During a discussion about the merits of the app store at work a colleague of mine asked a question somewhere along the lines of…

‘Do you think all application distribution will follow a similar path?’

and the thought that shot through my mind was something like:

‘People still think there is a future in physical media?’

I guess in my mind physical media is on the way out, and it has been since I first installed Steam back in 2003. Valve have done an amazing job with steam and whenever I hear debates about how future distribution systems will crush physical content I can’t help but think gaming distribution systems such as Steam, Live Arcade, PSN Store, GamersGate etc have been there done that and got the tshirt.

My first thoughts was that gaming was clearly leading the way, pushed by both the huge amounts of money and the fact there are very few popular open source gaming projects, leading the big game publishers to do whatever the hell they want- their way or the high way. On reflection this was far from the truth, as I had been using the APT packaging tool that did a (kind of?) similar thing on Linux for years. Apt and its friends let me install and configure free software with a few bashes on the keyboard.

It still seems strange to me that the big software development houses don’t have the cutting edge distribution channels to overhaul physical media, whereas games and open source channels do. Is it simply because users don’t want it, or we just simply aren’t ready? Have Apple might cracked the thing wide open with iTunes/ iTunes U/Appstore and the integration of these with the operating system and portable devices.

Yes Yes, we can simply go to the website and download whatever we wish in a few clicks, but 6 years ago that was my argument against Steam…