Some, spurious discriminatory, people have pinned gamers as the lazy types – the sit on their arse and work their thumbs into mince on control pads (yes yes or keyboards or flailing hysterically with motion controllers). The Metro in the UK for one has highlighted this claim just this week. FOR SHAME.

I digress.

So, being a lazy bunch, the stroll to the shop to pick up the latest greatest game or that re-mastered gem or that retro classic you’re sure you saw in the pre-owned bin just the other day, is some much needed exercise. To your stout belly I cry FEAR NOT! For this, my friends, is the age of….

DOWNLOADBLE CONTENT

I’ll wait a moment while and shock and awe pass. Done? No? Well wait a little longer if you like – this is text, it’s not like I actually have to wait for you.

Anywho. In this glorious age the Wii, PS3, Xbox360 and DSi alike (and, of course, soon PSP Go) have all embraced your ability to eagerly stab payment card details into their integrated online stores and spend spend spend! This has lead to some simply awesome developments in games. No longer does a marketing and distribution team the size of, well, a very large marketing and distribution team seem to be required to punch out a hit. Look at World of Goo, that’s brilliant and pretty much done by something like 3 people. THREE! Impressive times. Of course this has also lead to some fun smaller games that simply don’t warrant the expense of disc-based release, like the Art Style games on Wii / DSi, Braid and Geometry Wars on Xbox360 and such like, and some great gaming ideas that have seeped out simply because there’s very little financial risk in online distribution.

Great! So a herd of inexpensive, innovative, games appear. So the popularity grows even faster than the download catalogue. But my concern grows.

The Boss Men have been watching this new distribution model with envious eyes and they have seen the light. With a distinct “Oh, cool” I updated my Xbox360 last night to find I could now purchase online, and download directly to my shiny 120GB hard drive, full Xbox360 games like Mass Effect and Burnout Paradise. Great idea – the belly flab will be pleased. They’re not the only ones at it!

OnLive – a service that turns a PC into a gaming rig, control pad and all with the buttons labled L, I, V and E… stoopid, that doesn’t require download, just streams the game you want to play to you. Great days for instant-fix and shiny new content yeeeees… but there’s a catch to ALL of this.

A very big one.

Picture this… the industry continues down this path (despite Miymato San’s penny saying download content isn’t the be all and end all) there’s a very worrying precedent along the lines the music industry is heading. Increase in popularity of download purchases means decline of physical media. Shops close / stop selling games on disc. Where do you buy your games from now? Direct from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo (and Steam etc but for the sake of argument and good ranting let’s put PC download content aside for this one). What happens when they no longer fancy selling a particular title, or there’s a petty legal dispute? Your chance to own it has gone. Want to borrow a game from a friend to see if it’s a worthy purchase? Think again. What if your console bricks? It’s pretty much up to the discretion of the console manufacturers to return your games on a new console or not.

For me the most worrying thing is the bargains will go – The price will forever be controlled by one body, the gaming company. The pre-owned will go (possibly a good thing for the industry, but then surely trading in games then buying other games with that trade in helps in some way with the bonus of allowing those less financially fortunate to not be left in the cold?), that moment of “YES! I’ve been looking for this game for YEARS!” will never again happen.

Granted that’s a worse case scenario but I worry about these things (in the same way that I often worry ‘what if wasting little bits of tin-foil will one day lead to us have just not enough metal left to build that star cruiser to take humanity to another world’). I don’t really think things will come to that but it’s a concerning drift. While hard drives are relatively limited and games weigh in at a few gigabytes the physical media will still kick around but I’d be sad to see it’s death. Physical media seems more time-proof (well, until the plastic of the DVD degrades, heh), like it’ll last and still be there in 30 years for me to dust off and enjoy all over again.

Yes, I’m a nostalgic fool. Now leave me to my dreams of my Sega Master System and running lap after lap on Hang On ^_^