I don't know about you, but I would really like to be able to give my family and friends CDs and DVDs as gifts. Unfortunately, things are not headed in the right direction, and this is not the first time we're talking about digital content distribution taking over everything in the future...

According to Atari president Phil Harrison, who spoke to Edge, "There's a generation of kids being born today and probably already alive who I'm pretty confident will never buy a physical media product. They will never buy a DVD, they will never buy a CD, and they will never <-125x125 Button - right->buy a game in a box."

Yeah, isn't that just great? Maybe that generation of kids won't even read a book, know how a chicken looks, and probably they will all be robots! Leaving aside Sci-Fi stories, I think boxed games should never die. Why?

Digital content distribution won't be ever able to replace the feeling of holding the real thing in your hands, and grabbing the game manual for the first time, that's why! I may be old school, but I know I am not the only one.

So, this is the very short story about digital content distribution, but... what do you think? Are you for digital content distribution, or do you still miss old school boxed games, like me?

In less than a week, RockStar's GTA 4, PC version managed to gather a lot of user reviews, but most of them bashing it to the wall, as we were able to see yesterday. Now, we just bumped into the first official reactions from the game maker, whose Lead QA Arthur Chiang, Technical Director Kevin Hoare, and VP of Development Jeronimo Barrera spoke to IGN about the early issues of GTA 4, PC version.

Regarding the arrival of the first patch to GTA 4 PC version, Kevin Hoare said "We've never stopped working on the game, we're working on it every day. We haven't had the typical break after it's gone gold. We're continually working on improvements, we're working on a patch right now," so problems could go away pretty soon, <-250x250 Square - right->although it's not improvements that GTA 4 PC version needs, but FIXES...

When it comes to the "textures not displaying" issue, Jeronimo Barrera said " There's a lot of noise like this game doesn't run at all or there's missing textures and everything else. From what we've gathered a lot of those problems are either out of date drivers or we don't support that type of card or you're underspecced or whatever, it's always a combination of one of those things, it's not necessarily that we don't know what we're doing because obviously we put in hundreds and hundreds of hours of test into this. From what we did and from going through certification with Microsoft and our external QA process we didn't run into the amount of problems that the boards seemed to be saying there are. I know that Nvidia and ATI are constantly…I think they're releasing new drivers pretty soon."

At last, here's what I consider a funny lie from Mr. Barrera, or maybe that's just the reality through his eyes - "There is a bit of growing pains but the end result is consumers are going to be very happy. The majority I think are happy with it."

Just for the record, I checked again the Amazon page of the game - now, there are 94 user reviews, of which 78 rated the game with a single star, while 6 gave it 2/5, so...

One of the PC games I would really love to get into these days is GTA 4, especially since I had plenty of time to mess with those GTA 4 cars already... but it's always better to enjoy a game on your own PC, instead of your buddy's console. As long as your computer is powerful enough to handle a game, there's only one problem remaining - bugs, and - unfortunately - latest Grand Theft Auto PC problems exceed all previous ones had by the games that came before GTA 4...

Leaving aside the six-fingered lady, the latest Grand Theft Auto PC problems are basically related to textures appearing and disappearing, as well as (severe!) camera problems, as some of my friends in a hurry to grab the game told me, and discussion boards already boil like hot lave with posts saying that the GTA 4 PC version was released with a bunch of bugs<-250x250 Square - right-> that really manage to destroy the experience of playing it.

To make a longer story short, here's a quick list of the most encountered Grand Theft Auto PC problems:

- poor frame rates, even for those having a killer gaming machine
- short draw distances, despite pushing video settings to the higher limit
- missing textures
- crashes, crashes, and crashes, once again!

Just look at the page of the game on Amazon - until now, there are 74 customer reviews, with an average score of 1.5. Out of those 74 ratings, 60(!!!) users awarded the game 1 star, 5 of them - 2 stars, 2 - 3 stars, 1 - 4 stars, and only 6 Amazon users gave the GTA 4 PC version a 5/5 rating.

Just look at this comment by Philip Bankey - "First of all, let me just say that my review has very little if anything to do with SecuROM. SecuROM is the least of the issues that piece of trash has to offer.

This game is simply terrible. You have to sign up and log into the Rockstar Social Club and Windows Live just to play online, which doesn't even work. Yeah, I got randomly banned from servers for disconnecting from them and now I can't get into those servers. Who cares, you can't play the game anyway.

This game is impossible to play smoothly unless you have a holy PC that is absolutely up to date with everything. Even then, you can't run it at full settings because they DESIGNED THE GAME TO NOT WORK WITH CURRENT HARDWARE at full settings. Yes, they state in their guide that high settings are reserved for future hardware.

I'll just get to the bottom line: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. Rockstar has done nothing but port a terrible version of the console greatness to PC and slapped every customer in the face during the process. I want to see them go out of business, and I am in the processes of getting my refund."

I guess that sums it all up, but let me give you just one more sample - "My specs pretty much allow me to play anything at 1920x1200..Crysis (with shadows off), COD4, Left for Dead, Fallout 3..but GTA IV brings my dual core 3ghz to its knees and then some." Do I really have to add anything else?