Because of their sheer size, downloading games isn’t a major part of the download market. It can take hours to download an entire game, which you need to do before you can begin playing.
But that is likely to change, thanks to an innovation by a British company, Awomo.
"What Awomo does is take the core files used to play the game, which is enough to get you up and running, and then download the rest of the content in the background," Awomo boss Roger Walkden to the BBC.
"This is a super-fast way of distributing games. For the first time we have created a system that really does for games what iTunes does for music."
For instance, the company offers Tomb Raider Legend as a download. The files is 7.2GB, which can take hours to download even with a broadband connection, but Awomo users will only need to download 652MB before they can start playing.
Of course, not every game can work this way. But for those wanting to download, it’s a big step forward.