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[Minsc]

At some point enough is enough. I've always been a pretty die-hard physical product, give me a box with a disc... but I think once you start making DD purchases, little by little they start eating away at your need to have a physical product.

I agree completely with the article, at some point in the near future, physical media (books, DVDs/Blu-rays/magazines/newspaper) will be something of the past, certainly by new generations of gamers who've never been raised using them will avoid them entirely.

There'll be a market for disc based products for a long time, for people who are conditioned to using them, but it's a dying market any way you look at it, and the growing number of exclusive titles not available for retail purchase is a good indication of that.

 

[MightyHedgehog]

Believe me this will happen, its a basic consumer right. There is no way in hell that in the long run this shit will fly in regions like the EU which are very pro consumer rights.

I mean fighting pirates while maintaining that a license is not a real commodity but just a right to use to product cannot go hand in hand.

Do they allow you to resell your MP3s or digital movies or e-books? What about screensavers bought online? What about anything bought online and digitally distributed currently or in the past?

 

[RurouniZel]

I will never buy a console that is downloads only.

This x 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Do they allow you to resell your MP3s or digital movies or e-books? What about screensavers bought online? What about anything bought online and digitally distributed currently or in the past?

Wait, people buy those?

 

[Kosma]

Do they allow you to resell your MP3s or digital movies or e-books? What about screensavers bought online? What about anything bought online and digitally distributed currently or in the past?

Well the market is not mature enough yet. I mean you also dont see regular people being sued for piracy here in Europe or networks like HBO tracking down torrenters of their shows.

 

[Yagharek]

I agree completely with the article, at some point in the near future, physical media (books, DVDs/Blu-rays/magazines/newspaper) will be something of the past, certainly by new generations of gamers who've never been raised using them will avoid them entirely.

wat?

 

[_Alkaline_]

Full-on DD will be impossible in Australia, at least currently, due to severely low bandwidth and download speeds.

 

[lowrider007]

Why should games be a commodity for consumers ?, I personally see them as a paid for experience, games purchased via DD can be enjoyed again and again @ no extra cost, your paying for the experience of that game, why is that we think we have a God given right that we should be able to sell the license to that experience ?, you see this has always been the way with games licenses but we and many retail outlets have just abused it to the extent that now we suddenly think it's our born right to sell on those licenses on and get some of our money back, well is it ?

The way I see it is technology has now given publishers/developers the chance to properly enforce and protect the licensing of their products and people just don't like.

<jumps into flame-proof suit and runs for the hills>

 

[MightyHedgehog]

Wait, people buy those?

Hehe...just like the millions upon millions who still buy clip art packages and overrated security software suites from Norton and such.

The largest electronic platform for gaming is the mobile phone. People have been buying and leasing/renting games and software for those for almost ten years now...almost as long as color LCD displays have been put into them. The mass market is not unfamiliar with the way consoles are going and will end up being like.

 

[Korey]

As people have already stated, music is almost completely DD now. It's still available in physical formats only because we're still in the process of transitioning to all digital (some people/cars still don't have digital music players).

Movies are the next step and are slowly making the transition through Netflix streaming, Apple TV, etc. Someday people are going to laugh at the HD DVD vs Blu Ray wars of old.

Games aren't quite there yet but it's already begun, especially on the PC platform. It's the inevitable future. There are still some things to be worked on, mainly DRM and long-term ownership problems (what happens if the provider company goes under, what happens if the current digital format becomes obsolete, etc).

 

[Rhindle]

XBLA prices continue to rise. Apple Store prices will rise. They will train people just like they trained the majority of this forum and gamers everywhere to suck down simple maps for $10, DLC for this, nickle and dime for every tiny thing left out for that specific purpose under one excuse or another.

You think they won't continue to push and push and push?

I don't know that prices will come down overall, but you will see more flexible pricing overall. Right now, we're in an unfortunate situation where you either have to publish a $60 retail title or a $10-20 XBL/PSN title, with nothing in between. The lines should start to blur.

I think major titles will continue to be sold at retail for the foreseeable future, at $60+. But we should see more and more niche titles move to DD-only releases, at lower price points. And more shorter 3-5 hour games and more episodic releases.

 

[HK-47]

Why should games be a commodity for consumers ?, I personally see them as a paid for experience, games purchased via DD can be enjoyed again and again @ no extra cost, your paying for the experience of that game, why is that we think we have a God given right that we should be able to sell the license to that experience ?, you see this has always been the way with games licenses but we and many retail outlets have just abused it to the extent that now we suddenly think it's our born right to sell on those licenses on and get some of our money back, well is it ?

The way I see it is technology has now given publishers/developers the chance to properly enforce and protect the licensing of their products and people just don't like.

<jumps into flame-proof suit and runs for the hills>

If you are already running, you must know how retarded your anti consumer stance is.

 

[Yagharek]

Why should games be a commodity for consumers ?, I personally see them as a paid for experience, games purchased via DD can be enjoyed again and again @ no extra cost, your paying for the experience of that game, why is that we think we have a God given right that we should be able to sell the license to that experience ?,

By that logic, what gives publishers the right to sell a license in the first place? If you follow your logic to its conclusion, no games should be sold, ever.

 

[Shito]

As an Yuroland gamer, I see this day as the day when import dies.
And with it a little bit of myself.

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

Frankly, I find it most disturbing that the head of one of the biggest game companies in the world thinks that the best-case scenario for the industry is still "probable death".

 

[madara]

I will never buy a console that is downloads only.

WTF? :lol Your in your last decade of gaming. You physically need to touch a storage medium, smell the dead trees and the plastic to justify your hobby? Why do i get the feeling this has more to do with psychology issues and material wealth? If we have the option in the future to have the infrastructure for downloading legit games at a good rate and save all the waste to the planet its definitely something humans should evolve too.

 

[senahorse]

Full-on DD will be impossible in Australia, at least currently, due to severely low bandwidth and download speeds.

Huh?

I don't know about you, but being connected with iinet my Steam and XBL downloads do not count towards my quota, as for speed I sync at 17.5Mb/1.1Mb with my local exchange and downloads from Steam/XBL/PSN come down at speeds up to 1.8MB/s

 

[Yagharek]

Frankly, I find it most disturbing that the head of one of the biggest game companies in the world thinks that the best-case scenario for the industry is still "probable death".

The head of the biggest games company in the world has been saying its headed that way for at least 3 years.

 

[jorma]

Do they allow you to resell your MP3s or digital movies or e-books? What about screensavers bought online? What about anything bought online and digitally distributed currently or in the past?

If EU regulation enabling consumers to transfer the rights to their digital content happens, it will likely be with the music and movie markets primarily in mind rather than the gaming market...

 

[GrotesqueBeauty]

At some point enough is enough. I've always been a pretty die-hard physical product, give me a box with a disc... but I think once you start making DD purchases, little by little they start eating away at your need to have a physical product.

I agree completely with the article, at some point in the near future, physical media (books, DVDs/Blu-rays/magazines/newspaper) will be something of the past, certainly by new generations of gamers who've never been raised using them will avoid them entirely.

There'll be a market for disc based products for a long time, for people who are conditioned to using them, but it's a dying market any way you look at it, and the growing number of exclusive titles not available for retail purchase is a good indication of that.

And in the year nineteen hundred and ninety nine magnetically powered hover-mobiles will zip across the neon skies of tomorrow's super cities while microscopic robots groom us with nano-claws, converting dead skin into a delicious nutrient rich paste for our consumption! What, do you doubt the power of the future?

 

[EviLore]

Yes, in a worst case scenario with retail pressures gone and dollar signs in executives' eyes, expect games to stop dropping in price altogether. Expect licenses that provide you with barest minimum of rights. Expect data storage to remain (or otherwise return to being) proprietary and wildly inflated in pricie just because they can. Expect royalties to suck for devs/pubs. Expect the worst, and expect a bunch of shills to attack you if you don't accept it with open arms.

Or things could turn out like they have in PC gaming land. We ride unicorns through fields of chocolate coated dreams, you know. But it'll probably end up being somewhere in between. We won't be entirely happy with console DD, but most of us will use it anyway.

 

[luka]

"I'd say the core business model of video games is a burning platform. Absolutely. We all recognize that, and we'll recognize it 10 years from now when we tell our grand kids," he said. "We'll tell them we used to drive to the store to get shiny discs that have bits and bites on them and we'd place them in this thing called a 'disc tray,' and it'd whirl around…and they'll go 'What?'"

So he expects our grandkids to be clueless sheeple incapable of grasping simple mechanical and technical concepts?

 

[McBradders]

I'm all for a DD console, hell, that's pretty much what my PC is right now. I have about 3 maybe 4 modern boxed games out of about 20-30 games bought in the last 5 or so years. However I think before that becomes a reality (outside of the internet penetration factors) publishers and platform holders will need to re-think obstacles such as territories, localisation, DRM and the like.

I don't care that I can't sell my games on. I don't care that there is no physical media, in fact I applaud the fact that I can have a jukebox of games. However they need to ensure that no matter how many generational iterations of a box they may deliver, all my content needs to be available and playable.

Unfortunately this increasingly leads me to believe for this to happen we really do need a "one console future" (even if it's the PC) or an OnLive styled subscription based service where I pay to play rather than pay to own.

Of course with Nintendo in the marketplace this will never happen unless a huge swing occurs, which I really can't see happening any time soon, and the other players will always be looking for a slice of that particular pie.

The largest current factor is retailers, though. They're the reason DD is not the cheaper gaming mecca we had all believed it would be (lol Euro Steam ) and they're the reason this transition is going to be a crawl even when bandwidth speeds and broadband penetration make this ideal a possibility.

 

[Aaron]

One day, you'll look back and wonder where the days went when you could walk into a store a couple of months after a game's new release and pick it up for half of what it released at. While you stare at it's full priced glory on the DD store controlled by hardware makers.

What? You can't do that now unless it was a title flooded to the market and there's a glut of used copies, forcing the retailers to lower their cost. Hell, finding some brand new games in retail stores is sometimes a chore, not to mention games six months or older. Wanted to buy Valk Chronicles over the weekend. Out of like half dozen stores, only Gamestop had it, and they wanted something like $37 for a used copy (retail price $40).

If it had been on PSN, I wouldn't have had to waste my time.

 

[lowrider007]

By that logic, what gives publishers the right to sell a license in the first place? If you follow your logic to its conclusion, no games should be sold, ever.

That's not the same thing and you know it.

 

[rainking187]

What? You can't do that now unless it was a title flooded to the market and there's a glut of used copies, forcing the retailers to lower their cost. Hell, finding some brand new games in retail stores is sometimes a chore, not to mention games six months or older. Wanted to buy Valk Chronicles over the weekend. Out of like half dozen stores, only Gamestop had it, and they wanted something like $37 for a used copy (retail price $40).

If it had been on PSN, I wouldn't have had to waste my time.

Walmart has been selling it for $20 for a while now.

 

[cuyahoga]

As people have already stated, music is almost completely DD now. It's still available in physical formats only because we're still in the process of transitioning to all digital (some people/cars still don't have digital music players).

Uhh, no. Vinyl sales have been increasing year-on-year for awhile.

 

[Kosma]

That's not the same thing and you know it.

How do you steal an experience?

 

[HK-47]

The largest current factor is retailers, though. They're the reason DD is not the cheaper gaming mecca we had all believed it would be (lol Euro Steam ) and they're the reason this transition is going to be a crawl even when bandwidth speeds and broadband penetration make this ideal a possibility.

Oh brother.

 

[senahorse]

Yes, in a worst case scenario with retail pressures gone and dollar signs in executives' eyes, expect games to stop dropping in price altogether. Expect licenses that provide you with barest minimum of rights. Expect data storage to remain (or otherwise return to being) proprietary and wildly inflated in pricie just because they can. Expect royalties to suck for devs/pubs. Expect the worst, and expect a bunch of shills to attack you if you don't accept it with open arms.

Or things could turn out like they have in PC gaming land. We ride unicorns through fields of chocolate coated dreams, you know. But it'll probably end up being somewhere in between. We won't be entirely happy with console DD, but most of us will use it anyway.

:lol That got a whole hearted laugh out ot me. And I agree with all you have said, there will be ups and there will be downs, it's not going to be perfect but it will probably be OK all the same.

 

[Always-honest]

downloads are fuck


i can still play my nes games if i want. i know for SURE that i will never be ale to play a downloaded game 30 years later. because something will be fucked up...

 

[HK-47]

:lol That got a whole hearted laugh out ot me. And I agree with all you have said, there will be ups and there will be downs, it's not going to be perfect but it will probably be OK all the same.

OK if you are on PC.

 

[McBradders]

Oh brother.

What?

If I'm wrong "Oh brother" isn't really going to enlighten me.

 

[Aaron]

Walmart has been selling it for $20 for a while now.

Not any within a hundred miles of where I live. The three I checked a month ago had nothing.

 

[Korey]

Uhh, no. Vinyl sales have been increasing year-on-year for awhile.

As a novelty/fad/temporary backlash towards all-digital music. Meanwhile, CD sales continue to decrease.

 

[parasight]

OnLive!

 

[senahorse]

OK if you are on PC.

Well we just don't know, if we were to base trends off the current generation then scepticism is certainly warranted. However I would like to remain optimistic that things turn out fine in the console space. There's also nothing to say that eventually we could be all on a common platform where the only difference is the brand of hardware, games and control schemes. But like the rest of my post, this is all speculation.

 

[HK-47]

What?

If I'm wrong "Oh brother" isn't really going to enlighten me.

Retail isnt keep DD pricing up. If anything the competition is keeping them down.

 

[ZeoVGM]

Looking forward to an all-digital distribution platform. I just don't have any more space for physical games, nor I really want to allocate more space for them. I'd rather have them in my HDD and with the chance of being able to keep backups remotely simply for the fact that I bought them that way.

By the time an all-digital distribution platform, you'll probably have room.

 

[water_wendi]

Meanwhile, CD sales continue to decrease.

First off the problem is with CD media. It has low capacity, it skips, etc which is not good for something that is supposed to be mobile and on the go. Also digital songs can at least be made into a physical thing via cd burners. Afaik you cant take a Steam game and burn it off onto DvD.

 

[McBradders]

Retail isnt keep DD pricing up. If anything the competition is keeping them down.

Really? Is that why those DD titles on Xbox LIVE are pretty identical or, in some cases higher, than retail?

Or why I got hold of SFIV on PC day 1 considerably cheaper than I could from Steam?

If those DD prices aren't pandering to retailer "pressure" then I will gladly join the proverbial rats jumping the sinking ship and finally make start making dent in my backlog

 

[jercruz]

Full-on DD will be impossible in Australia, at least currently, due to severely low bandwidth and download speeds.

and a rip-off exchange rate.

edit: ah, remember some ISPs that doesn't count your XBL activity? they could do that in the future i.e. steam, xbl, psn, ww downloads are not quota counted.

 

[robertsan21]

Physical media cost + Higher developer cost is = higher cost! bad for us consumers and developers/publishers

Downloadable games + higher developer cost is= less cost! no need to ship stuff, no need to have machines burning discs with games on them, more inviromental friendly, better for us consumers and developers/publishers.

I say Downloadable games is the future and I want it tomorrow!

 

[lowrider007]

Physical media cost + Higher developer cost is = higher cost! bad for us consumers and developers/publishers

Downloadable games + higher developer cost is= less cost! no need to ship stuff, no need to have machines burning discs with games on them, more inviromental friendly, better for us consumers and developers/publishers.

I say Downloadable games is the future and I want it tomorrow!

You can have it today, go and buy a PSP Go!

Spoiler

Oh yeah I went there baby!!

 

[Kosma]

Physical media cost + Higher developer cost is = higher cost! bad for us consumers and developers/publishers

Downloadable games + higher developer cost is= less cost! no need to ship stuff, no need to have machines burning discs with games on them, more inviromental friendly, better for us consumers and developers/publishers.

I say Downloadable games is the future and I want it tomorrow!

I say give us rights to sell the DD license and we have a deal.

You can have it today, go and buy a PSP Go!

Spoiler

Oh yeah I went there baby!!

You still havent answered me how you can steal an experience.

 

[HK-47]

Physical media cost + Higher developer cost is = higher cost! bad for us consumers and developers/publishers

Downloadable games + higher developer cost is= less cost! no need to ship stuff, no need to have machines burning discs with games on them, more inviromental friendly, better for us consumers and developers/publishers.

I say Downloadable games is the future and I want it tomorrow!

Once again, how is not having control over your purchased product a good thing for consumers?

 

[Hypereides]

I have to say while I positively find Moore's foresight to be great, there still ALOT of people that prefer material games in comparison to those who go for digital downloads.

If the PSP go is any indication of it, then the general mainstream is not ready to go there just yet. But as long as Sony, Microsoft & Nintendo keep pushing for downloadable content, they'll eventually reach the breaking point.

 

[Kosma]

Once again, how is not having control over your purchased product a good thing for consumers?

According to Lowrider007 you just pay for the experience, the game is not a real product.

 

[ghst]

Retail isnt keep DD pricing up. If anything the competition is keeping them down.

it's not quite that simple. publishers have direct control over their dd price, as they have all wrangled deals with dd houses where they surrender no agency. so whatever price is set on dd will effectively be taken as the rrp, and the price retail sells for is relative to rrp.

this keeps dd pricing higher than it often could/should be.

 

[nubbe]

The companies will make more money to give shareholders and executive bonuses. But the consumers will still pay retail prices and higher.

There are a number of games on steam that cost €45-50 to DD while they cost €30-40 in retail... new
Even older games are a good €10 more expensive on steam sometimes. It is usually only during the weekend sales things get a lucrative price.

 

[teruterubozu]

Pirates would prefer not burning discs. The only platform that's burning is Pete's brain.