"Poorly-Photoshopped Representation"

If you could put your ear to the tubes that make up this internet thing, you would hear thousands of people talking about digital distribution. There is no question that digital distribution is the future. You can already download your favorite songs, books, movies, and thousands of games. In the future, there might not even be discs or cartridges. Everything will just download out of the ether onto some crazy futuristic device.

I am a Steam weekend deal addict. My PSP memory sticks are full of PSP Minis and old PS1 games. I have so many Xbox Live Arcade, PSN, and Wii downloads that I am a little embarrassed. I have nothing against digital downloads, but it seems to me from looking into the muddy waters of the future that a war is coming between digital and physical goods.

The opening salvos in this war have already been fired.

As I write this, Valve’s Steam service has well over a million users online, downloading and playing games.

But does a digital copy have the same value as a physical disc? There are pros and cons to both. If I own a game, I can take it over to a friend’s house to play. I can even lend it to them. I can pretend it’s a Frisbee if I want, or use it to make my coffee table stop wobbling. I can even throw it in the microwave and watch the light show. The point is, it’s mine and I can do whatever the heck I want with it.

This is not always the case with a digital copy. Read the fine print. Go ahead, we’ll wait. In many cases you are not buying the game, but rather access to the game. There is a subtle but profound difference between the two. In one case, it is yours. In the other, it is someone else’s, and they are granting you access to it.

Amazon’s Kindle users have already had issues where books that users thought they had purchased once and forever were removed from their devices because of contract disputes. Amazon would need to send a SWAT team if they wanted to break into my house to take a physical copy of a book back. (My dog Buttons would annihilate any interlopers.) Can you imagine Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft deciding that the copy of Sonic that you purchased wasn’t really yours after all?

Should I have to pay as much for a physical copy that is mine (for good or ill) as a digital copy that I might own until some corporation decides that I really don’t? Is the convenience of a digital copy worth the loss of the physical copy? My digital copy of Serious Sam won’t ever get accidentally stepped on by my roommate, but at the same time I can’t loan him my digital copy to play in his room.

What gets really crazy is when you start getting into digital items like clothes for your Xbox Live avatar or themes for your dashboard. There are communities that have sprung up around customizing everything from digital cars, to people, to little Sackboys. Personally, I wouldn’t give a single real world penny for my Oprah to get a new digital sweatshirt (my Xbox Live avatar is Oprah. Don’t ask). Other people are happy to part with their money for things that differentiate their little digital representations. Is it worth pre-ordering a game so you can get a special set of armor? Gamestop sure hopes so.

The digital revolution is already upon us. The path the revolution takes is up to us. In the meantime I am going to go check out the latest Steam sale.

Tags: amazon, digital distribution, dlc, downloadable content, downloadable games, kindle, psn, Steam, WiiWare, xbla

This entry was posted on Monday, July 5th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.