Retail PC game purchasing becoming harder and harder

I’ve noticed this trend for a while from retail stores stock of PC games becoming smaller and smaller to the incessant cry of the death of PC gaming.  Yesterday, while searching for Spore Galactic Adventures for my son, we went to two different Gamestop stores.  One had one little rack of PC games, the other had no PC games at all.  We ended up going to Best Buy to find the game.  Of course, they hadn’t bothered putting it out on the shelf yet.  This is the second time this has happened to me at Best Buy try to purchase a PC game on the day it comes out (the first was with Fallout 3).  So if you ever go to Best Buy on the day a game comes out and their website says they have it in stock but you can’t find it, tell someone to go look in the back.

This situation with retail in general doesn’t bother me that much since there are so many good online digital distribution sites now.  From Steam to Gamersgate to Impulse (and many more including publishers’ own sites) it’s easy today to buy a game online and download it immediately for play.  If you haven’t tried one of these sites before, give them a look.  It beats driving all over dealing with stores who only seem interested in selling games for the console crowd anymore.

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