If you’re a gamer, then you know the thrill of buying a new game. Tearing off the plastic, taking in that new manual smell, flipping through the pages on your way home to play it…it’s easy to make an event out of it. That post-purchase rush home is actually one of my favorite parts of gaming. Trailers and reviews be damned, nothing can damper my excitement for my first face time with a game. But how long will this patience-testing gauntlet be around?
With the rise of digital distribution, it might not be for much longer.
Digital distribution involves purchasing a virtual copy of a game or DLC. Instead of traveling to a store or using the internet to purchase physical copies, consumers purchase the same content they’d find in a store through a gaming console’s built-in (or installed) marketplace. As long as the user creates an account on the console, they’re able to browse virtual stores and make purchases with their credit/pre-paid cards. Although services like Steam and Direct2Drive have supplied this option to PC gamers for years, the concept has only just begun to garner attention with console gamers. Sony’s PSP Go was even released with digital distribution being the only way to play games on the system.
Despite potentially questionable business tactics, digital distribution actually stands to offer some substantial benefits to everyone involved.
Consider this chart, nabbed from Kotaku’s “What Your $60 Really Buysâ€. As a consumer, opting for a digital copy of a $60 game would, in theory, knock the price down to $41. Potentially cutting a third of the price off of anything is appealing, but when you consider the cash and time you would spend on traveling to the store in the first place, ignoring digital distribution as a viable option will only cost you.
Digital copies are also much more practical. Why bother amassing a pile of cases and discs when your entire gaming library could be internally stored on a console, tied to one account, and accessed at any time on your console or others? Furthermore, why purchase a costly, inconvenient physical copy when it’s so susceptible to being destroyed or stolen? Whether the disc is mishandled, stolen, or done in by a faulty console that haphazardly destroys your property, physical copies are a needless gamble.
With digital distribution, these threats are irrelevant. As long as you use a strong password and keep track of the credit card tied to your account, there is no risk of losing your property, short of the service shutting down. Even with the death of a hard drive, consumers would always have the option to simply download the game again on a new device through the original account it was purchased with.
Developers stand to gain from this, too. By reducing the cost of their game through digital distribution, more consumers would be willing to support their title. Games with $40 price points stand out from other new releases due to the value associated with the price tag. If $40 became the new standard, gamers would need less convincing to be able to comfortably purchase a new game. A lower price combined with a sale or promotion could drastically improve a game’s sale. The impulsive should be considered, too; having an entire storefront within their home provides much more temptation to buy a game than a distant brick and mortar store does.
With retailers cut out, everyone else would benefit. Gamers would pay less for their hobby, their property would be safer, and developers would potentially see higher revenue due to a lower price and added convenience for gamers. The companies involved in making games save money by avoiding retail and gamers save money by purchasing without leaving their home.
So, this brings us to the aspect of digital distribution that I don’t understand; why isn’t it more popular? Are consumers simply unaware of the option, or is there a preference for physical media? Is displaying your extensive collection important, or am I completely missing another benefit to amassing discs and easy to misplace cartridges?
How do you, as a consumer, feel towards digital distribution?
-Tom
Tags: CDs, digital distribution, Gamezombie, Gamezombie.tv, PSP Go, Tom
I suppose I’m a little biased since I run a video game store and that would obviously put me against digital distribution. As an avid gamer though, I think that the idea is good but I would be hesitant with it all until the manufacturers and/or publishers show their support intentions. You have in your post about being able to re-download everything in the event of hardware failure. If the licenses for the digital downloads are console specific, much like the 360′s content now, it might only be accessible while online. There are still quite a few people that don’t have Xbox Live or the internet even and sure they could bring their system to someone else’s house to download games, but if the licenses are not transferable, not being able to access the internet would render the whole process useless.
When speaking of publisher/manufacturer help, right now 360 lets you transfer your licenses once per year. I had a system crash on me and there were two months left till I could transfer licenses again. I called their tech support and let them know that the system broke and I was willing to go out and get a new one the moment I got off the phone with them and asked if they would let me do the transfer. Despite showing my continued support of their consistently faulty systems, they wouldn’t help me. They knew that I would either buy the content again on a new system so I wouldn’t have to be connected online to play the games, or that I would buy a new system anyway and wait for my transfer time to be up. Either way, they make money and I still buy their products.
Another thing that makes it all not seem possible is that if all video games went digital, where would it end? Next would be movies and then probably music. I think there are too many industries that rely on customers to buy things from brick and mortar stores.
One last thing that seems to work against it is the space issue. Yeah a terabyte’s worth of space is becoming cheaper these days, but when someone has a digital game collection of say over 100 games, are they going to shell out the extra money for more hard drive space? Are you going to have to temporarily delete your games to make room for new games? Just another issue that might make the consumer think twice before making the full switch to digital downloads.
I am interested in this topic as it very much effects my business, so I want to keep close tabs on it. Thanks for posting it at least to get the information out to the public.
Until next time.
-Allan
Level Up Games Owner
I’ll say this…
While having a digital copy is convenient, and it’s nice to be able to just load up a game. (Thank you Virtual Console, XBox Live, and PSN). I honestly LIKE having a physical copy. This goes with music as well. If I like a game enough, or want a game enough, I will buy the physical copy. Same goes towards music. I LIKE owning the album. It’s actually permanent, where-as if your harddrive fails, you’re f’ed.
What I think you’re missing is the appeal of OWNING something. You buy a digital copy, it doesn’t really feel like you OWN it. Want to know how many movies I own on iTunes/my computer? NONE. I like OWNING the DVD.