Microsoft Explains Why It Doesn't Release Titles Digitally on Launch Day

[LightningStryk17]

Just look at the PC gaming section at BestBuy.

I remember when they had 4 shelves or so of PC games alone at my local best buy, now its down to a half shelf with basically only Blizzard titles and the odd EA AAA title.

Its not hard to draw a conclusion that as consoles start releasing more and more games for digital distribution that a similar thing will happen to console games as well.

 

[upgrade_1977]

So microsoft cares about consoles but doesn't care about desktop users.... Sad

 

[agnickolov]

I've yet to hear about an analog game... All computer games ever produced since the very first ones on mainframes are digital.

 

[shikamaru31789]

[citation][nom]brandonjclark[/nom]"Eventually retail software is going to disappear." NEVER going to happen.[/citation]

I hope you're right. I always buy physical copies. For starters, I like having something physical I know I own. Secondly, I like having the case to display. 3rd, as far as consoles go, I don't want to take up a ton of space on my hard drive. 4th, the internet in my area sucks hardcore, I've only got 2.5 mbit/s down and I pay way to much for even that, so downloading games takes at least 12 hours.

 

[slabbo]

Without Monopolies MS would be bankrupt right now. Their business practices and decisions are just HORRIBLE! Nintendo doesn't have a problem releasing the digital version of games on release day! So it's just some excuse used by MS for whatever BS reasoning.

 

[Nossy]

Somehow, I think keepin a network up and running properly with very good security costs more many of you guys think. A lot of companies are realizing how much this "digital" and online thing has cost them to maintain. Network engineers are getting paid pretty good these days, sometimes even better than software developers. Sure they eliminate printing and paying low wage factory workers in China/Mexico to package the DVD and the retailer piece of pie. But now they have to pay higher salary network engineers to keep their servers up and running AND secure. A high capacity server cost between 50,000 to 250,000+ USD and upkeep costs.

 

[antilycus]

MICROSOFT completely out of touch with it's market, as usual.... Since Mr. Gates left, you no longer have a nerd running the company. You now have a bean counter that cares more about marketing hype then actual product relevance.

 

[tim1935]

I have a 30 year collection of games and I'm not stopping now. I almost never do digital downloads out of preference.

 

[abbadon_34]

I'm glad to see they didn't give the cop out "piracy" reason. This actually makes alot of sense.

 

[bryonhowley]

Personally I like my collection of DVD/Blu-Ray Xbox 360 and PS3 discs. I remember buying PC's games based on nothing more than the box art with even really knowing what the games was. I still have several floppy disk based games I have kept just because of the boxes were so well done I could not part with them. To me something has been lost with the reduced boxes and digital downloads.