Forecast: Retail to be overtaken by digital distribution in three years |
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The way to go?
Other forecasts include Nick Parker's, of Parker Consulting, positing that both Sony and Microsoft will be launching their next-gens come 2013 and 2014, respectively. Here is where the outstripping begins. Starting from 2010, as MS and Sony prepare for the launch of their next-gens, traditional box products will be on the decline, and digitally distributed software will be on the climb to make up for that resulting vacuum.
Said Parker, "For the first time ever, the games industry has a way of alleviating the pain that traditionally befalls it during generational decline, through online gaming in its many guises - it's a genuinely exciting time for the industry and the London Games Conference is perfectly timed to discuss these opportunities."
Oh, guess he's not as worried about losing retail, then. The London Games Conference will be happening on October 27th at the BAFTA headquarters in London.
Related Articles:
- John Carmack: Sony likely to kick off next console generation
- Pachter: Only hard drive is keeping MS from releasing new digital releases, retailers won't mind new mode of distribution
- Analyst: GameStop not yet threatened by digital distribution
Via EDGE
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Comments [refresh]
Don't know about you guys but I want the hard copy still.
I rather a product i can play and trade than a product thats useless after bought. They are creating a monopoly where they can charge what they want for the games. It sure will make piracy a bigger problem.
Seriously, I am getting scared, I want my hardcopies.
as they are a garantie that I'll will always be able to play them. If this forcast is true then I'll guess I either have
to stop gaming or just pirate everything.
but I still don't belive that people want to download
bluray games. Honestly, if I could, I would get all my
psn games on a disc.
I want a hardcopy too!
plus, my internet connection is pretty slow... I don't want to have to wait for hours to download my games!
imagine downloading MGS4! that would take FOREVER.
Plus i guess you would have to make backups a lot.. you never know when your system could just die. And if you don't make back-ups you would have to download everything AGAIN!
Downloading games is good for the smaller ones (about up to 300-500 MB).
NOT gigabytes! at least not in the next 10 years or so
Can't say I'm bothered. I can't stand going into video game stores anymore and downloading is still faster than mail order. Sold/gave away a lot of my older games because they just started cluttering up the place so to have everything all on that hard drive is fine by me and then I don't have to keep swapping discs around. Was quite happy downloading Ratchet & Clank - Quest For Booty which is about 3GB in size. Made use of that feature on the PS3 to autoswitch off after it's downloaded and installed the game and left it on while I slept to find the game waiting for me when I woke.
BitTorrent distribution overtook retail long time ago over here.
its kinda like the battle between the mp3 and the cd in the music industry.
I think we should not give away our power to have hard copies of digital entertainment. I hope everyone holds back on downloading games that are also on disc or cartridge and buy that hard copy to keep forever than download a static copy that can be wiped away as easy and allowing the game companies to have ultimate control.
it's the exact opposite.
the music industry's major players try to cling to brick-n-mortar stores and physical product when the consumer wants digital portability...
i don't see games becoming totally digital for quite some time...
i think crap like ebgames is on it's way out... the local game stores will return/remain, similar to comics and music... physical versions will be produced in much smaller quantities.
like they said i wouldn't expect anything like that to start to happen for another 3 years.
Can't say you're bothered, huh? A 3gb game is nothing compared to a game like MGS4. As%2
Yeah but MGS4 wouldn't be worth downloading. Bloated with tedious cutscene bits. For games like that maybe disc is fine.
I think that more smaller games will go the digital route but I don't think it will surpass retail anytime soon. First of all, most systems have little to no profit margin and companies earn money by selling the games. If they take that away, then retailers will either stop selling systems entirely or they will have to raise the prices on systems to give retailer more profit (like what they are doing for the go). And if retailers decide to rebel and stop selling systems entirely then that will cause a whole heck of problems.
Another issue that I don't see talked about much is the hidden cost of download. When you buy a game on disc or cartridge (depending on the system), you are buying both a copy of the compiled binaries (along with the permission to execute the binaries) as well as the storage media. When you buy a download, all you are doing is buying a copy of the compiled binaries (along with the permission to execute them). The consumer must then provide the storage media at their own cost. Yes, storage media is inexpensive these days (unless you are talking about BD discs...), but it still has a real dollar value.
Unfortunately in the current games market there is _no_ dollar cost difference between purchasing hard copy or download. (It is there in many computer programs where you purchase the program to download and if you want it on a disc you can pay extra.) So, it's not just that the download doesn't have the extra overhead of designing/printing (both disc/cartiridge and retail box), inventory/warehouse, and shipping. The consumer has to either make or have made a completely separate purchase to be able to store the download.
That is the hidden cost of downloading games/programs. Unfortunately in the games market the downloads don't have a lower price to make up for it.
Sorry, but it ins't gonna happen. There are too many people who still only have basic broadband, a crappy computer with limited hard drive space, or simply can't figure out how to find/buy digital content. These people are the ones who will keep retail stores going for a very long time yet.
Also retail stores do a ton of their business during the Christmas season because people want to buy games as gifts for other people. Sure its possible to do that with some digital stores, but its just not the same. People want something physical that they can actually give to whoever they bought it for, and not just some email in their account saying its now available for them to download.
Combining the two there are some people who don't trust online sites or networks with their credit card information (for good reason lately), and they will most likely never switch over to all digital content.
Basically retail games sales will definitely change over to all digital at some point, but that point is many many years into the future not just three.
Lets see.. Digital distribution puts high street retailers out of business, you only own the games as long as you keep your account with Sony and Sony has an absolute monopoly on selling games, so who wants to prepare for this future then?
i would rather keep a hard-copy (and possible hard-backups) of my games/media instead of keeping them all on digital cards/drives that may fail and force me to buy said media again.
I hardly ever download ISOS/Homebrew unless its smaller than 200MB...which still takes about 3 hours on my *****ed up connection...We pay $55 a month and get a max of, oh, about 30kb/s down and 7kb/s up...while my friends/relatives pay LESS than$ 30 and all have 10Meg and up connections....Im thinking about hacking my modem....
is how they are going to sell video games to kids now. all they have to do is ask mommy for a credit card.
parents are pathetic these days... a dad buys his son and daughter grand theft auto 4, thats not the worst part they had a couple tabs of ecstasy inside the game!
i can tell you one thing they arent getting any business from me, i dont want that digtal crap. some people actualy do more than play games on their system, like install an operating system. all they want is money money money.
this country is going to be ruled by big business as if it already isnt. pharmasuedicals , prisions, and wasting over 50% of the drug budget on a drug that isnt even unhealthy for you. GOTTA LOVE GOOD OLE USA. wish this country still stood for what it was founded on. and dont preach anything to me you stupid asses that watch the news and believe everything the box tells you.
Yup I want a disk or some other hard copy as well.
HDD's die or get corrupted and that could screw up alot of your games. Then you have to wait for the 50 gig download of MGS6 before you can play again.
Unless they can wire North America with fibre optics and make it affordable in 3 years, this will not happen in 3 years.
Basically every PS3 exclusive game is using around 25 gigs now. Even multi platform games are still around 7 gigs.
Then what if your hard drive dies or you get a corrupt sector and need to format ?
There are just too many things that can go wrong having everything digital and on your HDD....it's not a good idea.
i dont see this happening anytime soon to be honest
Never.
Developers really want this to happen so they get rid of the used game market, they'll push like hell with dlc on every game to groom us into the idea of digital distribution, the only real if and but in this is how long it takes for most of the world to have fast enough internet connections, it'll probably take another 2 or 3 generations of consoles but physical media as we know it will be gone, and possibly replaced by some physical digital hybrid.
Yeah that's right. It would be nothing if we still only had the 480p resolution! No "HD" hype and no "it's the newest future mgs game weeheee !!1" hype.
same here duuude! i got it while it was hot! while im at it, ill let you in on a little secret: i was downloading mp3s when dial-up was hot! 20 minutes a song, yo! (my god that was bs)
Think Steam, think PSN, think Apple Store where the biggest game is over 500 MB (called Myst). IT'S HAPPENNG RIGHT NOW.
I hate having to s*rew around with discs. They get scratches, smudges, finger prints, dust. Did I mention scratches ? They could also get lost. Borrow one to your careless neighbor and you might never see it again. Sure you can loose it when your HDD crashes. That's also a risk. But how often do HDDs crash anyway ? I have a 40 GB Maxtor since 2003 running almost daily ever since I bought it.
People seem to b*tch about 25 GB PS3 games. Dude... Bluray is friggin slow. Developers copy THE SAME data to extra sectors for the laser head to access it faster so games won't lag. I think they're called "dummy sectors". So think UMDGen where NFS Most Wanted (PSP) takes up 800 MB (iso) and cso takes up 160 MB ! So a 40 GB PS3 game could end up a 10 GB game, which is absolutely fine by me.
Why ? Because I pay $9.95 for an internet connection and for that money I get an 8 MB/s metropolitan speed & 500-600 KB/s EXTERNAL speed. Cheap and perfect. Oh, and I live in a third world country (Romania) !
Digital Distribution will probably work for Additional Game Contents. but not for full games. especially for X360 and PS3 games. one thing. File Size. people would rather stick in the Disc As Soon As Possible to play the games that they have waited for a looonnggg time. as for me. i seriously do not want to wait HOURS on a slow internet connection to Download Final Fantasy XIII into my Hard Disk. and whenever it is Corrupted. i would spend MORE hours REDownloading it again. a hard copy basically allows more flexibility in reselling. and if everything goes digital. everyone would be in bad financial shape due to less reselling games. a hard copy could also help with one's pride of owning a game. and when you look back at all the console games you have. you'd feel more prideful of the collection. and well. Digital Distribution would cost ALOT OF GAME SELLERS to shut down. alot of jobs lost. and in time of recession. that is not a good thing. and also. for a young person who can't afford a credit card let alone have one due to age limit of owning it. and saves money on piggy banks to buy games. well they would suffer more. i suggest leaving this Digital Distrubution way of purchasing games in another century. not now.