oh yeah. I went there.

The hot topic in the industry lately seems to be 'Digital Downloads' – This is partly spawned from Kelly's post on the topic, but it's something I've wanted to sound off on myself for awhile.

The short answer is simply this: I can't get behind DD.

The not short answer is :

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer having a physical copy of my media, be it game, movie, music or otherwise. EBooks? HA. My inner gamer is not threatened by this idea, I don't see the industry switching entirely to DD anytime soon - they would cut their own business down by a huge amount - I'm clearly not the only one who prefers a physical product, but also most people with anything less than a high speed connection are not going to try to download a massive game over a period of what could be days or even weeks depending.

Not only that, but what about the ever looming presence of next gen? When we all invariably upgrade to the PS9, Xbox9000 or whatever phallic joke Nintendo comes up with, are we supposed to just forget about all the money we've sunk into our old DDs? Surely they won't maintain those servers for all time, and we will eventually run out of room on whatever console we have, and fairly quickly too if current hd space is any indication. "But V, you amazingly handsome manbeast!" I hear you exclaim, "Surely you don't care about games that you've already played through and beaten (or not beaten) enough to play them again when you have a shiny new Nintenboxstation with TURBO GRAFIX!!"

Here's the thing, I am a gamer, and like most gamers, my nature is to horde the **** out of my favorite games. The majority of us I'd wager are collectors to one extent or another. The developers know this – How many of you went and found all those damn stars in Mario 64? Or every blast shard in Infamous? I did. I can't help myself. I love that feeling of 100% completion, and I love having a good library to run my fingers across when I'm trying to decide what to play, sooo sexy… but I digress. The point is that I still fire up my NES or my Genesis from time to time - I love those old games, Somewhere in my collection of junk there is a box with an Atari 2600 in it with a modest collection of games. It's where I started, and I enjoy going back there every now and then just to remind myself what it's all about. Particularly when I find myself losing interest in games, it's good for me to go retro for awhile and get a little taste of the old school. There's a huge nostalgic factor with gamers and their games. I still have an old 36" tube in my guest room that's main function is retro gaming. Whether you are reliving the first time you picked up a NES controller and squished a goomba, or arguing with an unsettling amount of passion about spelling her name Aeris or Aerith, we all have games that we think back to and say "yeah that's the good stuff". That said, there is a very high chance that I will feel the same about some of the games I've played through in the last few months. Maybe I'll break out my PS3 to play some Arkham Asylum, just to show some young upstart what games were like before you just downloaded them into your brain. Okay, that's pushing it – but DDs would take all this away from me eventually – As I said in the beginning I'm old fashioned, and I have the preferences to match. I'm sure that 20 years from now none of that will matter to the modern day gamer, but as for me, I'll be the creepy old man with a huge stash of the old school and I'll love every bit of it.

In the meantime, if they want to offer the OPTION of a DD alongside the pressed disc, then that is perfectly reasonable, it's a great way to distribute independent games, and budget titles… little gems that otherwise wouldn't see the light of day… it just opens up the market that much more, and those that want to deal with it, great. Those that prefer the box have their cake too, or a combination. Everyone wins.