Moore Calls Game Discs Ridiculous

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 10, 2006 @02:28AM from the power-to-pipelines dept.

Gamespot reports on a Churchill Club panel discussion attended by a number of industry heavyweights. They discussed, heavily, the future of gaming online and what it means for the industry as a whole. From the article: "[MS VP Peter] Moore said that the retail landscape is set to undergo a particularly drastic change of face. Even though he made a point that the current retail model was hugely important to Microsoft's plans for the near future, he sees its days as numbered. 'Let's be fair. Whether it's five, 10, 15, 20 years from now, the concept of driving to the store to buy a plastic disc with data on it and driving back and popping it in the drive will be ridiculous,' Moore said. 'We'll tell our grandchildren that and they'll laugh at us.'"

1 of 257 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:People Like to Own Things by asuffield · 2006-02-10 07:10 · Score: 3, Informative

As others have said, digital delivery won't happen until some new uber-DRM scheme comes along to thwart piracy

Yeah, everybody knows that you can't do digital delivery. Well, not without strong DRM, anyway.

From http://totalgaming.stardock.com/about.aspx:

No "Digital Rights Management" type scheme. Once you download it, it's yours to put on any computer you own.

Frankly, I expect the grandkids to look back and laugh at the idea that anybody would ever pay for DRMed crippleware. After all, people like to own things - not be told that they're trying to steal the thing they paid for. The "TV prohibition" years should have come and gone by then. And I find it pretty funny that dongles ever existed.

There will probably still be stores with boxes in them, but internet delivery of games is already here - I haven't bought a PC game on a physical disk in at least a year. Service that good is here to stay.