Sony has announced it's new "Day 1 Digital Program" for the PlayStation Network. Now what this means is you won't have to leave your house to get some of the biggest games coming this holiday.
Sony will be making a select few "big" October releases available day-and-date on the PSN. Not only that, but if you're a PS+ member, you can even get a 10% discount on the games during its first week of availability, too!
Here's the list of games participating:
Resident Evil 6
(Available for download on October 2nd – $59.99)
NBA 2K13
(Available for download on October 2nd – $59.99/$53.99 for PS Plus members, with pre-order)*
Dishonored
(Available for download on October 9th – $59.99/$53.99 for PS Plus members, with pre-order)*
DOOM 3: BFG Edition
(Available for download on October 16th – $39.99/$35.99 for PS Plus members, with pre-order)*
007: Legends
(Available for download on October 16th – $59.99)+
Medal Of Honor: Warfighter
(Available for download on October 23rd – $59.99)
Need For Speed: Most Wanted
(Available for download on October 30th – $59.99/$53.99 for PS Plus members, with pre-order)*
Assassin’s Creed III
(Available for download on October 30th – $59.99)*
Games with "*" on them means they can already be pre-ordered. Unfortunately. the games won't be available for pre-loading — at least, Sony hasn't mentioned it in anyway just yet. So this means, once the game's available at retail, you'll just be able to download it then. Yep, you have to wait for it to download first before you can get to play it.
Should GameStop and the other retailers be worried? Possibly, but the only problems I see here are without the pre-loading feature, that means users will still need to wait in order to play their games — which is counter-productive on what it wants to do. Not to mention you won't even have the physical copy of games in case you want someone to borrow it or you want to sell it. Nonetheless, if you want a game that's on the list that you won't be selling — ever, you could think of downloading it instead of going out.
To pre-order the games and to read more about the program, click here.
Should retailers be worried? Is this the start of games being sold digitally and if so, shouldn't they be sold cheaper?