6. Digital Gaming Is A Double-Edged Sword
Digital gaming has really taken off over the last few years, with Steam blazing a trail that has been followed up by Microsoft and Sony from the last generation all the way through to the current one. Being able to download a game without leaving the house is a brilliant idea, though it's also one that's best thought about before diving headlong in. For starters, cost is a real issue. For some reason, PSN charges more for digital games than they cost to buy physically from stores. How is this acceptable? And how does it make sense that uploading the game to a server is more costly than all the overheads involved with manufacturing a disc, case, manual and so on? Then there's the issue of ownership. If you have a digital copy of a game, there's just not as much security: you will inevitably need to delete games from your hard drive from time to time to make space for others, but what if Sony stops supporting the game a few years from now? What if you fancy playing Trials Fusion in 7 or 8 years' time, but Sony no longer hosts it on their servers, so you can't re-download it, and you've essentially thrown the money you paid for it down the toilet? It may sound like scaremongering to some, but there's something to be said for having a disc: nobody can take that away from you, and even in 20 or 30 years when the PS4 servers will be long-dead, you can sleep well knowing your games will still be playable when you wake up if you fancy a burst of nostalgia. Plus, in most cases you can't trade or sell-on digital games, which for those of us who rarely re-play games, is a massive downside of digital.