SimonG: And I am very sad I miss out on console games. There are many games I would love to play, like RDR, which I simply can't. I'm just putting them on hold, like I did with PS 1 and PS 2 games. I also bought a 3DS just to play MGS 3 and Zelda: OOT. I don't have a television, and I really don't need one, which is the biggest reason for not buying a console.
Since you can nowadays connect consoles with screens and beamers, I will very likely buy a Xbox or PS 3 next year simply to catch up on games (emulation is to much of a hassle). I would have already bought a PS3 if they kept their backwards compatibility. The only reason that I never had a console is that money was tight and I needed a PC (also, gaming on a PC was cheaper, as piracy was easier).
Nowadays, money is no longer an issue, but I'm moving a lot, which makes a console rather stupid to have. If consoles would offer 100% digital libraries, I would also buy one instantly. But I'm not packing countless discs each time I travel. But I love consoles, even though I am a pure bred PC gamer. And I'm very sad I missed out on some of the best games, because they are console exclusives. Playing the second best on PC is no substitute.
Old post and the thread is dying down but...
If you ever do get a PS3 or Xbox 360, you can buy digital games on a console. I don't know if they offer every single game available as a digital download though, but hey, they don't offer every indie or arcade game on discs either. The value of buying digital is subjective though.
http://xbox.about.com/od/xbox360faqs/a/Xbox-360-Games-On-Demand-Faq.htm The difference here is that people have a choice. If you don't like the way the physical product works, that's fine, just buy the digital ones then. Other people might prefer it.
Before I assume too much and put words into your mouth, I have to ask, does it bother you that a digital library for consoles and the DRM that would come with it isn't "forced" on everybody or are you okay with letting the two exist simultaneously as they do now? I think I know your answer based on other posts in other threads, but maybe I've misread them before.
Console digital versions of retail sometimes go on sale for less than the disc version but they're usually not a phenomenal deal or anything, usually you can get the disc on sale for less. This week, the XBox Live sale is 2 dollars better on Dead Rising 2 than Amazon.com's sale, for example, but you will never stack up a bunch of the cheapest games that way. If paying an extra 5-10 dollars per game is no biggie, then it works. The real problem is hard drive size and the way XBox 360 does those. This is not a problem on PS3, btw, the way I understand it any hard drive will do for those.
Now, XBLA titles (download only) are often great deals. If you refuse to buy games of that caliber until they're 75% off you'll do better on Steam for many of them, but if 50% off is just as good you can solely buy on sale and pile up loads of them. Steeper discounts do happen, they're just more rare.
Some games are such amazing deals you can almost justify the price of half your console just by the gameplay you get from them. Red Dead Redemption is one of these, for 30 dollars you get the edition with every DLC on disc and included. The hours of gameplay that stacks up to can easily justify another 100 dollars, I'm really not kidding, there's not that many games with such varied gameplay that you can pour 100-200 hours in and barely notice you've done so. Probably it's not worth it for everyone, but given how I tend to buy games it's an amazing value.
Anyway, now I'm rambling, I just really popped in to let you know how the digital distribution of disc based titles works on XBox 360.
