This just came to mind when hearing this song on the radio:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd_pU80mGXk

We need to make a music video!

It's a pretty good song.

Oh uh OHHHHH!

I remember listening to that song when I was a kid back in 1994.

I don't think digital will kill off physical media but they will just compete with one another

CDR killed the VHS star!
DVD killed the CDR star!
BDR killed the DVD star!
meteor killed the everything star!

Maybe not in a year or so, but it'll happen eventually. It's just a matter of time.

I assume that's the Buggles. Great video and the first one MTV played when they went on the air.

For those too young to know, the M in MTV stood for Music, not that you'd know, I don't think they've actually played music since before I went to college over a decade ago.

Ironic, considering MTV and MuchMusic don't play any music videos anymore. And of course, there's still plenty of music on the radio. The digital fad will die off the same way the music video fad did.

Remember, a lot of people claimed that internet retail would kill physical retail as well. How's that working out?

Well, there's this.

Not to mention many physical PC games are just installers with activation codes. It's not a quick death, but a long, gradual descent.

Because people are preferring streaming rental services for film but are overwhelmingly still buying DVDs and Blurays when they buy them? How's that working out for your attempt to apply that to PC games then?

The PC section of any gaming store here in Germany easily outsizes any specific console. Funnily enough, our local GameStop has even expanded their PC selection and it's now larger than the Xbox 360 section.

Relax. :) It's called an analogy with a bit of humor.

Plus you ignored the rest of my comment which invalidates your counter argument, since I never claimed immediate death. I'll even copy it here to make it easy for you:

"Not to mention many physical PC games are just installers with activation codes. It's not a quick death, but a long, gradual descent."

A very hardline statement that is!

;) I don't live in Germany (see the information under my rep and join date), so I'm not sure how I would know that. But I do know adventures are more popular in Germany, and games like Gray Matter had physical collectors editions around Europe but not in the US.

In the US when I pass a GameStop it's mostly empty, and the PC games displayed are just things like Skyrim or Diablo 3 that require online service anyways.

It's funny how a joke thread with a pun on a popular song somehow translates into people arguing. Sheesh, gamers need to lighten up and be less contentious.

SHUT UP!

;)

It's not that digital is killing physical, physical is killing itself by being a worse customer experience. I mean, why would anyone pay for a disc and a few black and white sheets of paper as a petty excuse for a manual for a game they must activate on Steam instead of just buying the thing on Steam in the first place? (feel free to replace Steam with any other DRM system)

Physical has still advantages in theory: you get nice goodies (manulas, maps), you are not dependent on an external service, you can resell your game, you can share it with other people and not to mention that physical retail is where you will make new customers. Steam doesn't make new gamers, Steam just absorbs existing gamers from other markets.
However, when all these advantages are gone, why would anyone pick physical? The goodies are pretty much non-existent and those petty excuses for a manual should not even be printed, you have to activate your games on some external service every time you reinstall, you cannot share our games, you cannot resell them. It's just a rental. Much like brick and mortar video stores, if you are just going to rent something you go for the least messy solution: digital distribution.

Of course the industry has no problem with this, in fact it's what they would want. They can cut out the middle men and get full control over what you buy. They can just pull the kill switch and hold your entire library hostage if you don't want to follow the rules. Oh sure, you don't have to agree to their terms of service, but then all that money you spent will be gone forever. You wouldn't want that, would you
?

Every physical copy should be like Witcher 2 standard edition

you get loads of extras in a nice box and you can register your game on a DD service