EA President Says It Is "Inevitable" Company Will Go 100% Digital

"It makes far more sense to purchase the core game and then DLC for each year to add these extras."

That's possible now, and it'll never happen.

Not to be a smart-ass but aren't all video games 'digital'. Saying games are going digital is like saying most cars will eventually run on gas.

Depends on the context I believe. Physical copies versus non-physical copies.

You are right itll never happen. Theyre in the business of making dollars not sense.

It's just marketing speak for making you pay for games that you no longer own and have control over except for whether or not you still want it on your hard drive.

I'm sure at one point in time the thought of Terabyte hard drives in computers made jaws drop but it's a natural progression with all things

Well, that one still gets me because I can remember 5 Megabyte hard drives.

Man computer porn must have been terrible back in those days.

I'm of two minds on this:

On the one hand, not having to manufacture and distribute physical copies of a game could possibly lead to lower production costs, and potentially cheaper games. Having a strictly digital copy of a game means fewer moving parts in your system. Fewer moving parts means less wear and tear on your hardware, thereby extending its lifespan.

On the other hand, I can own a finite number of video games in disc form. No matter the size of your hard drive it can eventually fill up, forcing you to delete old content to make room for new. I'm also kind of betting that digital-only games will make piracy easier as well. Lastly (and this one is admittedly more of a gripe than an actual pitfall), I've downloaded games before. Most of them are several GB's in size and usually take a few hours to download. It's often been my experience that going to the store and buying them is just faster.

You take the bad with the good I guess.

I'm actually not sure about the piracy thing. It just seems to me that cutting out the hardware "middle man" would make the process a little quicker for pirates.

Another point that I forgot to post is that digital games will eventually effectively kill the second-hand market. Bought a game you don't like or don't want anymore? Too bad, you're stuck with it and you can't resell it. I also trade and borrow games between my friends a lot and it would put an end to that as well.

"With EA's sports game franchises, this move really makes a world of sense. Why pay $60 each year for the same game with new athletes and a few new features? It makes far more sense to purchase the core game and then DLC for each year to add these extras."

This is a naive sentiment. Do you honestly think that EA would start charging less for their yearly sports titles, just because they became digital? Not in a million years! EA is only concerned about top dollar. So they'll continue to charge that $60 for Madden. "If they paid $60 for it before, why change the price now?" It's that kind of reasoning that's going to make us lose control over our purchased products, and suffer more extortion at the hands of game companies like EA.