Bite the pillow, Xbox fans. Microsoft's going in without lube.

[te72]

Eman, you make a few good points, but I don't see physical media going completely away. As the resolution and sound quality increases, so does the need for storage space. As much as I love not having to put discs in my ps3/Xbox to play games on it, some games are just beyond a reasonable size to store digitally. Unless you can create a method of compression that doesn't sacrifice quality... I see the need for physical media still hanging around.

 

[GrimJack]

I'm not so sure about that... look at the PC. I don't buy anything in media form anymore - it's all through a service like Steam. It tracks my licenses, installs games I want to play, finds my friends and tells me what they are playing, even allows me to join games they are currently playing.... all without any physical media.

 

[Supracentral]

I'm not so sure about that... look at the PC. I don't buy anything in media form anymore - it's all through a service like Steam. It tracks my licenses, installs games I want to play, finds my friends and tells me what they are playing, even allows me to join games they are currently playing.... all without any physical media.

Yup, same here, I haven't bought a physical disc in years...

 

[GrimJack]

Just another sign that the XBitch is way behind the times.

 

[bioskyline]

I'm not so sure about that... look at the PC. I don't buy anything in media form anymore - it's all through a service like Steam. It tracks my licenses, installs games I want to play, finds my friends and tells me what they are playing, even allows me to join games they are currently playing.... all without any physical media.

i love steam for this, casue i just have to login and all my games come with me. plus never have to worry about losing cd-keys or scratching cd's beyond play. the other advantage is i dont have to wait in line at stores for new games that come out, like people did for skyrim, BF3 and MW3.

 

[3p141592654]

The downside, of course, is that all you hold is a license. If they want to change the terms, go out of business, get hacked and puke up all your personal information, or decide they just don't like you anymore then you have very little recourse. At least with a disc, you can play it offline. Same goes for any other "cloud" activity.

 

[GrimJack]

True enough, however, the counterpoint to that is that I rarely go back and play old games. As in, *never*. I only need to keep track of the license for a few days, then I'm finished. There is the occasional game that I play for longer periods of time... like Team Fortress, Eve, etc. For the most part, though, they could lose all my licensing information after it's 20 days old and I wouldn't even notice.

 

[DreamerTheresa]

....every year or so, I'll still dust off the PS2 and play Ecco the Dolphin... If I still had a Genesis, I'd play the older Ecco games, too.

 

[Eman14j]

Awe ecco :-( I miss that mind numbing game.

 

[te72]

I'm not so sure about that... look at the PC. I don't buy anything in media form anymore - it's all through a service like Steam. It tracks my licenses, installs games I want to play, finds my friends and tells me what they are playing, even allows me to join games they are currently playing.... all without any physical media.

The downside, of course, is that all you hold is a license. If they want to change the terms, go out of business, get hacked and puke up all your personal information, or decide they just don't like you anymore then you have very little recourse. At least with a disc, you can play it offline. Same goes for any other "cloud" activity.

I'll admit, I don't have any experience with Steam. Are the games stored on their servers, or do you download it all to your machine while you play? If it's the latter, that's much like PSN, I can download the games I've paid for (but didn't always want to play or have space for) again when I do want to play them.

Difference is, I have an 80gig PS3. My computer on the other hand has well over 6TB of space. I have a hard time seeing a console ever having that sort of capacity... wait, I see what you're doing here haha. Truth be told... if all games that are on consoles (Demon's Souls, MGS, Sega's library, Nintendo's library) were made available through a service like Steam, you could count me in in a hurry. Probably my favorite game I've played in the last few years was Valkyria Chronicles. Game like that would be easy to get on a PC if need be... what's the hangup?

I'm a little wary of the whole cloud based "ownership" as well. Then again, I tend to go back and play a lot of games I wanted to play, but didn't have the time or money when they came out. Works out in my favor (usually) when it comes to price too... Plus, what if the internet goes out? I've got a whole MESS of games I don't need internet for.

....every year or so, I'll still dust off the PS2 and play Ecco the Dolphin... If I still had a Genesis, I'd play the older Ecco games, too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecco_the_dolphin

Ecco the Dolphin, along with Ecco: The Tides of Time and Ecco Jr., can be found on the PS2, and PSP game Sega Genesis Collection.

Ecco the Dolphin is part of Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, along with its sequel.

The version of Ecco the Dolphin released on Steam is part of the "Sega Genesis Classics Pack" (it can also be purchased separately) so it is the Mega Drive/Genesis version as opposed to the earlier Windows port of the Mega-CD version, but the Windows version is slated to be announced as an update for the Steam game.