pc-game-digital-downloads posts

The big advantage of PC game download services is convenience; you can purchase and download legal copies of PC games directly to your PC hard drive with no need to hold onto a disk. The problem is that you also cannot resell or trade in those games as you can with a boxed PC copy or boxed console games.

Now a newly announced service called Green Man Gaming is claiming to offer a way for gamers to trade in PC game titles they had downloaded and purchased. The UK based site says it will launch near the end of March and will have 400 games to purchase with over 2000 games available by the end of 2010. Unfortunately the press release announcing the service doesn't go into much detail, saying only that they will use "leading edge technology" to facilitate the trade-ins and adding that they will "pay significant royalties to the publisher each time the game is traded in perpetuity." We hope to get more info about this service including if it will be made available to US customers.

We've been seeing the rise of the digital download business model for PC games for the last few years but one PC gaming publishing executive believes that the industry will turn completely to that model within a year. MCVUK.com reports that 1C Company's international publishing director Darryl Still believes, ""Q1 2011 is my estimate as to when PC games will be sold completely via digital."

We don't think that's going to happen that quickly, at least in the US (we are pretty sure there will be lots of retail copies sold of StarCraft II released when it finally ships) . But it is clear that the presence of PC games in retail stores is getting smaller and smaller. Still states, "Digital is fantastic, and we're very pleased with it. But it is not us as the developers and publishers driving products to digital – it is because the options for the PC at retail are so limited."