Downloadable retail needed?

[PhilD]

I admit I have, on more than one occasion, chosen to buy a downloadable game as an "impulse buy", so maybe the "download it now" thing works with me. OTOH, I don't think I ever decided not to buy a game because there was no option to download it.

Stardock's system for downloads is great - for those who don't know about it, it lets you archive on CD, or reinstall from a new machine, or whatever you'd like to be able to do with a game you bought on a CD. With this kind of facility, the only downside to a download system is the lack of a printed manual, which isn't much with most games these days since they have so crappy manuals - but, in the case of Dom3, makes a huge difference.

Having the manual as a PDF file is fine, but having it as a nicely bound, physical object is very important to me.

Now, as to what Shrapnel "should" or "could" do - it's clearly their choice, but like Pascal (PDF), I don't believe finding a reliable system to setup the downloads is that much of an obstacle to them - even if they offered a downloadable version at some discount, they'd probably recoup that in the cost of printing the manual.

I think one of the reasons they won't offer a downloadable version is that it might encourage piracy - if the manual is available as a PDF file, it becomes that much easier to just copy the whole thing and give it to your friends. As it is right now, copying the game doesn't just make it impossible to play MP games - you also don't get the nice manual.