Downloadable Games

Many thought we were completely off-base for not including digital downloads in our last list, but honestly we viewed them as a positive for PC gaming and not a negative and we were concentrating on minuses for PC gaming.  That said... yes, downloadable games are the future of PC games and are rapidly becoming its present.  Services like Direct2Drive, Steam, GOG.com, and countless others we're not even going to try and list are bringing viability back to the PC format. 

The nice thing about digital downloads is that they offer a viable option for the people out there out there who'd rather download something than be bothered to go out and purchase a disc at a store;  in the past, these people could only turn to piracy for such a connivence.  It remains to be seen whether direct downloads will bring core PC gaming back to where it once was – hardware issues persist and some people consider online services like Steam to be as bad as DRM.  Still, the way we see it, digital distribution is not so much a replacement for regular retail product as it is a unique buying mechanism that has helped PC gaming as a whole evolve, which brings us to our next category...