I was searching for PS3 on google the other day and came across a site claiming Sony has categorially denied that they will be putting full PS3 games up for download. It said that this left the downloadable games section free for Microsoft to enter into and win a somewhat one sided war.

This got me to thinking, at the start I thought that this was a horrible idea as the games would take a long time to download. Especially now with blue ray discs, they hold something like 80GB. That would take weeks to download. Then I realised that they are constantly making the internet quicker so this would become less of a problem. I now personlly feel that this could be the way forward for games. It would be like the TV on Demand services we see cropping up at the minute. It would also do away with the bulky cases that we have to currently store our games in at the minute.

I would imagine a service like this would have to run exactly like the virtual console does. Where once you download a game it always remembers you have it. This would be incase your hardrive would get fryed or somthing.

I was wondering what everyone else thought about it. Would you rather still have the games on the disc? Or would the appeal of when you want to play a new game and being able to play it instantly be more satisfying?

Not a bad idea to say the least, but my concern with it is how are the companies going to regulate the download of the games, deal with potential pirating, etc..

One thing that pops to mind is the recent pulling of versions George Orwell novels 1984 and Animal Farm by Amazon from the Kindle. The customers who bought versions of the pirated novels from the Kindle store had the novels remotely removed and their money reimbursed.

With that in mind I just wonder what powers Microsoft and Sony would have if they did offer this service you mention of. Possibly irritable customers might surface here and there no matter if they make such a service as streamlined as possible.

At the moment I still prefer having disk in its case. Its just that feeling that you actually bought something with your money that I like. Having tangible proof that you bought something is just so much more reassuring to me.

I would think it's a horrible idea. Just to be clear before I begin, dual layer Blu-Ray discs are 50 GB (25Gb per layer) and most PS3 games are probably on single layer blu-ray discs that probably are barely full because afterall, 360 uses dual layer dvd's at 8.5gb size. Because data access is slower with blu-ray's not because the read speed is slower than dvd readers but because it has more data to sift through, many times data is repeated on a ps3 blu-ray disc to help improve load times. In the end, it's probably going to be about a 6gb download which would expand to around a dozen gigs of space like a pc install.

Okay, now onto the horrible idea part. 6gb would still be a lengthy download and given how stingy internet service providers can be with bandwidth, people could easily go through their bandwidth and pay extra fees for going over the limit. In addition, not everyone has broadband and those who do may only have a basic package with a meager 5-10gb bandwidth allotment. Secondly, your game download would be restricted to your machine and your gaming profile so forget bringing the game to a friend's house to play. Speaking of space taken up, half a dozen or so games and someone's 40gb hard drive PS3 model would be full and they would now have to decide which games to remove and which to keep. Do myou you feel like redownloading a game and installing it when you feel like playing it again while having to remove another game to do it?

As for being able to redownload should something happen to your hard drive, if the servers ever go down, that's it your out of luck. This maybe five years from when you buy the game but still. That completely throws out nostalgic gaming in 7-10 years like we do with our NES, SNES playstation, n64 etc.

Someone on another forum nbrought up the fact that you wouldn't worry about secondary market (ex eBay) artifically increasing costs on rare games that are outr of print. That may be true, but there's no guarantee a game stays available longer online than if it were still being pressed and sold at stores. And of course, the secondary market is great for getting games you may have missed out on. Not all of the hidden gems sell for ridiculous prices on eBay. If you miss getting the game online, you miss playing it forever.

Finally, you may have noticed there doesn't seem to be any discount whatsoever for downloading pc games despite the fact there's no manufacturing costs of the discs and packaging. They just have to pay the bandwidth allotment fees on a third party host server.

I don't object to the independent downloadable games that are offered but not for full games. Owning a physical copy makes it seem like you actually own the game, not that you are renting it with huge restrictions.

I don't mind downloading games from either the Xbox Arcade or PSN Network but full games, no thank you. I would forever spend money on either upgrading hard drives or uninstalling and reinstalling games to juggle with memory space.

Call my old fashioned but I'd stick to discs any day of the week!!

I'm not necessarily against it, but I'm not necessarily for it either. I'd prefer it to be sold through both formats (ala GT5 Prologue, Burnout Paradise, Tekken5DR, and most PC games), but when its a full game we are talking about I generally live to this rule.

No disc, No buy.