, emulated on Linux and MacOS, but I can only still play it because:

A) I still have the media it came on. Since SSI went bankrupt a long time ago, and UbiSoft don't care about a game they "inherited", I wouldn't have been able to do this with digital distribution. I can't even get the latest patch that used to be on the now defunct ssionline ftp site (aka. digitally distributed).
B) I can find a crack (an illegal copy protection circumvention device, acording to the DMCA) that disables the CD check (which is the only thing I can't get working on Linux)

But the biggest case in point of all, would have to be Interplay's "Stream" service. Anyone remember it? For a small subscription fee (I believe it was 10 USD a month) you could get every single Interplay game digitally delivered to play on your HD any time you wanted. I mostly played M.A.X. and Giants: Citizen Kabuto myself. Ofcourse you'll note that InterPlay (one of the oldest publishers in the game) managed to go bankrupt too, despite being digital delivery pioneers. Ofcourse nowadays I can't play either M.A.X. or Giants: Citizen Kabuto anymore - if I want them, I'll have to get them again. As tangible goods.

weird, I had a post deleted about Ultima and the cloth map and broach they supplied! (unless it's somewhere else?)

I don't think that the future of digital distribution is Steam or any other online publisher. The reason to go digital is so that you can control the destiny of your game. Without the need for funds upfront to create boxes and physically distribute your game in Wal Mart then there's no reason why everyone shouldn't just be self published. I think the future is individual companies selling their own games with the media giving a fair look at any game that's fun.

grey alien, this it? don't know why i'm bothering, but this is one of the features i like about this board.

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=51637#576638

somethingfunky: Yeah, that's it thanks. I couldn't find it.

>>There's no reason to waste natural resources on packaging etc... if you can get the same information/experience without it.

Firstly you dont get the same experience, there's nothing quite the same as getting some hard copy with a game.

Secondly, it's rubbish as natural resources are still wasted. I'm not talking about the miniscule drop of whatever fossil fuel the power stations between you and the server used, i'm talking about the fact that if you dont backup the download onto CD/DVD or whatever you will in time loose the product anyway - so you are using the exact same resources, except one method creates the CD using more environmentally efficient mass production techniques, and the eutopian ideal of digital delivery ends up burning a lot more natural resources.

If you dont back up, you *will* loose the product in the end. I've lost several digitally delivered products so far and i'm not just talking about stolen key codes on steam either, http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=49348&hl=Alien%20Codec

It's going to get worse too, as Flame Duck mentioned with the inception of this digital rights thing it wont be long before we've all had experiences similar to some of those I and a few others here have already had.

Have your euopia by all meens, just dont be fooled into thinking it's going to be better for you as a consumer, and it isn't going to make things any different from an indie perspective - sure it makes indie games less risky to publish - but every mid quality title interferes with column inches space for the big stuff, what's worse is that there is already a precedent in digital distribution to "pay to advertise"... We will probably find publishers will be happy to charge small studios to publish their games rather than pay out a royalty.

Digital Delivery is the worst possible case scenario for consumers.

Wow, it's like Napster, but in reverse.

How would you lose your product. When you buy it save the information and then contact the provider to get another copy. Also, why make hard CD copies ... and at least if you do you can put a boat load of programs onto another form of removable media instead of having one game per CD and a box and a manual.

I don't see how anyone loses. Set up a website, get someone to process your transactions, keep good records and be on your merry way.

Forget Steam and other online publishers charging you to publish your game. That's absurd and they'll be out of business really quick because anyone can set up their own server and online publishing label which can be just as effective as any other.

Don't get me wrong I like boxes, printed manuals, the smell of the fresh ink when you open the box. However, it's not worth it in the grand scheme of things and it's wasteful considering the fact that we're talking about video games here.

I don't mind products that you download and there you go. All done. It's the ones that call the mothership to verify and validate and exchange pot roast recipes before it will let you play it (or use it).

I bought Alcohol120% a while back and every damn time I rebuild my computer (which is relatively often with my constant upgrading) I have to go through all kinds of #%$@#$^@#ing hassle to get it to work because my code won't verify any more and the activation is screwed.

The last time I had it happen to me I just told them I was done playing their game and was going to go download a crack. I haven't had a problem with the software since. When it's tougher for legitimate users to use a product, copy protection (and don't think that's not the most prevalent reason for this entire new distro method) becomes a hindrance and consumers need to start talking with their wallets. Alcohol-soft already has my money so my telling them I'll never purchase another of their products means nothing to them. Telling 100 other people not to buy it might give them pause.

Advert I keep hearing on the radio...



Bugs the hell out of me. I keep thinking "30 years ago 74% of kids didn't suffer from dyslexia and autism. So it was a great time to start giving them MMR jabs and flouridating the water supply."

Not exactly relevant, but I feel better for getting that off my chest. Who would have thought 20 years ago that every fifth highstreet shop would be a mobile phone shop or that the main effect on daily life of the Internet would be the intrusion into your evening of Indian call-centre salespeople exploiting dirtcheap VoIP ??

that would be great if everything was digitaly distributed! think about it, when a shopper want's a video game, he/she would have a bigger selection of games to choose from.

Validation can suck ... but I think that it's mainly Steam ... although I didn't have a problem. I think Garage Games Ignition method is fine. You download you input a code and off you go. Heck ... I'm not a fan of validation at all really. I think there should be a digital rights ethics course taught in school. I think that's a huge part that's missing in our society. Plain ethics and logic ... one person puts in effort to create said game/music/movie ... if you use it you're using their energy. If you use it a lot that means you enjoy it so pay the damn person for their time and energy!!!

How many providers (aka. publishers) have gone bankrupt, in the last few years to your knowledge?

This comming from the guy who gets digital distribution through Garage Games? Why go with GG, if you can do it yourself just as successfully. The obvious answer ofcourse is "you can't". You need coverage. Steam and Garage Games have this.

You *might* be able to set up a service that's technically indistinguishable from steam or XBox Live, but unless you have Half life 2 or Crimson Skies, you'll never get the ammount of customers they have.

Well that was two years ago that I chose to do that ... thinking that they'd sell a lot more than we could. I've since learned that we can sell just as many copies or get as many downloads for our title as they can. Of course I also like Garage Games' mission and the people over there so if they wanted publish something else we developed over there I'd do it in addition to our site. Basically, every place you can get on will help you sell more titles but it is possible to move as many downloads/copies as a perceived larger publisher so you don't have to fold to some of the larger less personal ones.



Like I said go ahead and make a back up ... you can put more than one game on a back up CD and the biggest waste from a retail game is the box and manual ... not the CD/DVD.

The box and manual comes from a tree Jeremy, trees are a renewable resource. CD's are made from one of the polywhatsits, that comes from oil, which is a finite resource.

In terms of making the product mass production uses less fossil energy per unit than home burning a CD.

Using the argument that digital distribution uses less energy is rubbish.

Oh sure you can wait until you've got enough stuff to put more than 1 product on a CD - I lost my TreeMagilk Pro because I had a hard disk crash betweenh buying it and my next backup. I should have burnt it to CD strait away but I didn't, it wasnt enough to fill a disk and consequently I lost it. Dont make my mistake Jeremy - backup stuff that you buy digitally, and do it strait away.

It's a pain in the neck too, all my time wasted flaffing around with CD's, that I had to drive into town especially to buy in the first place - all so some company could save money and pretend they where being environmentally efficient.

I dont mind buying stuff online, I just dont see it as an advantage - especially environmentally.

Hmmm i would enjoy a pure digital distribution for games if:

a) There would be a reliable easy to handle mass storage system like a holocube or whatever. I won't rely on burning CDs/DVDs or keeping it on HDs as they all have their limited lifespans which are not suitable for archiving.
b) ePaper is out where i could enjoy reading the Manual in bed.
c) Prices drop.
d) There is an account where i always could get my binaries back.

But i guess all those having jobs in retail shipment won't...


Greetings,

taumel

Thanks for bringing the thread back onto the topic of DD in the future, taumel. ;)

I also pretty much agree with what you say. The issue of storing DD games is a key one, I think. There will need to be some kind of reliable, compact removable device. Forget about burning CDs/DVDs. Who knows what nifty storage devices we'll have in the near future.

However, I don't think the issue of always being able to get your binaries back is too much of an issue, tbh. If you lose your DD games for whatever reason, why is it the responsibility of "the company" to get them back to you? I'm playing Devil's advocate here. >:) I mean, if someone steals your iPod, or you lose it, you wouldn't expect Apple to send you a new one for free, would you?

Nope i wouldn't but i would expect them to be allowed to redownload the songs i already paid for without beeing charged because it is a digital distribution...

Okay they would have to pay for the bandwidth/traffic but these things could be summed up in the end-price after some statistical research.

But maybe there also will be more a client-server/P2P based scenario with huge bandwidth where the content is only streamed to your system and cached...and then there is no storage problem, more a connection availability...

Greetings,

taumel

Except you might live in a country where this could be illegal. Like the US.

Particularly since running high performance blade servers 24/7/365 (aka. on demand), uses up a lot more resources (energy) than an original production run, the "Game of the year"/"Directors Cut" production run and the budgie production run put together.

Well it depends on which "whatever reason" that is. Someone stole your CD keys and credit card details because Steam isn't secure (enough) - Valves problem. Dog ate CD key - not Valves problem. And liability laws differ from country to country.

If someone steals your iPod the insurance company will replace it. That's why you pay insurance. They are not going to replace software that was lost, because it was stored on a volatile storage medium, or because a company that provided a service went bankrupt.

But I digress, to answer your question: Yes they will actually - at least some of them. A friend of mine bought the RSI Demo Maker for the Amiga, back in 1989 or something. In the meantime the floppies had ofcourse demagnetized, but he wanted to use some of the graphics from it as placeholders for a project. Data Becker sent him replacement discs, despite it being a discontinued product, that had by far exceeded it's warranty.

As competition gets tougher, companies will have to compete on service, rather than content - this is going to be the publishers worst nightmare - as actually having to treat paying customers like decent human beings is not normally a natural act for many of them.

Possibly, but then we get back to the old "access validation" problem again.

Well, if you happen to have it insured, then of course the insurance company will be responsible for replacing it. It's nothing to do with Apple, however - it's not there fault/problem. That's my point. Why should it be any different for DD companies where customers lose a product through no fault of theirs? I'm talking about a 'product' here, not about ID/credit fraud where of course the company can be held responsible if negligent.

I much prefer getting a hard copy of games.
For example, I recently bought the full version of Myst 5 and I was really disappointed to find that the box... wasn't even a box! It was two pieces of cardboard wrapped around the case. The collectors edition, which comes on DVD and contains a 100 page book, is probably better for that... though it may not be becuase the CD case appears to have room for a rather thick book. I was moderately disappointed. I remember back in the day, I could buy a $40 game, and it would have a full box with a nice picture, a mobile case (The myst 5 case is huge... I don't know what they were thinking since you only need one single play disk), and a bunch of neat back-story stuff. "Tachyon: The Fringe," for instance, (a very ridiculously underrated, underpopular, and incredible game), had, on release, a big box (a REAL box!), a nice disk, a decent case (though I would have preferred a plastic case, but it was easy to store and all that), a 100 page book, another 50 page book, a big and well-printed controls guide thingy, and a thick manual.


"Boxes" like that of Myst 5, in which the only great part about the hardness of it all is the pictures on the disks, are examples of where things are going. I like the novelty and I think a lot of other people do too.
(Remember how everyone wanted the hard copy of B3d, but had to get the download copy?)

What about products where, as almost all DD stuff does these days, there is an ongoing connection or community or product support aspect.

Take Alien Codecs plugged in service for example, theoretically I should be able to log in and get the latest version of the product at any time. If software companies need to deliver endless patches to fix bugs and keep their customers from demanding refunds then surely they are taking this responsibility upon themselves to do even if they then outright refuse to do so.

Publishers cannot have it both ways, it's either sold as seen like second hand rubbish, or they support the product and it's users. If that meens delivering a digital product that they've already delivered what's the problem in that? It's not as if buying a store bought game only ever results in a single download of the patch that makes it work.

I do much prefer the DVD cases as the old boxes were huge and mostly empty.

If companies want to provide somekind of online community for a product then great! I'm not saying they shouldn't. However, most games don't require this kind of thing - they're just plug and play. Online communities seem to cater mostly for online, multiplayer games, which is not what I'm talking about - they raise different questions, I guess. I'm simply talking about the digital delivery of a finished product.

I agree, if a company releases half-finished, poorly tested, shody code that required endless patches, they should indeed be responsible. The point is, this shouldn't be happening in the first place. The idea is that you by a finished, working product in the first place. I bought Mario Kart and played it for hours - no patches needed (or possible); it just worked.

There's no problem with that but that kind of service would come under "good customer care", rather than something they're obliged to provide.

Sorry, but I don't know what you're saying here. Can you explain?

Having your iPod stolen is different from having your DD software. For starters, your DD software will probably have some form of over zealous copy protection scheme (like a hardware lock-in) that will actively prevent you from backing up your software. The iPod on the other hand actually comes with a clip you can use to chain it to the radiator, thus preventing theft.

It is theiir fault tho'. If Valve goes bankrupt tomorrow, and everyone loses their steam account and any software they've "bought" on it (for example), that is most definately something that's Valves fault. It certainly isn't through any fault of the user.

But they don't offer a product! When you "buy a game", you don't own the game, you just get a non-exclusive license to play it, providing you uphold the often draconian EULA. Publishers and developers offer a service.

It sounds to me like the argument is due to you two talking about slightly (but crucially) different things. Flameduck is talking about how things are now, and big10 is talking about how things should be. Then again, big's original post indicates the naive assumption that "should be" == "will be"

Yeah that is a good point actually, I can just see the future now.

Download edition
Special Edition - Comes with box on DVD!

:)

[edit]Just seen jhockings post after writing this lot. You're right, though, I think we're talking about slightly different things. I know I'm probably being naive, but I want to be optomistic about the future if it is going to be all DD. :)
[/edit]

Can I make it plain, again, that I'm talking about DD in the future. Can we please stop going back to steam and it's inadequacies. To make it clear, I mean a future where you:

1 - See on your digital TV service (or whatever) a game that you want.
2 - You buy the game and have it digitally delivered to your console or it's removable storage device.
3 - You play the game.
4 - The game works.
5 - You never have to contact the company that sold/made the game ever again.
6 - The end.

I disagree. Without getting bogged down in semantics, at the end of the day you're buying a product - that product is the game.

Again, I disagree. What is the 'service' they're selling, exactly? Just because a DD game can't be held in your hand, doesn't mean it's not a product. There's probably a really great analogy I could make here, but it escapes me for the moment. :)

Insisting we argue the "future" is just a way of saying, "yes your probably right but what if you aren't right, then what?"... The problem big10p, is that the arguments raised are very valid.

Even GTA on the Playstation had to go through Sony's license validation testing twice because bugs had to be patch out. With digital devliery it will become easier to patch products which are not up to scratch in the first instance.

This might encourage more software to be released in a less than robust state, more importantly however, if we accept that game updates are the norm (which they seem to be these days) then the companies who are producing these products need to extend their support to cover redelivery of the product. Some firms do this now, some do not, as far as trading standards goes it's a huge grey area because there are no specific regulations covering it.

In my view if you cannot deliver your product in a 100% perfect state then you have to support the product post-sale, and if you support the product post-sale then you cannot pick and choose what users you support based upon your own corporate manifesto.

Therefore Digital Delivery has to allow users to re-acquire a product they've already purchased. If such service levels become standard, and on the evidence available today it's a zenith so far away that "future" might not be the right word for it, then digital delivery might not be such a bad thing.

That said it still isn't friendlier to the environment. It's worse. It will be worse for the environment until production technology overcomes some of the short sightedness that makes people think it's friendlier to the environment now, when it isn't.

As far as the future of home computing goes, there has been a rival to the "computer" in the form of "consoles" for a long time, consoles are now getting to the point where digital delivery will be normal practice soon. Consoles have never replaced the home computer, and never will, and I see no evidence to suggest a TV or other home entertainment system will ever do so either - there is a place for the general purpose "computer" in peoples homes and we're a long way from that changing.

Whatever the merits of specific "console"-esque systems that come and go, the issue of digital delivery will be with the "computer" from here on out, and that's where I see a problem.

The internet is an unregulated environment filled to the brim with all manner of criminals. There are two industries which have always embraced new technology faster than all other fields: sex; and crime. As digital delivery gains mommentum so will the exploitation of the consumer. The problem is that right now too many digital delivery operators are reverting to Victorian standards and ethics - simply because there is no body or institution keeping tabs on them.

If we can get that sorted, then maybe the future for digital delivery will be brighter. Sadly if we do get some kind of governing body we will be in the sad position that it will be geared toward big business and completely overlook the little guy's like us.

> Again, I disagree. What is the 'service' they're selling, exactly?

The game is the service. If you read the little eula that pops up when installing software carefully it will, in many cases but not all and maybe not even most, specify that you are

I'll admit that providing DD games for consoles and computers are two separate issues. For one thing, consoles represent a fixed platform so the need for patches is (in theory) much reduced.

I just think that if we really are going to go totally DD in the future, it damn well better work and be user friendly, otherwise, like everything else, customers won't stay customers for long.

You mean we're actually supposed to read those things?! :P Personally, I have a hard time seeing a game as a service myself, though. Like I say, it's all semantics, anyway.

The real or imagined inadequacies of Steam are by design, rather than by accident, and probably a good indication of what's to come in the future (in our lifetimes, anyway).

Nope. If you owned the game, you would be allowed to do whatever you wanted to with it including, but not limited to giving your friends a copy.

It's not like that now. Not because it's not possible, but rather because it's not profitable. I don't see how digital distribution is going to change this, particularly since the way things are now (defective games being shipped that don't even work / install) has become accepted practise.

Not nessecarilly. But you're at least supposed to know why they're there in the first place.

the NIST did a study that showed that under optimal conditions a DVDR should function for 100-200 years.

Under normal storage conditions I would expect that to be at least 25-50 years.

I would consider that archival enough.