A new retail market for computer games

The time of selling PC games in retail stores has come. It's already like this in the States, where only console video games are sold over the counter. Japan is following quite rapidly, although PC games have never been as popular there as over here. Our market will soon follow, being replaced by the more sensible online retail option. That to me seems fine, apart from a couple of caveats.

• consumers are expected to still pay full price (45+ euros) for new computer games. That's a ridiculously high amount of money, considering that the market and the client end-user agreement has changed. Computer games nowadays need to be activated by the publisher (cf. Spore, Mass Effect, every Steam game), which means someone else outside of myself gets to decide if I can play this game today, tomorrow, next year, ten years from now. I used to pay good money ten years ago for a game disc I own, and can still install today. If I can't hold on to this self-control over when I play a game, I expect to be compensated. If a publisher decides to keep prices as they are, while taking away liberties I used to have, I cease to buy their product.
• same goes for expiring products, limited downloads and other similar avenues. This essentially means I'm renting, and I shouldn't be expecting to pay full price for that either.
• the online offering used to be truly global. No matter where you are in the world, you can buy a title, as long as you are willing to pay for shipping. Now the Steams of this world are only offering particular content to particular regions, while barring it from others. If the reason for this makes sense, I'm fine with that. I don't need to see any right-wing stuff in the latest releases. If it's just to make a buck, or to prevent losing a buck, then no. Let me decide if content is worth buying.
• finally, unless offline retail actually has something to add to the content of any form of entertainment, then there's no reason for online product to be more expensive. Retail channels can help out a product by having location, distribution, marketing and so on and so forth. But it's ludicrous to force online retailers to simply carry higher prices, just to protect the offline channel. That's market pollution.

At some point in the next four years PC games will only be sold online. Soon after, the eighth generation of video game consoles (Sony PS4, Xbox III) will lose their disc-based content as well. At least, as long as they make prices more reasonable. 80 euros for Uncharted 2 Special Edition is too much. For that amount of money, I expect to get an escort service, a bottle of champagne, and a limousine.

(So indeed, PSP Go is a bit too early for the party. As Scott Adams said sometime ago, "success is mostly timing, which is mostly luck".)