In an interview with Edge, Atari president Phil Harrison made a bold prediction about the future of physical media. In short, he thinks it's doomed.
"There’s a generation of kids being born today and probably already alive who I’m pretty confident will never buy a physical media product. They will never buy a DVD, they will never buy a CD, and they will never buy a game in a box."
Never is a pretty strong word. While I do think digital distribution is the future, I also see the capacity of games and movies growing at a faster rate than bandwidth. There's also the hurdle of Internet providers capping bandwidth, an irritating trend that will become more prevalent in the near future. Similar to how it would be unreasonable for most people to stream or download a Blu-Ray-quality movie today, I think it will be difficult for people to stream or download whatever is the highest-quality format of visual entertainment in the future.
That said, I hope I'm wrong. As I look at my shelves full of games, movies, and music, I'm totally ready for digital distribution to dominate. Clutter sucks and I wish I had more space in my apartment. How do you guys feel about physical media? Are you ready to go all digital? Or do you still like admiring lovely box art?
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