With the PSP-go being the first gaming medium to rely only downloadable games only, it's looking like games may end up ALL being a disc-less form of media.

Some people don't really care. Some people care A LOT.

Some people like the convieniance of not having store save and upkeep dics and carts. While others seemed really concerned about not being able to sale back copies of games.

How do you feel about DD only?

Me? I don't really care either way. I haven't ever sold back games. Also, if a game looks good I'm going to get it wether it's DD or disc.

Being able to sell back a game doesn't matter to me, but you simply cannot beat owning the physical copy of a game. Don't get me wrong, I own several games in WiiWare and Virtual Console, but they're not really getting the attention they deserve when they're not sitting out on display like my other games. Most of my games, I can just stand in front of them, scan for an interesting title, done. On my Wii, gotta turn my stuff on, maybe also gotta plug my Wii in, and only then can I see what's available.

I hate the idea personally. I like collecting titles, so only being able to download them means everyone has the same selection at all times. I also sell back my games quite often, so the idea of being stuck with a game that I can't sell back is money lost to me.

It's nifty for titles that are extremely rare or pricy, but otherwise give me a disk/cart.

Well it depends. I like to be able to sell back my games but I never understood how that was legal in the first place. Maybe the culture of selling back games will change. That might not be bad in the sense if it leads to more picky consumers who now only buy very few and very good games at $60 help push the new prices down. I doubt the industry will truly get its cake and eat it too. If gamers cannot rely on money or credit for used games, new sales or prices will go down eventually.

I always want the hard copy as backup. I don't need a hardcopy as backup if I always have access to a digital hardcopy via a profile but I doubt that will be the case plus that would cost like on XBOX Live where I assume you can download again if the file is messed up, but what happens when you are no longer on Live? See what I mean.

The real kicker though is that I would never support it until I had virtual loaning or traveling of the game. I mean if I pay for a game AND I can only play it on my particular console then we are talking about a joke here.

The people you bought it from still got their money. Even if you give your copy to someone else or let someone borrow it, it's still one copy floating around.

Anyway, you bring up a good point about how digital downloads are restricted to the console you downloaded it to. One thing nobody talks about (possibly because they're afraid of the answer) is what happens when the Nintendo Wii gets replaced with the next big console? So much for the Wii Shopping Channel.

DD is great when DRM is handled properly. I dl'd a ps1 title for my psp but after bricking it and having to reflash it, my psp no longer owns it and I cannot transfer it to my system. I followed a bunch of faqs on the subject, but I have a feeling it all comes down to the fact that I soft modded my PSP. In that case, my bad. However in the case of MS, their bad. Sorta.

With second xbox, I was unable to re-dl all the MANY xbla titles I purchased until a few months later when xbox finally came out with a halfway acceptable work around. Now you can transfer ownership of all the DRM from one system to another, once per year per GamerTag. I feel that once a year limit is too constricting. My friend, Faeus, who some of you know from xbl, dl'd approximately fifty xbla titles on his first 360. Which died shortly after. He then had a new one sent to him by MS and he used the transfer tool. Then, four months later, his second 360 stopped reading discs. Furious that his warranty had expired just days earlier, he went and bought an Elite, rather than paying MS one hundred dollars to fix his replacement console. Now, he had to wait eight additional months to be able to play the games he already purchased, offline. At the time, he was living sixty miles from PHX where there are no cable lines for high speed internet access, so offline play really mattered to him. It was a horrible eight months for all that had the misfortune to be in the path of his redirected rage.

Point being, the real issue to me is proper use of DRM. Otherwise I could really care less about DD v HC.

In fact, I think I prefer DD since all the pieces are already set to allow the games to be sold at a much lower price. And if you are worried about retail, well they can sell, as they already do, redemption cards. As additional incentive to the use of retail versus direct download, game makers could put their games on rewritable media such as USB flash drives, that once inserted into the console, it is copied to the machine and simultaneously deleted. As a safeguard to instances where the drive was removed prematurely or heaven forbid, the power goes out, the first thing to be transferred would be the DRM and if transfer was incomplete, or if the owner deleted the game for space or what ever reason, the game could then be downloaded from the internet. As far as the game on the drive goes, once the DRM is transferred the game will immediately be deleted if inserted to any console. Plus side for the retail purchaser is now the user has a perfectly fine flash drive (once reformatted of course) and on the retail side, they make money on the sale of both the game and the drive for a slightly higher price than the dl version. Even more incentive if the drives have exclusive themes and gamerpics as well as nice art from the game on the drive itself.

I think it would be great.

Maybe this will ease your worries about DRM and such... at least for PS3. Sometime this year, my PS3 crapped out on me. But I was able to format it myself (which is actually rather easy, btw). But the problem, all my PSN games, DLC, and Rockband 1 & 2 songs were now gone.

But all those purchases were tied to my account, not my console. I was able to jump online and re-download EVERYTHING without paying a single penny and without any hastle other than the time it took to download and install.

But, yeah... I'm pro DD. IF the change never took place that's fine too. But I think HC isn't all that important, specially if it's just over sentiments of shelf-space.

Digital Distribution:

Pros:
- Cuts cost for developers or producers to bring a game to market
- Allows some developers to bypass production companies, increasing the market
- blah blah blah environment, availability, and a positive, indirect effect on online features

Cons:
- Standard features, such as trading/reselling, moving around, and sometimes even keeping can be limited
- The trickledown of cost-saving is usually only seen from small companies, large companies just keep it
- A flood of poor quality games comes down the pipeline when you lower the bar of entry. Shovelware leads to money-envy, money-envy leads to re-hashes, and re-hashes leads to the dark side! (with a stop-off at brain drain)