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Buying Boxed Games - Important To The Gaming Experience?
Thanks to GameSpot for its 'GuestSpotting' editorial, in which a reader discusses why going to the store and buying a videogame is a vital part of his gaming experience. He argues: "When I hear talk of the future and how broadband-enabled gaming platforms will allow us to download entire games without leaving the comfortable wombs of our homes, I shudder", and sings the praises of "...a place where you can look over your collection [of game boxes] with pride, reminding you of the enemies you have defeated, the points you have scored, the races you have won, and, of course, the money that has been spent." Although the author of the editorial admits he's somewhat of "a fetishist when it comes to the corporeal aspect of the video games", are you happy with buying games that have no related physical artifacts?
I do too for some games, but I also dislike the idea of having everything in one location. I'm against this in a console settings. As I see it, there are two ways game companies can do this:
1) You download the game onto a hard drive device. Hard drives are a lot different than individual media. If you pay 500 to download 10 games, and your hard drive dies, you lose all of the games. You have to then wait until a replacement drive comes, and even then, whose to say there won't be problems with getting those games back? Currently, with CDs/DVDs, if a CD or DVD gets scratched up, you may have to replace it, but you certainly won't have to replace every disc.
2) The company stores this. In other words, I'm paying for a product that I have access to only over the network. What if the network goes down? What if I have a bad link for whatever reason? What if some asshole launches a DOS attack on my site? I just don't want the media company to have that kind of control. I don't want to pay for 'virtual ownership' and frankly, the bandwidth won't exist for many years.
I would much rather prefer something more along the lines of solid state memory chips or drives before I would consider this sort of technology transferrable. For PCs, this is fine; PC games have worked by this model for a while. But I won't pay 30 bucks for a PC game online if I can get a real physical disc for the game for 10 bucks more, and if it comes with a guide, even better.