Digital Distribution - Will everything become digital in the future?

For many years, the gaming industry has played an important role in many people’s lives, and throughout the past decade, this industry has grown, developed and advanced in many ways (examples include the improvement of superior graphics within games, the evolution of a new generation of gaming and the conversion of some games to digital distribution). Most of these ways have allowed the industry to accelerate its progress, and as we approach the eighth generation of games, a burning question has surfaced – will the entire gaming industry become digital in the future?

The gaming industry has now progressed to a point where some games are fully downloadable and available to play, without any need for a physical disc or hard copy. These can be bought from online stores such as Xbox Live Arcade, the Wii Shop Channel, PlayStation Network, and the App Store. There are many advantages to the total transfer to digital format, and a lot of people have concluded that digital distribution is the way forward in gaming technology. One of the largest arguments in favour of this is that digital purchasing of a game is much more convenient. There is no need to physically get up and travel all the way to a shop such as Game to actually buy your game, and the transaction can be made within your own home (even from the comfort of your couch!). This appeals to a lot of gamers, as purchases can be made at any time of the day (shops have restrict this because of their closing times), the games will never be ‘sold out’, and there will be no need to wait in ridiculously long queues on release day outside the shop in the freezing cold.  Another advantage to digital distribution is that there will be no need to have own physical discs. Owning the actual discs can present many problems; game boxes can clutter a gaming area, discs can become scratched and useless if not taken care of properly, and gamers can even loose discs. All of these problems would disappear if games were all downloaded digitally. Of course, a digital takeover would immediately benefit the platform holders, developers and publishers involved in the release of a game and any add-on content that is released at a later date, not only the gamers themselves. Everyone included in the business end of gaming would probably be pleased with games becoming 100% digital. Games publisher ‘Paradox Interactive’ says it no longer needs retailers as the vast majority of the company's revenue is now derived from digital distribution sales, meanwhile, ‘Bohemia Interactive’ claims if it wasn't for digital distribution its PC game development would cease. Chief Executive Officer of Paradox Interactive, Fredrik Wester, told PC Gamer "We don't really need retailers any more". This is because, according to the company, 90% of their revenue now comes from titles sold on digital distribution platforms such as Steam and Gamersgate. This shows how the computer gaming industry is already gaining from the growing amount of fully downloadable digital games available for PCs.

Despite all of the advantages to this, there are a lot of drawbacks. For a lot of people today, playing games has been a pastime for them throughout their whole lives, and the sentimental value of going to game stores, queuing up on release day, or even pre-ordering the game and physically owning the box and disc played a huge role in what gaming means to people. Removing this sentiment may affect people’s love for games, and ruin the anticipation of waiting to own the disc themselves. This seems to be the most popular argument against a digital revolution. However, there are more serious problems associated with the gaming industry going completely digital. Major concerns have been raised about the issue that internet capabilities are just not strong enough to support a total digital switch over. In June 2012, a survey revealed that the average UK internet download speed was 15.286Mbps - this would not be nearly powerful enough to support everyone in the UK to be digitally downloading a new game release at the same time. This would not only affect the gamers, but it may also cause huge problems for the internet in general for many people throughout the world. Also, the consoles themselves may not be physically able of containing so much digital downloads. A new range of consoles may have to be produced, with much larger hard drives, capable of storing vast amounts of data. This would cost the industry a lot of money, but it may all be worth it if the profits increase (as many people may be more tempted to make more impulsive transactions which would increase profits made on games).

In the future, I can see the majority of games becoming digital, but I doubt that the gaming industry will make a full modification. Looking at other industries such as the music industry, although most music purchases are now made digitally, some stores, such as HMV and even record shops such as Probe Records in Liverpool (where I have bought vinyl records from!) still sell CDs and vinyl records. I honestly doubt that peoples love for physically going to shops and buying the games will ever go away, as although it may be more convenient, core gamers and maybe even older generations of gamers may feel more sentiment towards the original ways of gaming – by owning the physical copies of the games, as they did when they were younger.