You're both right and both wrong. Xbox Live Arcade has download only games but so does the Playstation Network. Neither one has downloadable retail games that you can't get by simply walking into a store and buying the disc. You can get Bioshock from Games on Demand or get it in store. Likewise, you can get Warhawk in a store or get it on the PSN. It's stupid to think that anyone would just switch over to digital distribution titles when retail still accounts for more than 90% of their game sales revenues. If it does happen, it will be an incredibly gradual change, we're talking ten years easily here as there are a lot of real world limitations like broadband caps, retail revenue conflicts and etc to overcome.

Until it's announced Z9000, it's just speculation on your part. I don't know why you think Sony wouldn't do it too, they are hurting just as much from used game sales as Microsoft is. It makes great business sense to get rid of your middleman, especially when he's eating your profits by reselling your products.

Sony has openly claimed they are aware that their customers prefer physical media

Link? Isn't Sony the company about to release a download only PSP? I'm pretty sure Sony is smart enough to realize that used game sales and piracy are intrinsic to physical media and is planning for the future as well.

This comment was edited on Aug 27, 2009, 16:59.