A Future Without Discs?

Disc formatting was all the rage back in the 90s. Discs made cassettes obsolete. They outmoded tapes. And they enshrined those good ole’ fashioned game cartridges as relics of the past.

However, with the Internet so readily available and unimaginable amounts of data so easily accessible, will the disc, and any other physical memory storing device for that matter, eventually give way to a future of online distribution?

The possibility certainly seems inevitable, if only because it makes sense on both a personal and business level — at least when it comes down to PC games.

Gamers beings the lazy bunch of people that we are, convenience is important. It should come as no surprise that online shopping has thrived. After all, why go to the store when someone else could deliver it to you with just the click of a mouse?

For companies, online shopping has probably been a boon as well. Rather than having to store their merchandise within stores, they could just ship products directly to each customer. Of course these companies still have to deal with various delivery agencies that serve as the middlemen.

In the world of gaming though, things are a bit different.

In the 90’s, discs were practically required in order to distribute information. But this is not the case anymore. Information can be downloaded by the gigabyte and stored on any computer, although this may be a long, painstaking process for some.

Many developers have already taken to the Internet as a medium to distribute their games. Valve, being one of the earliest and most notable of these companies, developed the Steam platform to serve this specific purpose. This trend has begun to catch on as multiple companies now host their games for purchasable download over Steam.

Steam is not the only example, of course. In addition, Blizzard has recently allowed users the option of creating a Battle.net account. This option lets users access any Blizzard game that is installed and activated on one specific e-mail address account.

So, if someone got a new computer but could not find the physical copies of the Blizzard games they wanted to install, they could easily download whichever games they previously owned directly from Battle.net.

It’s this level of convenience that makes online distribution ideal for the consumer. There is no need to worry about preserving the condition of your games; there is no need to worry about losing CD keys; and there is no penalty to actually losing the disc itself.

Furthermore, why should these developers deal with middlemen and why should they waste resources on creating discs when neither are necessary? Unless they distribute through a 3rd party, any company such as Blizzard or Valve, can directly deliver their product to the customer at maximum profit.

This also means that independent companies can easily mass distribute their products as well. Riot Games, for example, has planned to supplement the retail release of their highly anticipated title, League of Legends: Clash of Fates, by also opening the game to online distribution.

Honestly, it’s a win-win situation for PC companies and users, and maybe DLC on the consoles will have a similar effect, although I am skeptical about that.