It seems like games have become so sophisticated that most gamers would be pretty dissatisfied with an arcade racer like F-Zero or Wave Race.

Realistically, how many "mom and pop" game stores are left? Game retail is Gamestop, big-boxes and Amazon.

Here's the thing: If Microsoft had announced all their DRM stuff and the limitations on used games, and then announced that their entire launch lineup would be available for $44.99 if you bought the digital version on Xbox Live, I think a lot of people would have been pretty happy with that.

You are free to do whatever you want. If you want to pay more for games and deal with load delays, so you can tell visitors to your little museum about the troubled development history of Duke Nukem Forever, that's also fine.

Zenspath:

Music is a special case because purchased digital music coexists with ripped CDs files.

Azure,

Triple, are you seriously going to tell me that DVD/BD sales are healthy?

I'm a huge die-hard Nintendo fan, and I am part of a segment of the core gamer demographic that will buy a Nintendo console purely to play Nintendo software. But, for this entire segment, the Nintendo device is necessarily their second console, because Nintendo consoles have no third-party support that is of any…

That's what people said when PS2 came out, but they didn't consider HD. When Super Mario 64 launched on the SNES, it blew everyone's mind. We thought it looked just like a Pixar movie. We couldn't imagine games ever looking better than Ocarina of Time. But, when you give developers more power to use, they'll find…

Personally, I think Nintendo has made real mistakes on their hardware tech. The novelty of the Wii was a real hit, but between the power gap between Xbox/PS3 and Wii, it couldn't get multiplatform games. That problem is set to repeat as PS4/XBONE games outstrip the Wii U's capabilities.

The ownership argument is always in the conversation when an industry is shifting from hard-copy media to digital distribution.

Some of these games are worth dismissing entirely. Unit 13? Little Deviants? Army Corps of Hell? Seriously?

Permanence for a game collection is a pretty trivial thing to value. How many Xbox games from 3 years ago are you still even playing?

They're trying to shift their market from retail-based to digital-distribution. They're really handling the PR end of it badly. All they need to do is sell new software downloads for $10-15 less than the boxed versions and run good sales on older software, and the used game market will die on its own. Instead,…

I bet breaking the "check-in" requirement gets your console permanently banned from XBox Live. They were able to do that to modded 360's several years ago, and I'm sure their ability to detect hacked devices on their network has only improved.

XBOne exclusives that are also coming out on PC are pretty much XBOne exclusives as far as I'm concerned. I doubt many people have gaming PCs capable of running Titanfall at the detail levels and resolution that the XBOne can.

I honestly don't know which console I am going to get.

So people like Steam because Steam games are cheaper. But digitally distributed games will certainly be cheaper on the new consoles as well.

Valve doesn't force publishers to put their games on sale on Steam. The publishers put the games on sale, and there's no reason to think they won't be doing the same thing on the Sony and Microsoft e-stores.