Editorial

11:08 PM on 2/8/2011 by Katrina Pawlowski

To contrast the last rage-filled edition of On the Download, we’re going to take a look at all of the great things that digital content offers us. From great sales to prolonging a games experience beyond the retail version, all things that are worth loving about digital content.

Digital Content tends to get a lot of nit-picky critics. From the people that like physical copies of their games, to people who believe it’s a way of manufacturers to nickle and dime us without a break. While we don’t see many retail copies of digital games or content (it does happen, though) and permanent price drops are a rarity - there are plenty of other ways for these games to warm our hearts.

First off is the illustrious Steam Sales we experience on a regular basis. Steam, the Valve (developer) run digital distribution program for PC games, likes to give us every opportunity to play the games we like. SteamPowered.com lists sales for Mac and PC games/DLC under the “specials” tab - and if you own both mac and PC? Most games carry over without an issue.

The next up would be the popular Deal of the Week where we often see Xbox LIVE Arcade games and DLC. Sometimes these games are arranged by theme, other times it’s fairly random. You never know what you’ll find on the Deal of the Week, but full games, arcade games, and DLC are all eligible to appear up on sale.

The Playstation Blog doesn’t have a catchy title for their deals, but they list sales/deals along with new releases and other news right on their website. On the Playstation 3/PSP Store dashboard there are often sales listed in a nice little box, though - so pop in periodically to check out cheap digital content.

Sure the DRM issues are a pain, and other restrictions apply to digital games, but it’s not all bad. In fact, the ability to get two copies of a digital game for the price of one is downright co-op of them (if you need two copies to play online).

This concludes our mini-guide to tracking down deals on digital content from the source, but don’t forget to check Amazon.com for things like Xbox Points cards, Xbox Gold memberships, and other great deals.

Author

Katrina Pawlowski
Former Editor

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