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[kaching]

What are you guys talking about?


The majority of content won't be delivered on disc = physical media reduced. It's not a misleading title. Not that I agree with what he's saying.

Or, you could keep delivering the same amount of content on disc as you do now and just start delivering MORE THAN THAT via network. Hell, you could even deliver more on disc than you do know but if network delivery outpaces it, you will still have the majority of content delivered by network, not disc.

The amount of content being delivered by disc doesn't have to reduce for his statement to come to pass.

 

[Here Be Dragons]

How long do you wait for Gamefly to mail rentals to you?
How long do you wait for NetFlix to mail DVDs to you?

If anything has demonstrated this business model can work, it's the fact that people are just fine with waiting a day or two for their movie or game rentals to show up via mail, instead of going to the local Blockbuster.

It's only a short hop from there to getting rid of the physical delivery entirely, and just downloading it over your broadband connection.

Gamefly doesn't tie up my entire net connection for that time?

 

[shuri]

A steam system where it would pre-load games before street date would be the perfect setup. Also, back in the days, download 4.7gb of data was inhuman back when the ps2 came out. Now i can download that in around a hour.

I'm all for that.

 

[Buffy4ever]

All I am going to say is when we have to start downloading games that when I get out of gaming!

 

[Rabid Pancake]

Tape drives! The future is 55 years ago!

 

[Dr. Kitty Muffins]

He just wants it to be that way in order to kill off the used games industry.

 

[Bebpo]

I think XBLA/Steam were the first step (~2 years ago), GT:HD/PS1/PS2 BC downloads are the next step (now), and then PS3/X360 games are what follows from all this (future).

Is it a good thing? I dunno. But it's the direction the industry is headed and eventually will reach (though I think games will also be sold in boxes just like Steam games are sold in retail as well. I just think people will have the option for direct download).

I mean if right now tons of people download 1gig demos on X360, and then Sony starts letting you download 4gig PS2 games on PS3, then 7gig X360 games for download really don't seem like that big of step.

 

[Hylian]

The question is, how much cheaper would the games be if directly put in to live marketplace sony nethwork like place for downloading. And what would this mean for the puplishers who are currently funding lot of the projects.

 

[loosus]

I understand why there's a push from content providers (lower costs, assuming the bandwidth costs less in the long run), but why are consumers? Or, are they even pushing for it? Do consumers really mind going to the store to buy games?

Maybe I don't represent the "average gamer," but I buy about one game per month -- max. If I were buying two or three games a day, then yeah, there might be some added convenience to downloading it. But hell that little trip to Wal-Mart is a good excuse to get the hell out of the house.

 

[Bebpo]

I understand why there's a push from content providers (lower costs, assuming the bandwidth costs less in the long run), but why are consumers? Or, are they even pushing for it? Do consumers really mind going to the store to buy games?

Maybe I don't represent the "average gamer," but I buy about one game per month -- max. If I were buying two or three games a day, then yeah, there might be some added convenience to downloading it. But hell that little trip to Wal-Mart is a good excuse to get the hell out of the house.

I enjoyed hearing Defcon was cool and booting up steam, paying $10, and downloading it all within the span of 15 mins.

If I had to go to the store, I'd never have picked it up since it's not like I need to play it with all the other games out. Same thing with XBLA; if you can just click, click, click and have a new game to play, you'll be more likely to buy something that you hear is good since it's sitting right in front of you.

 

[mj1108]

Shows just how much faith Sony has in the BR format....

A company trying to break a new format into a market shouldn't be saying things like that.

 

[aaaaa0]

Gamefly doesn't tie up my entire net connection for that time?

Neither does a broadband delivery system if it's designed properly -- it can use QoS to throttle the bandwidth consumed by the download, it can stop the downloads when you use the connection for anything else.

 

[Mojovonio]

then why invest money into a disc format?

Anyways, if this happens, i'm going to miss have the actual game/movie.

 

[Phobophile]

With net neutrality creeping up on us just around the corner, this is even less likely to happen.

 

[aaaaa0]

With net neutrality creeping up on us just around the corner, this is even less likely to happen.

On the contrary, video and game download services are more likely to happen without net neutrality.

Currently the economics are that you pay a flat rate for unlimited transfer of any kind of data. ISPs do not discriminate between different kinds of data transfer -- this is the definition of net neutrality.

This encourages ISPs to vastly oversubscribe their networks -- the more people they cram onto their networks, the more money they make. But this means each person gets less bandwidth, and the ISPs are inclined to throttle or go after heavy users "abusing" the network.

If net-neutrality goes away, then your ISP can charge premium fees for certain types of traffic. The economics then totally change, because if they can charge more money for, say, video or game downloads, then it's to their advantage to have people use more of that kind of traffic, not less.

As demand goes up, they make more money, and hence are incented to upgrade their networks and reserve bandwidth for those premium customers.

To be clear, I prefer the current system of net-neutrality, but I just think the economics is going to force tiered service to become a reality in the near future.

To some extent the loss of net-neutrality is already happening -- I've heard that Comcast will go after you if you "abuse" your upload bandwidth, and either cut your service or throttle you unless you subscribe to a higher plan.