During the keynote speech at Microsoft’s UK Gamesfest, Xbox Europe’s Vice President of strategic marking David Gosen revealed his belief that videogame digital distribution will become a bigger seller than physical media.
There’s no question digital will overtake physical. It happened in music and will happen to our industry.
Gosen’s belief comes from his analysis of the rate consumers are actively choosing to download content for games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. He also uses the amount of XBLA games sold to verify his point that “digital will be the dominant force in [the] future.” Towards the end of his talk, he hinted that Microsoft will have some hefty announcements in the near future regarding digital downloads. No word yet if that announcement will consist of the words “lower-priced hard drives.”
Honestly, I’m afraid of this change. I know we will all be happily downloading games in a few years from now, but I just really like discs. Plus, a disc actually has value outside of my living room. I don’t like Gosen’s assumption that downloading songs and 300 MB XBLA games is the equivalent of an industry wide change, but that seems to be the consensus with most. What do you guys think?
[via MCV]
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Contest:
6:57 PM on 08.06.2008
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I couldn't imagine not being able to go back and play some of my favorite retro games because they are DRMed to hell and only exist digitally on my unique console.
As for games going digital only, don't hold your breath, it won't happen for a long time. There are too many places that still don't have broadband, and the ISPs simply can't afford to let everyone who buys Metal Gear Solid 5 all download it at the same time.
Games on the other hand, I predict WILL become solely digital as well, BUT it won't happen for a very long time. So many people with broadband access must live in a bubble and think that is how everyone surfs the net. Not so. That, and when the hard drive sizes begin to become massive; nothing more annoying than not being able to expand your library because "Ooops, I'm outta hard drive space".
The video games industry seems to be taking the opposite path, leaning towards digital distribution whenever viable. But if it doesn't catch on, will all this investment of time and resources be a waste?
There are so many things to consider than just making a parallel to the music industry.
Internet speeds are still an issue. The US is pretty behind in this area. Fiber optics won't be mainstream here for at least 5-10 years. It's an expensive setup, and companies will have to rewire everything.
Drive size. If we're going to be downloading these games, we'll need drives that are at least 500 gigs instead of the measly 20 or 120. I mean, 500 is still pretty low if we're to download games that will eventually be 10 gigs or over. You have to consider that the next gen games will actually fill the entire blu-ray or high def disc.
That's just two problems out of many. It'll be a while before we start downloading all of our games.
If I'm spending $50-60 on a game, I usually want packaging. I want to know that I don't have to be around an internet connection to play or reacquire the game. I want to see exactly where my money has gone, and be able to hold it in my hands.
This is also not mentioning that retail stores would have a lot to lose in the loss of selling movies, music, games, etc. Places like Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. will resist a massive push toward digital distributions, because they have already made significant investments in to brick and morar stores.
Not everyone has a broadband connection. Not everyone who has a broadband connection has their consoles hooked up to it. I still buy music CDs (just got on in the mail today, in fact) and I still buy DVDs. Why? Because I like knowing that it's mine. It's there. I don't have to worry about downloading, hard drive crashes, or other crap like that.
Did the console did but your friend didn't download the game for his? Well, you can't just bring the disc over to his place if it's all download-only, can you?
Some people have the means to buy a new console if their dies or perhaps they give an older version of the same console to a friend or relative in order to buy a newer version. Can't just transport your games to the new console, can you? And it would really suck to be the recipient of the older console if they don't have broadband but the games are only downloadable, wouldn't it?
As long as my hypotheticals are getting egregious, at least a disc that I bought at lunch can still be loaded and played when I get home and the wife says, "Our FiOS connection has been down all day, and Verizon won't be out for three days to fix it." Now if everything went to being downloaded and there was no game for me to purchase ... well, you get the idea.
And as Poopface Monty pointed out ... "Disk full."
Oh, yeah, bring on the death of physical media!
Not.
Hard Drive space is not a big problem. My last 500gb hdd cost $130, in NZ prices. Of course, thats not standard for the consoles, but cant you already change your ps3's hard drive? Id be surprised if it were completely impossible for 360 too. If people start needing it, MS and Sony will start to compete for largest hdd space in their consoles, which will make it cheap for us.
However, as i said, its only a matter of time. The fact that piracy exists, and is so rampant, is proof to me that people dont mind downloading and storing all this data. Its getting them to pay for it thats the issue.
I joke, I joke!!!!!
Back to serious matters, I prefer too to see what I pay for... I mean If I buy lets say 100 games... then I want to see them sitting on a shelf gathering dust and for bragging rights to my friends (to show my penis is obviously bigger and that I am not insecure).
I do not want a hard disk full of data which slows down my stuff that no one can see.
Also downloads always involve some kind of DRM or security, loose your password or download link or something similiar and the game you bought but accidentaly deleted and need back is no longer in existance for you to get without buying it again ( I can't remember how many times I have had problems with Valve downloads in losing details to be able to re-grab a game previously paid for... I think I have 3 accounts there atleast).
Also download prices are still as high as physicaly buying a game, It Just means the vendor (Micro$oft, Nint£ndo or Play$tation gets the money that otherwise the independant stores would get on the highstreet in your local town supporting your local economy.
I wonder if this would affect developers making crap games since you'd think if people cant resell games, they'll be a little more discriminate in regards to game purchases.
wishful thinking huh?
I understand the move with music since its to consumers advantage. If you only want 2 songs, you can buy just those 2 for .99 ents instead of a $15 CD. But with $60 games it just doesn't work the same. Unless this has the side affect of making games cheaper..maybe $40 per title. Yeah, again, wishful thinking.
As said by B-Nez, with physical buying games you can easily and quickly trade it in and get a good proportion of your money back on a bad game.
How many of you have had a memory card corrupted or a harddrive go to shit and fuck over your song library? I know I have, and I would hate to have to redownload my entire game library if something similar occurred on any future console.
Plus there's the fact that I just plain love having an actual physical disc or cartridge, complete with case and manual sitting on my shelf, there's just something about the comfort of actually owning a tangible object. XBLA, VC, WiiWare & PSN are all fine and dandy, but if given the obtion I'll always prefer heading on down the Best Buy and buying a game in box. With the exception of a few stand-alone songs here or there I always buy real CDs, and since there's no buying just the parts of a game you like online I'll be fighting a full-on conversion to digital distribution all the way.
YOU'LL HAVE NOTHING TO HAND DOWN TO YOUR GRANDCHILDREN BUT YOUR NES.
i will never download games
we would need huge game consoles
its just retarded
i hate microsoft and this stupid statement makes me even more pissed
Plus, the industry wants everyone to lose their first sale doctrine rights by pushing DRM laden digital downloads on us. Your NES cartridge from twenty years ago still works, but your Yahoo Music and Plays For Sure music downloads from two years ago don't. DRM relies on them maintaining the authentication servers forever - they won't. They'll just make you buy the same stuff over and over again.
The best defense against DRM and forced obsolescence is to buy physical media.
Sachin Agarwal is right. The industry wants to move towards digital downloads to prevent us from selling our games. Now I buy a lot of games and I rarely sell them. Plus if that company happens to go under then you can kiss all your games good buy if they were using strict DRM to control them.
Not to mention they would completely ignore the younger generation that do not have credit cards. Sure they could always go to the store to buy a download card, but at that point they might as well buy the actual game.
Any company decides to go strictly with digital distribution will not receive my business.
CD's are still being mastered since their debut in 1982. Yes numbers have dwindled since the arrival of digital distribution, but the market for them is still very strong.
Video games will continue to be produced and shipped to brick and mortar stores for a very long time. I seriously would not worry about it.
You can streamline as much as you like, but the fact is if games are only digitally distributed, not everybody will be able to access it because, believe it or not, not everybody has an ultra fast internet connection; hell some people don't even have an internet connection at all.
Take Australia for example, it's so expensive for broadband over here that most people opt a 256/512 account with very limited capping or in a lot of cases, even dial up is still used. I pay $80 a month for my internet connection and only get 1.5MB connection speed, that's an average of 60KB download speeds. I would be FUCKED if digital distribution was the only option, and Im pretty well off as far as finances are concerned.
Point I'm trying to make is that even though it will EVENTUALLY become that way, it won't happen until all societies are capable of handling that much information amongst our networks. And in Australia's case alone, it won't be happening for a long fucking time.
Not to mention having purely online distribution would null any kind of physical advertising that video game retailers provide for so many games. People are also not going to want to fork out money for them to have their special edition video game sent out to them because there are no stores to get it from.
There are just way to many factors involved to simply make a switch to DD. Maybe in 30 years.
People like to have physical stuff that belongs to them, not a temp digital file that if anything happens, they loose it, and of course who will be there ready to sell the same shit for the same price, MS.
Me? No broadband? Are you kidding? Verizon FiOS, baby! Not a problem here. ;)
But I know a lot of people who live in areas where there are no broadband providers either because they live in a development in the middle of nowhere, or they live in a house that's in the middle of farmland. And, no, satellite at this point isn't a viable alternative because of the cost.
And then you have bastards like AT&T and Comcast who are mulling over bandwidth caps...
When it comes to games, I like to sell or trade my games I know I'm never going to play again, but with this digital distribution system, I'm not quite sure how that could work.
Plus we've got a 10Gb/month download-limit in Belgium, so I wouldn't even be able to get many games :-(
But when it does happen, they better have a big-ass hard drive for every system (or allow you to upgrade it freely like the PS3), because I never get rid of my games.
Assuming the games industry still expects me to pay for its product, they damn well better give me some physical property. How would they expect me to lend games to my friends? What will become of the used market?
The only reason other forms of media (movies and music, and I guess older video games) were able to transition to digital majority is because the world discovered that the price of this content was severely reduced (to zero dollars) on torrent sites.
In the 90s it was cool to have a huge selection of CD cases in your living room, but you don't see that very much anymore. The same thing will happen at some point with games.
I really like collecting games and looking at all the boxes, but even more than collecting them I love playing them. Yes, there will always be people who like collecting games and will buy the physical copy, but in a given time most people will switch over to the download form.
But rest assured same as the thing with mp3 and CDs even after the main transition to download form most games will still be available in boxes for quite a while.
When I buy a new game I always smell it when I first open the case =P and you can't small a file on an HDD lol
PS: I hate David Gosen.
This is coming from a company that will more than likely (according to John Carmack) have an upcoming title released on multiple discs.
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I'm not a fan of digital-distribution only. I don't want to wait 4 hours for my game to download, and given MS's track record with hardware, when your system fails, we'll have to deal with that effing DRM issue.
Screw that.
Where as physical copies, your only limited by your pocket, not the default space you've been given. This is one thing staying in the very far future. Then when it is made a reality choice, I personally don't think it'll be as embrassed as microsoft think it will. Then add there monopoly money on top of it. then the complete disregard of exchange rates - people are gonna be pissed.
That being said we won't see it fully utilized for a long time. Current internet technology doesn't make it viable to download things of this size as you'll be waiting for weeks. This is why movie downloads on live are barely HD because if they were 720p or 1080p then you'd be waiting a long time to download the movie when you just want to chill out on your night off
Old games, yes. Small games, yes. But for Microsoft to claim that the future will be all digital is ignorance. Firstly that's going to require hard drive sales with sizes of ridiculous proportions *adjusted to Microsoft Prices* in order to fit everything on there.
Graphics requirement will only rise, and with that - a requirement for more space. Yes perhaps it's feasable that we will one day have a basic internet within most homes that receive information at over 1,000kbps. But right now, it's just not possible. That and Microsoft must remember that whomever gets the console just may not have that connection. Those connections need to become mainstay BEFORE a physical media can be done away with.
And even then, Microsoft games are more likely to go the way of the PS3 and incorporate the blu-ray drive in their next console. As certainly they are not foolish enough to believe that by the year 2010 we will have such amazing internet speeds.
Nosir. 50gb games are not something I would want to download more than one. And even with a decent speed service, 50gb will still take at least 8 hours for the average person. Yes there will be someone who says "Just leave your console online overnight" but the average person will not hawk over their console until the download starts.
In addition, if Microsoft so wishes - and it isn't backwards compatible - they could accept Pioneers new Blu Ray Discs into their system as a games disc platform... 400gb Blu Ray discs... I do not want to download 400gb games onto my consoles, and I damn well for sure don't want to suffer any lower resolutions or dropped parts just to make it more friendly to download.
No. With these astronomical disc sizes, I cannot see physical media being done away with, not for a long long time. And long to me is approaching roughly 3 generations of consoles later. Maybe even 4.
These spokespersons really need to get a reality check. What happened in the music industry does not mean it's going to be a sheer happening across the board. I download an HD Movie on the marketplace and it just doesn't look as good as my Blu Ray discs. Nor do I have the options that the discs offer. With Music, it's not like there's some amazing phenomenon and the music files will have increased in size as the years go by. That happens to games, but that does not happen to music.. Music fits and is formatted into the medium that is desired. It has a limit of size per audio file that we can comfortably say it will not go above. Meanwhile the first games were mere kb in size when music was blaring all around us before they existed.
Then game megabytes. Playstation 1 and we had 700mb discs.. Then we had multiple discs. Then we had Playstation 2 and we entered gigabytes. Xbox 360 entered and now we have multiple discs again.. Playstation 3 entered and now we have 50gb discs... It's only rising. Video Games cannot be stored like music...
If they can come up with an interface which is inviting and easy to use, it won't necessarily be a big barrier to entry to the casual gamer - especially if it's easily available from the device itself. Loom at homw many shitty games have sold for iphone already!
Also, as the DS has proven, you don't need massive game sizes to come up with great (or at least popular) stuff on a handheld - the type of games suited to handheld can be much more easily kept small.
There's also a distinct difference between PC downloads and console downloads. On a PC, I can purchase and download a game online, but I can, and do, still backup a copy to a CD or DVD, in case my hard drive crashes. I can also have terabytes of space to download and install games on. Neither exist for consoles, well, not yet anyway, and I'd wait for both, or at least a guarantee that I can re-download the game I've purchased if my HDD crashed, before jumping headlong into digital distribution.