Download a game or buy it in the store?

[davig019]

genrally i'd go with whats cheapest.

Saying that though i do have at times a couple of games pre ordered on steam that may be a pound or two cheaper elsewhere because i like the way that they can be predownloaded and unlocked as soon as it's released as the post to my house isnt always reliable.

[RockGod117]

If It's a console game I prefer to buy the disc just to save the hard drive space.

[TrustySpoon]

Depends on 2 factors for me. They are cost and physical space. Right now I stick with downloads. But it wouldn't stop me buying a ce version of a game

[cami]

whichever is cheaper

[Hicks12]

Well my stance is pretty much the same as before... Apart from the fact if It's cheaper on steam (regardless of the actual difference.. Pence or pounds) I will go with steam as my 60mb connection makes downloading a breeze now, bought space marine for 5 quid downloaded in 25minutes!

[george1979]

Usually whatever's cheaper but like Hicks downloading from Steam is a breeze now. Only paying for a 30mb connection but was getting DL speeds of 3.9Mb/s when downloading Space Marine. I do like getting an instruction booklet though.

[directhex]

Only paying for a 30mb connection but was getting DL speeds of 3.9Mb/s

Paying for 30Mb, download speeds of 3.9MB.

Bits versus bytes. Multiply/divide by 8 to convert units.

[scaryjim]

I think the point may have been that his 30mbps connection should only manage a theoretical 3.75MB/s, and of course real world should be much less than that due to transport overheads. However, from my experience Steam is actually a bit clever, because your downloads are all compressed, but it calculates download rates based on the uncompressed data size - so Steam generally reports a download rate approximately twice your actual download rate. Easy enough to tell when you have 8mbps broadband and get ~ 1.7MB/s downloads

[Andehh]

I am a sucker for steam, so easy and convinient! It also make it so much easier for the inevitable re-formats....

[csgohan4]

Physical copies might have extras like content or free in game upgrades. Depends. But cost is the biggest factor for me.

[KeyboardDemon]

Physical copies might have extras like content or free in game upgrades. Depends. But cost is the biggest factor for me.

Sometimes those same features are available for download copies as well, but only if you buy the right version, such as BF3 Limited Edition pre-orders, but with other games they gave more in the Retail Limited Edition then they did with the download, like in Deus Ex: Human Revolution where the download Limited Edition didn't get the DLC included in some regions but the Retail Box set did.

[ncaputi]

Whatever is cheaper in my opinion. However, i will never say no to the classic boxed disc. But again there really is no presence unless their is a price difference.

[sygitius]

I prefer boxed games

[Tartanpimpernel]

I do like a boxed game for my gaming shelf, but DL seems the future these days.....primarily so games publishers will make more money, as they make little from the second hand market.

DL games means that market is hugely reduced, not to mention savings on manufacturing discs/cases/printing

As stated above I usually go with whichever is cheapest usually, with DL games I sometimes pick up the boxed version later once prices have dropped.

[Vancha]

I wonder sometimes what'll happen when Steam goes under. Obviously it won't happen any time soon, but it's the one thing that makes me lean towards disks...They'll probably last longer than Steam will.

[0iD]

The greatest advantage of physical media for me Vs d/loads is loss. I know a lot of us back-up our precious data either to NAS or cloud storage, but we are still in the minority. If truth be told, very few concern themselves with the possible loss of data thro disk failure, fire, theft, floods etc. That said, I have a clause in my home contents insurance that covers digital media for that reason.
That said I actually prefer do download the game these days over buying disks as I'm so bloody lazy I just can't be arsed to load in disks, means I have to move unnecessarily