People are wary of it, uncertain of not owning something they can see and touch. Business' are afraid of it because it'll cut many of them out of the loop. The implications of selling digital only products online, and seeing physical media fall to antiquity go far beyond our material products, and the profits of retailers. As this comes to pass we'll see it have a positive effect on global warming and humanities necessary goal of a zero emission carbon footprint.
While this will mostly have positive effects for the world there will be some detrimental human costs. To break everything down a bit;
Manufacturing.
-The disk, manual, case and other stuff doesn't get made so a whole factory full of people is cut out of the loop. Along with numerous machines that don't have to be running.
Packaging.
-Again the disk, manual, and case, plus any boxes the games are shipped in don't have to be paid for. They don't have to purchase the plastic and paper and cardboard.
Shipping.
-From the factory probably on a truck, maybe a train, for many places boats get involved. After that they go back onto trucks and go to warehouses for wholesalers and larger store chains. Then they get shipped from the warehouses to the stores themselves at some point.
Retail outlets.
-After they get to the store, possibly with promotional display material, there are employee's and business overhead that the outlet needs to pay for plus their own profit pie.
So obviously there will be thousands, possibly millions of people that will gradually see their field of work shrinking away. Business' devoted to games, music, movies, and possibly books that most likely won't be able to cope.
Getting past that though there will be immeasurable amounts of plastic, paper, and fuel saved. From power plants to a person driving to the mall to buy a game, all becoming unnecessary.
Admittedly the internet will most likely consume a bit more energy but I highly doubt it'll eat up more than a tiny percentage of what is saved elsewhere.
All things considered I very much hope digital distribution quickly makes physical copies of stuff obsolete. It already has for me by and large, except for console video games I tend not to use physical anything. Good luck in your conversion, I know it'll be hard for some people.
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I love that they’re including these. It was fun running through the Remake just shredding fools and going through the story again. Looking forward to another run with Rebirth on Xbox for the 1000/1000.
I originally wrote this on my gaming blog. I didn't think it should be submitted as an article to N4g as your not supposed to post personal blogs. Anyway here's a link to the origional http://unqualifiedgaming.bl...
I don't actually have any other posts on the blog yet as I just started it. I wanted to get into journalism and I'm passionate about gaming and technology. I figured there wasn't a better way than to just start doing it. Create a portfolio of work so to speak.
I agree with this blog post. It brings up good points.
Nice blog post.
Added value leechers in the production chain won't give up without a fight; the loss of employment must be true, but the majority of the benefits of those production intermediaries with the added value excuse goes to an oligarchy of executive pricks, so enough with that sofism I say to Activision & such.
It's a shame the digital pricing of Protoype on PSN & XBL, sometime publishers are borderline mental when it comes to pricing, they are just encouraging piracy on every platform where available, with their greedy corporate manners.
Creator<--smaller platform-->Consumer
Enough with the publishers bullying
DD only will never ever happen
Stupid blog
I can agree with this to an extent but DD still has pending archive / return issues with the consumer. For example.
-If I decide to buy and game and I don't like it, Can I return it?. Its a common problem all of us have run into . Under the current DD structure the common answer is NO.
- Am I able to archive the games I have purchased to CD/DVD.BD?. I'm pretty most of PC gamers here at some point in our lives have replaced a hard drive or two and not having a proper backup of our files means LIFE SUCKS.
Network / home infrastructure still isn't a high level for large file downloads. Mind you there are still homes using dial up and extremely slow DSL. Rates for "Fast" internet are down right ridiculous.