I would like to clarify that my expectations for the timing of digital distribution outstripping retail will be more than 3 years. The 3 years in the MCV headline is from one of the other speakers.

having a laugh....3 years. has anyone tried to download a game on PSP Go! ? It can take up to 3 hours for Gran Turismo to download on a 10mb broadband line and GT is less than 1000mb, so what happens when PS3 in their infinite wisdom of putting all games on the Bluray format started trying to digitally distribute games at 15GB+
Has anyone even considered that a lot of broadband packages are still capped? What happens when you have a 2GB a month limit and a game comes out at say 5GB, who is going to pay the extra to the broadband supplier.
The market place is not ready, broadband providers aren't ready and consumers aren't ready and none will be ready in 3 years.

Who is Nick Parker? PRRFFFHHHHHH
Poor prediction. Lets see where he is in 3 years?!!!!

3 years? The UKs BB wont even be at acceptable levels by then to take the market fully away from physical media. A totally unrealistic prediction from said speakers.

As I said, the 3 years prediction was NOT from me but fom another speaker. We have a way to go. What I said is quoted in the text.

What if these cloud based gaming/services such as OnLive actually work? Isnt this more likely within this three year timescale, if not sooner?

No further need for console hardware generations. Cut out retail. Instant gaming with no need to download or patch. Instant movies. etc etc etc.

OnLive will work, but it will be limited to the USA for a long time...infact I dnt even think the USA has the technology in place to support a countrywide rollout. That alone will take years.

Other services etc will always be around and will take hold of the market place. However I think there will always be a place for games, the actual disc in your hand. Digital will take a large market share, probably 90-95% of PC games, but I think consoles will be different. We shall see though.

Games in cases to last forever? Hmm. Only time will tell.

Come on guys - do you have to keep on doing this?

MCV is getting really bad. I suspect this will be deleted.

Monopoly does not serve the industry!

We are way off 3 years. You need to allow for the Part exchange factor which has a big influence on deciding where to purchase from. Additionally the price point for downloads will be at Full RRP, and not many consumers pay FULL RRP. Broadband is 10 years away from giving us a good enough service. The file sizes are too big also (50gb for PS3) I would guess we are 15 years from being really affected by Downloads - We are putting our money where our mouth is as we plan to roll out shops soon. But Digital Download is something to watch.

Digital distribution will NEVER overtake physical copies.

Why? Because there's no competition or stock taking from the likes of Xbox Live or PSN, All their games remain the same price or years. So there's no incentive to lower prices.

Hell, even the launch 360 XBLA titles are still the same price and they're nearly 5 years old now.

Unless a set amount DLC codes can be given to retailers or other websites to obtain, Retailers will fight and win in a price war (esepcially with the used market on their side) and Digital will lose.

Also you just need to look at DVD and music Downloads. Although Music has finally taken off, DVD downloads are no where. And these files are small. Even the PC market has not embraced the digital downloads and a computer has everything in place to download and store games.
Where Game downloads will be big very quickly will be casual games like you get for the Iphone.

The PSP-Go will be the one to watch to see how the digital download market takes off ( I predict it wont)

Music downloads have taken off but they've absolutely fucked the music market. Everyone downloads tracks rather than full albums and the music industry is struggling to come to terms with how to make this work for them (I'm talking labels not retail here). At 89p a track there's no real money init.

I think punters will have issues paying £49.99 for a game download (thats the current SRP on games). The Publishers seem think this is what they'll get for them. It'll be a rude awakening for some.

Sure the iphone aps will do ok selling for a few quid but lets be honest that isn't going to satisfy true gamers.

Time will tell of course, downloads will inevitably come to the fore eventually but it won't be the cash cow publishers seem to think it'll be

And theres still one problem that no one can change.. And that is what happens when your hard drive dies, I mean if you have only down loaded the games, and it falls over you've lost maybe £100s of pounds in games, unless to make copies of them, umm I see an other problem there.. oh of course you could save them online, oh no thats file sharing... down loads your screwed. best stick to buying a disc...

You can re-download from PSN if you change hard drive, should be same system everywhere if you have a diskcrash.

The massively popular Steam application for PC should illustrate just how popular download is in relation to physical media. Certainly all PC gaming related software should become download only through secure apps such as Steam in an effort to combat the platforms rampant piracy. Excluding casual gaming, it's my opinion that the PC is fast becoming second to consoles as the primary gaming platform, certainly for publishers/devs.

As someone who actually prefers a lot of the Virtual Console and WiiWare stuff, I can't tell you how convenient it is to have all the games channels right there on the console flash memory or an SD card at the touch of a button.

All I can say to game companies is cut the FMV and superfluous crap and give us the meat and potatoes of the game. One of the reasons DS and PSP are doing so well is because that's exactly what the games are about - a pure gaming experience.

Roll on digital downloads. Can't come soon enough.