In our continuing effort to bring you fresh and interesting content, X3F presents Would You Rather ... a weekly feature that asks you the hard questions. The point? If you had to choose one or the other, which would you go for?
This week's WUR was a user submitted question that really made us think, especially coming back from our local gaming store. At 1,200 MS points a pop, the Xbox Originals platform seems like a steep entry into the "classic" prev-gen titles. While many of the games can be found for a lot less than their digital counterpart, some of the recent additions are going to a premium price if they can be found. What we hear from the community is that the pricing structure of the XBO program is out of wack for the most part.
This week we want you to forget about the price in the equation and consider the content only. How important is physical media to you in the wake of the increasingly digital age? Do you prefer to stack your games to line your room like a protective castle wall, or are you fed up with hard copies of the game and wish you could get everything digitally? Let's pretend we're made of money this week, if only for a moment, and ask yourself when it comes to those Xbox Originals...
Feel free to share the reasons for your vote in the comments. We'll share the results of the poll during the next edition of Would You Rather ... which hits X3F every Wednesday.
Last weeks WUR results can be find after the jump ... click here to download those results!
Last week's WUR was a tight one but 53.7% of our readers decided that they'd rather participate in a beta or at least try a games multiplayer experience rather than the standard single-player. It looks like this online thing is kinda working out for Microsoft after all. Well, them and the 10 million people who subscribe to Xbox Live that is.
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
4-03-2008 @ 11:25AM
wickedpheonix said...
Sell us some decently sized and priced hard drives and I'm all for digital distribution - but as long as 120GB hard drives are over $150 I see where the real cost of the XB Originals are coming from.
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4-03-2008 @ 11:45AM
Yar TTomlliw said...
I think Telltale Games are right on the money with this right now, and have been for nearly a year with the Bone / Sam n Max games.
They release episodic content monthly, which can be paid for one episode at a time, and then downloaded instantly from a series of mirror sites. Alternatively, at the end of the season, you can buy all episodes, for one price, download them there and then so you have the games on storage, but then, a few days later (depending on mail service) send you a hard copy of the disc, with a nice case, few little extras you don't receive for just downloading an episode (directors commentary, making of etc etc), and thus you end up with the best of both worlds.
It's clear digital media is the way we're moving whether we like it or not. It is convenient to be able to download a retro game and just pull it up on your hardrive without switching a disc. It's also a great idea for those games that go out of circulation and become difficult to obtain. However, I also understand the frustration of collectors who want to be able to keep and treasure their games and have those extra bits that heighten the experience, but ultimately take up space.
I'm a bit of a fence sitter on the whole thing, and in my eyes, I feel a compromise needs to be reached.
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4-03-2008 @ 11:50AM
TurboFool said...
With a 12GB hard drive that I have an average of 2-4GB free on at any time, I'd much rather have the discs.
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4-03-2008 @ 12:12PM
justin said...
I'd much rather free up some hard drive space for other content. With digital space being limited, I'm likely to delete an XBO game to make room for something else. But I'd have to have a pretty small apartment to be pressed to throw away a hard copy Halo
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4-03-2008 @ 12:46PM
Ciaran Gallagher said...
Xbox Originals are a scam! You can get the real thing for next to nothing in price - or you can pay much more than the retail price to get a digital copy, which can take hours to download and takes up a lot of space on a 20gb drive!
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4-03-2008 @ 12:50PM
Jonman said...
Biggest issue with digital is MS's ridiculous DRM policy combined with the shoddiness of the 360's reliability.
Given that the second isn't going to be fixed anytime soon, they need to do something about the first.
Hard drive space is less of an issue for me as I've got an Elite, and I've usually got somewhere in the region of 70GB free space at any one time.
Cost is still a huge stumbling block for the Originals, but the biggest hurdle overall is time - there's more than enough good content for current gen that I don't have spare gaming time to go back to play retro titles.
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4-03-2008 @ 1:55PM
Odog4ever said...
If somebody else had brought this up then good: Guess how much a copy of Marvel vs Capcom 2 for the original Xbox is going for? It's not $15 (try $80-100)
If they were to make this game available on Xbox Originals or even on XBLA I would gladly hand over $15, as it would be a much better deal that procuring a physical copy. I just want to play the game and don't care about "adding to my collection".
Xbox Originals is good for hard to find games and games with inflated resale prices at least.
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4-03-2008 @ 3:00PM
charles said...
Game packaging sucks anymore. I'll take mine digitally whenever I can get them, so long as I'll be able to re-download them free of charge should the need arise.
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4-03-2008 @ 6:04PM
Kojo62 said...
Digital downloads are fine for rental situations.
But for an ownership investment, hard-copy media bypasses all the DRM headaches that come with digital. Disks are also better for reselling, trading and gifting.
So gimme my disks, please.
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4-04-2008 @ 6:03PM
Tom said...
For me: I really couldn't care less about having physical discs. I'm an all-digital geek and love it.
But that's just me and I do realize that I'm in the minority on this one. Meh.
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