Good point... on the other side though, it's lame to have to buy a product in store when digital distribution is gaining so much momentum... It doesn't make sense to buy something to download for $50 when you can have the box and an extra for the same price... The whole idea of digital distribution I thought was to a) cut back on costs, and b) try to fight against piracy.
Sites like Steam and GOG I think have been doing that well... low prices, and weekend deals help tremendously in getting people who perhaps usually pirate their games to fork out $5-10 dollars for a game, even if they have already downloaded it.

Go with PNG, full quality of BMP and closer to JPG size. ;)

Because you're the only one who hates DRM, of course. :-) This just sounds like a rationalization to me.
Like most every gamer on the planet, I am anti-DRM as well but either I don't buy it or I buy it and circumvent the restrictions (no-CD cracks or what-have-you).
For example, I don't like Steam. So when I want an older game that's only available on Steam, I buy it on Amazon or eBay instead. Lately I've wanted to pick up The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (for the voices), but there's no alternative to Steam--so I simply don't.

Wasn't it on one of the other DD shops now?

Yep. I grabbed my copy off of Direct2Drive.

Well, I think every online retailer does weekend sales now. Hell, that's when I buy probably 90% off the games I'll pick up in a given year!
I think that as online retail starts to gain momentum, you'll start seeing cost savings. Right now the stores have a bit of a stranglehold on pricing because they pretty much have total control over console games. However, once THOSE start appearing as online-buyable items (and that is starting with full priced console titles), the physical retail outlets are going to start mattering less and less to a publisher's bottom line.

Still only available for US and Canada...

aaaaaaah, forgot that regional restriction crap, glad the 360 doesn't suffer from it
aside from netflix
and the video marketplace
and the indie games
and ghostbusters (not that its any good but its still not right damnit)
and random content that people just don't want to sell to australians...

I'm constantly feeling bad for Australian gamers. GOG must be a real blessing for you. :)

I'll just toss this out there for what it's worth:
DRM today (the nasty scary limited install variety from Spore and Mass Effect) has nothing to do with piracy. It's all about stopping the resale market, because the publisher doesn't see any money from the resale. Never mind that if I _bought_ it, I have the right to _sell_ it (in whole -- I don't get to keep a copy). But that's why software is all _leased_ to us instead of sold to us. Since we never own it, and are only paying for the privilege of using it under some set of terms, they can do this kind of thing. Your option? Pay attention to the terms, and don't agree to terms you don't like -- and spend your money at GOG instead, where you actually are buying your software.
Oh, and copyright gives the publishers certain rights about how the item can be copied (and how/when/where it can be "performed", since that is a type of copying), but it does not give them rights over transfer of ownership of a particular copy. So if they ever did let you actually purchase ownership of your copy, they couldn't do the limited install thing.
Anyway -- nowadays much of the anti-piracy rant is just anti-piracy because it makes the publisher sound more like a victim than anti-resale...
And the lesson learned over and Over and OVER (but apparently forgotten or not noticed even more times) is that anti-piracy measures are useless against pirates. Even if it were possible to make a perfect uncrackable DRM scheme (and it isn't, but play along with me for a bit), the pirates (large scale pirates, the ones that the publishers claim to be so worried about) can always use social engineering to wangle a leaked internal copy without DRM embedded in it, or get whatever magic master keys are necessary to create unlock codes for the DRM, or get whatever else would be necessary to bypass the DRM. More importantly, they can do this and have the pirated free version up on torrent sites and duplicated around the world in _LESS_ time than it takes the publishers to get from a gold disc through duplication, packaging, and distribution. See the recent Spore fiasco...
I'm not in favor of piracy. As a software developer myself, I wish it didn't exist. But I also wish I was fabulously rich, and it's just not going to happen no matter how much I annoy other people :) Piracy does exist, and the people doing it are VASTLY better at cracking DRM than anybody is at creating it. So, ultimately, you'd make more money by writing off the hardcore pirates as a sunk cost that can't be fixed (thus saving all DRM R&D costs and DRM-related troubleshooting/tech support costs), and do something trivial that doesn't annoy your customers while doing some basic level of keeping honest people honest.
Oh, and make a game that is actually worth playing for more than 4-5 hours. Seems obvious to me, but seems to have gone over the head of the vast majority of console-envious attention-span-of-a-shrew publishers...
(Should come as no surprise that I like Morrowind, and am currently watching DaggerXL, a rapidly shaping up DaggerFall remake with some interest)

You know...
I agree that DRM is aimed more towards stopping the "great and mighty boogyman of Resale" now then actually stopping pirating. Heck even the most arcane sorts of DRM seem to be quickly and mercilessly cracked by those involved.
It's a wonder how any gaming company stays in business with all the piracy and resale going on. Why get in the industry if you make a game for a market that will just pirate it? I mean everyone is a pirate...right?
Honestly there are very few game companies that seem not to look at their companies as potential criminals instead of potential customers....especially in the PC realm. The reason DRM-free gaming is starting to gain popularity among consumers isn't just because of the lack of DRM, but it is also because people hate having the assumption that they are criminal tossed on them before they even purchase the game.
There are a few things that need to happen: Game companies need to get rid of the idea that software is just 'licensed.' Even if that is technically the truth, people don't see it that way. Even with Digitally distributed software, you do not hear people saying 'so..I leased this awesome game today." Individual people are not companies that have a whole iT and legal department to deal with licensing issues.
Just assume that there are people out there that will always pirate your game, regardless of DRM scheme, fancy packaged doodads, awesome included soundtracks, or what not. Then start treating everyone else like customers, not criminals.
Lower the prices on games. Sure i know there is a major cost investment in a lot of games, but come on: the one thing the iphone has shown is that people will buy cheap crappy software if it is priced low enough.
Don't over saturate the market. Man... sometims to many games come out. Talk to the rival game companies and just...stop releasing so much. There are only a finite number of consumers.
Along with that realize there are niche markets. Some companies already realize this, but honestly the game industry is moving more and more (if it isn't there yet) towards a point where the movie industry is at: Certain people tend to buy certain games. (Or watch certain movies.) There are cross over 'hits' but not all games have to be that. Satisfy your core base of people (be it 'teh hardcorez' or 'OMG i'm SO CASUAL' market, etc.)
DRM won't save the day. Better planning and research will. Stop using a scattergun approach to gaming by launching your game out in to the void and hoping it'll sale. I'm not saying build your games to the whims and desires focus groups....but companies need to start realizing the games market is changing on both the PC and console side.

Actually, it isn't so much over saturation on general, but more at certain times. You KNOW that September-early December is going to get increasingly ridiculous in terms of the number of games that will start popping up for sale. Spread it out a little better, even things off! It does nobody any good if 6 potential AAA titles release in October and November because people can't afford all of them. Spread those out throughout a fiscal year, though, and you'll probably get more sales per game.

I go back and forth... at times I love the boxes, and I read through the manuals again for nostalgia, and buy an old mint copy of some PC game on ebay.
Other times I go through a phase where I buy games only on Steam or GOG for a month and think how silly it is to care about paper and boxes and such.
It's almost like I'm bipolar.

I'm 100% with cioran, after some months of games from gog, i retrieved some old games of mine and buyed some more on a bargain bin....
and i'm definitly annoyed, practically raged by the fact that i have to continually switch cd on my laptop every time i want to play a game or simply see were i were arrived... not to tell the absurdity of having a power hungry and noisy cd player constantly on!!!!!
my anti piracy solution:
- release only really good games and make updates to ameliorate the interface/gameplay when the first gamers comment came (with autoupdate obviously)
- release games at a reasonable price
- make all your games available from day 1 on sites like gog and other distributor like steam (all of them, so that i could choose what service i prefer, that's gog :) ), so that when i hear of a game i doesn't loose time to search for it, i could start the download in 2 minutes, install without any hassle in the shortest time possible, play without having to find a nocdcrack (and make a good uninstall that really clean it and automatically put the savegames and personalized configuration in an easy to retry and reapply way to boot...)
with something like this you will see the rise of the selling (if you release good games!!!)
pirates will ever exist, if not only because non every player have all the money it will need to have all the games he want, but making it all easy and quick to access is the goal, and no fucking DRM ensure i could continue to play it in the future!

I think it seems that way, but it's really not as bad as it seems. I mean, I think there is a lot of piracy, but there's a lot of sales too. Demigod is one example. As Revolution said in that Eurogamer interview..the relationship between game makers and gamers is largely broken, and that's part of the problem. Companies like Stardock do well, I'd say cause they have a close relationship with their customers, and also have their heads on straight when it comes to piracy (i.e. focus on potential customers, not fighting piracy, directly at least).
Funnily enough, Capcom is a strong proponent of SecuROM (albeit in its mildest forms), and when asked about Sins of a Solar Empire's success (basically no DRM, very high sales), Sven said it was likely the exception to the rule. And here we have Demigod. Har. How many 'exceptions' will it take?
I have said the exact same thing before. High five. :)
These people agree with us and are fighting for it.