The Shrine

According to an NPD 2012 survey, 35% of gamers would prefer to buy online, 65% still like going to a store.

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2012/06/29/o ... mes-online

And these are gamers, not the general public (ie. all Wii buyers as per Sine or Don). So yes, the companies will make everything available digitally (like Nintendo trying to make everything released on the Wii U available digitally on Day 1 by offering insane incentives) but those digital sales are still a large minority of overall sales. It may change, sure, but it seems that it ain't a gonna be the takeover the companies want

Considering 5 years ago that number was probably something like.....2%, I think that's progress. ;p

If the next gen consoles can give me steam like service for digital purchases I'll probably rarely buy a physical copy again.

Console games is setup more toward a retailer model at least compared to computer games, though I'd say that's mostly due to a lack of online distribution network for console games.

I'm really not seeing the point to buy retail in the age where you're lucky if the manual is in color. I remember buying retail games with just a sheet of paper saying 'the manual is at this URL' and if you're going to do that you might as well get it online. Saves more space!

Don wrote:Console games is setup more toward a retailer model at least compared to computer games, though I'd say that's mostly due to a lack of online distribution network for console games.

I'm really not seeing the point to buy retail in the age where you're lucky if the manual is in color. I remember buying retail games with just a sheet of paper saying 'the manual is at this URL' and if you're going to do that you might as well get it online. Saves more space!

You don't see the point? Clearly you don't have friends (to let borrow your games) and have never heard of this "trading" thing. I've said it 'til I'm blue in the face: digital downloads cannot be the same price as retail releases because they offer a significantly less value proposition. This isn't an opinion, this is simple household economics. That's the reason Valve released Portal 2 on physical media even on PC, the market for digital media is still far too small when compared to the overall market.

Zeus wrote:You don't see the point? Clearly you don't have friends (to let borrow your games) and have never heard of this "trading" thing.

My trading thing