Do you tend to buy a physical game or download it?

Jimbo Mahoney

Jimbo Mahoney

Jimbo Mahoney

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I'm interested to hear people's opinions on this.

I myself still tend to buy physical games and physical CDs, as opposed to downloading games from Steam etc. or MP3s.

I only download a game if it's on sale and is therefore cheaper than a physical copy.

When downloadable games are 25% cheaper (or better) than physical, I'll probably switch.

What about you?
 
Depends on the game and the price.

If it's a single player game, then I buy a physical copy so I can sell it on after I have played it.

If it's a mulitplayer game, then which ever is the cheapest.

I will sometimes buy a single player game from Steam if it's really cheap, bought STALKER and Bioshock for £3 each.
 
If I see something I want and can afford, I buy it. Physical or digital doesn't even play a part in the decision.
 
Mostly buy from stores, sometimes download. It depends where the best offers are I find, such as I got Warhammer Online from download as it was the cheapest, yet I've physically bought Bioshock as I wanted the Big Daddy and he was cheaper in the shops.
 
DD is so quick and easy, I just love having a game store in my house. Plus auto patching is a god send.

However, I can't help but feel DD is missing some of the charm of physical media. I know it's irrational, but it's exactly like when people say buying an album used to be an experience not just for the tracks.

I remember buying the big old boxes and reading the manual in the car on the way home, and on the loo! That fresh game smell, drink it in.
 
Always get my games through digital download services now, the amount of game boxes i have piling up was just getting ridiculous. It's much cheaper aswell.
 
I think steam is the best option but also the most expensive most of the time, especially at a games first release. I got The Orange box soooooo much cheaper from an online shop than from the steam store itself. Odd as you have got to download most of the content form steam anyway.
 
It usually depends which is cheapest for me, sometimes you can pick games up at release in the online shops for £20-25 where as in steam they are about £30-35. Price is usually the major factor.

I do like steam, I know its basicly DRM but its friendly DRM, auto patching, friends list (which is now pretty much my main messenger program), built in good quality voice chat for free.

If I know the retail comes with a nice box and manual then I will usually get that. I think what we need is for more retail copys of games to be linked with steam for auto patching. So for example with soon to be released Hearts of Iron 3, thats coming out on steam and retail, it would be nice if you could buy it from retail and put the key into steam to get the auto patching features. Steam would know its a retail copy from the CDKey and would only auto patch, if you unisntalled it you would have to reinstall from the disk to save steams bandwidth.

Probably wont happen very much but it would be nice if more games were like this, basicly like Empire TW.
 
Lyon85 said:
DD is so quick and easy, I just love having a game store in my house. Plus auto patching is a god send.

However, I can't help but feel DD is missing some of the charm of physical media. I know it's irrational, but it's exactly like when people say buying an album used to be an experience not just for the tracks.

I remember buying the big old boxes and reading the manual in the car on the way home, and on the loo! That fresh game smell, drink it in.
Click to expand...

I agree, i like that 'new-game experience' too, maybe I'm just a bit nostalgic.

I do buy DD when considerably cheaper however.
 
I prefer digital games, steam for me is awesome. It means I can just download the game and then not have to worry about the boxes/manuals etc, download speeds are OK for me (10mbit Virgin connection) so I can get things downloaded quite fast if need be

I don't agree with the pricing structure on some steam games but you can often get fantastic deals on weekends, for example I got defense grid for £3 and it's a great game for the money :)
 
I usually prefer to buy physical media as I then have something to show for the money spent and it can be resold later.

However I have recently found myself buying quite a few things off Steam, some of their weekend deals are too good to turn down. Also there is no chance of loosing your media with Steam.
 
I prefer digital downloads for many of the reasons stated previously, but I often find myself buying physical copies because Steam's prices on a lot of games are quite steep compared to what you can get them for at certain online retailers.
 
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