If games came with a burn feature, that allowed me to burn copies of my digital copies – i would be more likely to sign on board – I probably wouldnt stop buying retail discs, but I have bought a number of computer games as digital downloads, and am completely fine with those purchases so far. However for me to fully sign on – I need a way to have active access to the game without holding 5,10,20, who knows how many gigs of space for eternity or re-downloading that 5,10,20 gig download all over again if I decide to give it another spin in a month.

Imagine a friend saying “hey man I saw you have Gears of war 32 on your gamercard, lets get a game going” and you're response is – “ok sure, ill join you in an hour or two after i re-download it, I had to make room for Barbie Horse Adventures 27.”

If games came with a burn feature, that allowed me to burn copies of my digital copies – i would be more likely to sign on board – I probably wouldnt stop buying retail discs, but I have bought a number of computer games as digital downloads, and am completely fine with those purchases so far. However for me to fully sign on – I need a way to have active access to the game without holding 5,10,20, who knows how many gigs of space for eternity or re-downloading that 5,10,20 gig download all over again if I decide to give it another spin in a month.

Imagine a friend saying “hey man I saw you have Gears of war 32 on your gamercard, lets get a game going” and you're response is – “ok sure, ill join you in an hour or two after i re-download it, I had to make room for Barbie Horse Adventures 27.”

But I love waiting in line for a game at 12am for a release. I love having a CD/DVD to put into a console/pc. The feeling of a digital download doesn’t give me the sense of entitlement to the game.

And quite frankly I’m proud of my display of boxes and jewel cases.

While I won’t deny that I would download reasonably priced games, what are the chances of that happening?

If anything happens to lower the price of games that are downloadable, it’ll be the emergence of episodic games. I’d much rather buy the whole game at once, you know?

Then again, it’s almost like iTunes where you can buy a single show for a season at a reduced cost. The problem is that the shows aren’t very long…

Lets face it; 60 bucks is a lot to pay for a game. By going with a download service, companies are able to cut out a substantial amount of cost. For one, they don’t have to worry about Best Buy or Wal Mart taking a cut and they also save loads of money on manufacturing, packaging and shipping costs. Games from a download service would likely cost about half as much as the retail games do now.

The main hurdles I see with the download method are the ones you already pointed out; accessibility, speed and storage space. I don’t think current technology lends itself to this method very well.

In the mean time, I’m more than content with the current generation hardware and software and while it will be interesting to see what comes next, I’m in no hurry for the industry to get there.

Also, Xbox Live has that ‘redownloadability’ which is why a lot of gamers are okay with it as it stands. Not to mention that the vast majority of games on the service are small.

I like the idea of the burner, but even that isn’t enough in my opinion. One burn? What happens when the first burn results in a coaster?!

1) The game distribution service should provide “redownloadability”. So if you choose to wipe the game from your drive, your purchase should not be invalidated, you should have the option of downloading it again (after all, you paid for it).

2) Consoles of the future that intend to support this type of service should have burners, so that you have the option of creating a hard copy of your game. If they’re worried about pirating, then it can be a 1-time only thing, and that’s fine. But I have a feeling this will get overlooked entirely.

An just to further comment, I agree entirely about having a disc, but even more than that, I enjoy having packaging. I love the artwork that goes into the book and packaging of a game. It would feel so cut and dry to just download a game instead of purchasing a work of art.