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Denver, 7:38 AM
Sat Nov 21
50 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/19/09
I don't see how you relate the physical to digital media 'revolution' to the death of peripherals or new Maddens. It's also quite funny that Madden is the game that you chose to pick on, being that every sports game in existence follows the same pattern.
If the argument is that the game is an 'update' for $60, it's a straw man. There are significant changes made to very core pieces of Madden. Could they be made via a digital update? Probably, but the amount of resources spent on upgrading Madden each year beyond justifies a full 'new' release.
It would be impossible for MS to move to pure digital distribution in this generation, since they chose a proprietary storage device that doesn't really store much data. For that reason, I'm not so sure that I can put too much credence into Peter's statements. The future may be here before their hardware is ready for it.
Digital distribution is the future, and I've embraced it (and my Pearl White PSPGo) with open arms. Your conclusion of what this means to the future of games is very debatable and not very well substantiated by the body of what was an otherwise informative and well-written article. #economics
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Sorry for not understanding the tone. :(
To be fair, it does raise a point of digital distribution that I hope we'll see more of: patches!
Outlook doubtful. #economics
10/19/09
I believe DD can go three ways depending on consumer attitude.
We have the first one already where both digital and physical exist side by side. In fact if more companies take that stance the better it is to support them doing that.
In the second scenario, as the younger generation that prefers portability as opposed to a physical media have more purchasing power there's a likelihood that they will buy more digital products. All that they would ask for is more transferability and portability. If the two of them are granted then yeah it will gain more ground. Buying used games for cheap, being able to sell games and so on might change to different forms. If more digital purchases were made there would be more sales and lowered prices. Before companies reduce the price of a product it has to acheive a sales threshold usually. When there's no physical media, there exists a far lesser cost of storage, so they can afford to play the waiting game as long as the game's look or USP doesn't depreciate.
In the third scenario, that most people think will happen is that it wouldn't take that much footing. They believe there will be support and it might exist alongside but in a diminished way. It's mostly due to people projecting their opinion that they prefer physical media. If it is true that the vast number of people out there prefer it that way, then it'll be like how 3D in cinemas was - just simmering as a gimmick till one day the industry decides it's time to bring it back again with full force. #economics
10/19/09
Choosing between $60/month for broadband and #60 occasionally for a physical disk, folks will go for the cheaper option. #economics
10/19/09
I think in the UK, they're trying to make a 2MB for all system. But there's so many countries where it just wouldn't happen due to monetary and structural limitations. In progressive/progressed countries it's only a matter of time. It won't happen right now as a lot of people think but it's bound to happen. I think that's the reason why a lot of companies are willing to take experimentative risks with downloadable games. (Though Onlive and Gaikai are a bit too risky for the current infrastructure in most places - I think it'll take a longer period for them to break-even unless they have higher charges).
I do believe that in another 5-10 years time as speeds improve further there will be better speeds available to all for an affordable price. I mean it's usually a 10 year period for things to get more structuralized. Still there has to be a better fair usage policy as opposed to download limits for most ISPs. Some ISPs still impose a harsh limit (fortunately not mine but still it is still an issue although growing smaller). #economics
10/19/09
At any rate, things should be very different in ten years as you say. Just probably not everywhere and certainly not where I live where it is around 1961 now. #economics
10/19/09
It's a very small minority, but there are people who do that. In college, I knew a few guys who ALWAYS had Bittorrent running, pulling down something. I get the impression that caps are meant to crack down on people like that, but as more digital media is released and more people spend more time on YouTube and Hulu, they're going to begin affecting people with "moderate" usage patterns. #economics
10/20/09
10/19/09
It's valid that at the moment, most sales will still be made over the counter at your local brick and mortar store, but digital distribution is something that I think developers themselves will want to push. From the Steam Finances:
"Profit margins for developers are a major selling point for digital distribution, and Steam does not let the side down. I’m pleased to say that there are now figures as accurate as possible for each margin: 10%-20% for traditional retail/publisher deals; roughly 60% for Steam developers; and an incredible 86% for Valve themselves."
That's huge, especially for big publishers that have in-house development like EA. And with games costing more and more to develop, a way to get directly to the buyer is becoming more and more appealing.
It's going to come down to consumer adoption and whether we are willing to accept that that our games no longer come in shiny boxes. The PSPGo is definitely testing the waters to see if we are willing to buy something that's only function is to play games bought over the net. Whether it's successful or not, it shows that Sony at least believes that gamers are willing to take the step.
Personally, I support digital distribution when it comes to the PC, but am wary of the lack of competition when it comes to consoles. There needs to be incentive for gamers to switch over and a big step I believe would be a lowering of prices to acknowledge that what we are purchasing is no longer physical.
I will miss having a huge shelf of game boxes though. #economics
10/19/09
Digital distribution will be the norm when it provides all the same benefits as physical media.
1) Ownership - Can I sell, lend, or trade it?
2) Portability - Can I take it to a friends house, to play on their system?
3) Price - Does it drop in price on a similar timetable to all physical goods?
Until it removes all of the drawbacks digital distribution is the future...and always will be. #economics
10/19/09
The really nasty part is the line of thought of "let's find ways to monetize usage." With full digital distribution, it would be an entirely logical and easy-to-do move to shift from "a player buys a game" to "a player pays money to use a game" for -all- game types. Companies would squeal with glee, I'm sure, at the idea of no consumer ever truly "owning" a game again. It'll be like some unholy rebirth of an arcade-at-home philosophy, where we're plunking in virtual quarters in order to continue playing a game we paid for, or some nightmarish scenario like that. Not to be a pessimist about it all, but my vision of the gaming future is "consumers paying more to get (overhyped and underdelivering) less than ever before." I might have to start reading books again. A sobering thought. :P
EDIT: I just wanted to clear up, before a potential misunderstanding, that it's not digital distribution I have an inherent mistrust for - it's "companies taking advantage of digital distribution to foist unfavorable conditions on consumers with no other options available" I'm afraid of.
10/19/09
Agree with you guys.
Plus there's another angle that really hasn't been discussed, which is on-demand production - where you distribute digitally to retailers and burn the disks at the retail outlet when someone wants one.
This offers the best of both worlds. It eliminates inventory storage, takes out retailer and production risk, the marginal cost of production remains low - but the purchaser still gets what he wants, a game that can be played, traded, sold, lent and carried around.
Of course, there is some capital cost involved - but so there is in pure digital download. Besides, some of it could be taken up by retail.
It seems extraordinary to me that this is not being considered - the only advantages that pure digital has over this is are in favour of the developer - not of the gamer. #economics
10/19/09
The question is, will you still buy and play video games if they are not offered in a physical format? My completely non-scientifically substantiated opinion is that the great majority of users with your same preference would.
Assuming I'm correct, your preference will never be the future reality.
FYI, the second and third 'problems' you list are already addressed in today's digital distribution models. #economics
10/19/09
10/19/09
1. Play up those company-benefitting strategies as something new and hip; the "wave of the future." Once it's embedded in public consciousness, the initial resistance barrier will be degraded, allowing further incursions to met with less resistance, or even openly accepted.
2. Make that company-benefititng strategy the only option available, such that in the future, the only way to avoid that method would be to just stop playing video games.
Digital distribution is a good idea on the fundamental level, but what worries me is how companies would leverage it as carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. It's like a software EULA: if there's some ridiculous condition in it, what are you going to do? Your only options are to accept the EULA wholesale, or simply not use the product. I cannot imagine for a minute that companies would want digital copies of their games to be able to be swapped around between friends, like physical copies often are, or that with digital distribution prices would go down over time even half as fast as they do at retail (if, in fact, they do go down). If you bought a game and didn't like it, you couldn't trade it in or sell it back. I look at the big companies and digital distribution, and the thing that comes to my mind is "What if movie studios were able to charge you for every member of your household who watched a movie you rented?" Not an exact parallel, but I think that's the level of exploitation they would -like- to leverage, and if they don't (all at once), it's because we'd jump out of the hot water if we were dumped straight into it, but if the warm water around us was slowly heated, there's the greater chance we'd not notice it and be "boiled alive."
Aside from the fact that I simply prefer partaking of games as a product and not a service, I just don't trust companies to not treat digital distribution as a money tree.
10/19/09
It's going to take a good 15-20 years of selling over digital and physical distribution lines before any of the big three will dare to take the step into the digital-only era on a home console.
Remember, controller rumble used to be "for the last generation." Don't count out physical media just yet. #economics
10/19/09
10/19/09
Sometimes slowly, as in the long lasting format of vinyl records being the standard over the course of several decades and sometimes rapidly as in the case of the transition from 8 track to cassette.
Then we had the cd to dvd shift which we're on the tail end of but is still the standard for most things.
So the next step in the evolution of format is what we're on the rising tide of right now, the digital distribution "movement".
So for the first time those looking to the future are asking us to conceivably consider an existence sans the physical media and to consider it being replaced entirely by Digital "ethereal" product.
So what I speculate on, is that this transition may not be as smooth as people are saying, as there will be more resistance to this from the consumer.
"But Sean you said that entertainment media is always evolving, so isn't this just a part of that course, naturally?"
And to that I would say yes, but I would also go back to the main idea of what I'm trying to say which is...this is the *first* time we've been asked to consider an existence without a physical item to have in hand entirely. That transition may take a good deal longer than the timeframe of 10 years as speculated on in this article, by my estimation at least.
I have no problem with purely digital media myself, hell my entire photo collection has been stored online at photobucket for years now. I can't remember the last time I went and got film developed. I love that sort of thing personally. But then again, that mindset isn't everyone's and still can be considered non traditional even no in the "digital era".
The idea of 10 years being the timeframe we're looking at where physical media is gone, today, to me seems a bit too avant garde of a way of thinking. Who can with certainty tell the future so far out though and who knows how it will go down. Just now, today, thinking about it I am thinking of a figure at least twice as long as 10 years sounds a bit too hopeful to expect us to give over for the first time, our experience with physical media in lieu of the purely digital. #economics
10/19/09
On the money, great read!
20 years? 1.5 gens? Yeah, I can see that. Current gen gets raised on digi/physical idea, and the next one after that is raised on the digi-only idea.
Then you might have the crumdugeon like myself that goes "Hooolldd up! Car, bought with money, house, bought with money... How come games don't come this way no more??" =) #economics
10/19/09
I agree with you to a certain extent, though I'd say that estimating the timeframe at 10 years is probably right on.
Of course, by "right on" I mean that we'll see a majority of music, videogame, and probably movie content delivered to people sans physical media. There'll most definitely be resistance, and I'm sure there'll be plenty of people demanding that companies still release their newest content in some physical form.
However, as broadband internet speed increase and buying massive amounts of hard drive space gets cheaper, it'll be harder to ignore the advantages of going digital. Frankly, though, I think the largest factor that will help to turn the tides in favor of digital is simply convenience. Even older people, more accustomed to using physical media, will be more likely to give up those old habits if it means they can click a button to download and watch a movie from their couch or play the latest tripple-A game release online minutes after it comes out via digital download.
Personally, I like my CD/DVD/BDs, cases, paper manuals and other physical media, so I'm not exactly thrilled to see this progression. But perhaps with enough backups of my hopefully lossless data, and enough assurance of my ownership of said data, I could get over that eventually. #economics
10/19/09
We already have our first digital-only handheld. So next gen we have hybrid home consoles and digital-only handhelds, and the following generation we have have digital-only?
What if there's a digital-only version of the next PlayStation, and it just happens to be $100-$150 less expensive than it's hybrid-distribution second SKU? Who's moving to digital now?
I actually see the above scenario as being the most likely, in which hardware producers create different versions of their product (digital-only and a hybrid console similar to what we have today). This could rapidly accelerate the digital-only adoption rates. #economics
10/19/09
Just think of how Draconian MS or Sony would be with that power considering their track record. "Hey friend, that game looks cool, can I borrow it for the weekend?" That'd be a thing of the past.
You could never lend, give, sell, or transfer anything you bought ever again. If your console or account broke/was-banned expect to play hell trying to access your property.
How much do you think MS would ass rape you for a 1.5TB hard drive? Do you really look forward to "1-year contracts" for the same cost as a forever copy?
Can you sell, give, transfer DLC? No. Can you pool together enough MSP and sell it back to MS? No. They squeeze and squeeze and squeeze some more. Every. single. change is always, without fail, an opportunity to push the what-you-get for what-you-pay ratio more in their favor. #economics
10/19/09
Plus this generation of consoles is already projected to have a longer than average lifespan than previous consoles (due to a number of reasons, previous generational leaps brought more monumental changes to the medium, in the future, the gap between generations will be much smaller).
Colour me skeptical, but I just don't see it happening the way they want it to. #economics
10/19/09
You totally disappointed me with that intro...
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The second is that not everyone in this day and age has the best internet. I can tell you that in Wyoming the best connection on cable or DSL is about 115 k. It takes me days just to get left 4 dead on a new pc, how's that going to look say 5 years down the line when we have to download not megs but gigs of data?
Then there are the materialist people who have to have a physical copy of data because they want to. There's a reason those download cards haven't really caught on much in music stores, and that's because the real deal an actual CD for the same price is but feet away. A good gaming example I think is patapon 2. Everyone I know loved the first one, but because of the whole internet issues here, when they found they got a rebate voucher they couldn't do anything and felt robbed.
Finally there's the retailer's themselves, I mean there's millions if not billions of dollars in the second hand game business, and while developers may not feel any profits off it, publishers *might*. I'm not saying they do get some actual money out of this, who knows except for some accountant in either of the companies? but if there's any swap of change you can bet that someone's going to fight as hard as they can to keep the status quo. #economics
10/19/09
All of that needs to be addressed before a download-only console becomes a good idea. #economics
10/19/09
In Australia, broadband penetration is so low, with download quotas typically under 10gb, you just able to have a purely digital distribution.
5-10 years? I don't think we're moving forward that fast for it to be possible. Maybe in that time, consoles will be like Steam, where you have an online and offline option. #economics
10/19/09
Perhaps I will be wrong but we shall see. People still like opening the case and smelling the plastic. (The smell of something new) Which is very bad for you I might add.
Plus looking through the manual etc it's just part of the experience of purchasing a game. #economics
10/19/09
10/19/09
Physical album sales fell 20 percent to 362.6 million from 450.5 million, while digital album sales rose 32 percent to a record 65.8 million units.
Digital track sales, such as those conducted in Apple Inc.'s iTunes Music Store, were up 27 percent from last year, breaking the 1 billion mark for the first time at 1.07 billion.
Read more at:
[www.huffingtonpost.com]
[arstechnica.com] #economics
10/19/09
My point is that I don't think physical media will die because of all the people who like the experience of having their physical collection. Sure, it may become more of a niche market and something along the lines of what NIS is doing right now with Badman, but I don't think it will die anytime soon. #economics