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Digital distribution could be just around the corner, Click here

Personally I'd want the real thing, a nice shiny DVD/CD in a pretty box, with an instruction manual printed on paper.

Besides, were do you stand if the publisher/distributer go's **** up after you've d/l the game. There's plenty of them fallen by the wayside.
Or your h/d gives up the ghost, or your files get corrupted.

And besides, were are you to store all this games.
I've got around 40 odd games, a small collection by some standards I'm sure,
I wouldn't want to keep them on the h/d for ever.

I've zero enthusiasm for DD I'm afraid.

You make some valid points there Ordep! And I also share some of your concerns. I don't think the hard drive is such a good place to store games either, and the company ceasing trading in this competitive market would be a real bugger if you were to lose the game data (even with a CD key - unless they take out insurance that another site would continue to provide the downloadable material).

I'd be okay with downloading a game with a good connection, provided I could just burn it to disk and use it in the same way you use a shop bought CD/DVD. But for my time and effort, I'd like a proportion of the money saved by the distributor, since they'd effectively make the full retail price minus any bandwidth charges - that's a hefty saving, and since I'm expected to do the hard work I expect to get a large chunk of the savings too. I don't think the current HL2 online purchase via Steam is particularly representative of a good value purchase either - I guess a nice box to store your disk in and an instruction manual (even if unread) makes for good marketing practise that is hard to replace.

I think that you have both stated the very reasons why I didn't opt for the Steam option of HL2.

Also, what about the resale value? at least when you have finished with a game or find you have boobed with a purchase you could sell it on and help finance your next game. As Spook pointed out, a large slice of the saving needs to be passed onto the download purchaser. Will be interesting to see how many plump for the HL2 download in comparison to the normal retail options (if they ever release the figures).