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Moore Calls Game Discs Ridiculous
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.'"
I get sick of having my first CD damaged, so I can't play a game without taking extraordinary measures. At the same time, though, I don't want to not be able to play my games locally because my ISP managed to drop the entire block.
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Of course our grandparents think it is ridiculous to drive to the store and buy a plastic disc with data on it too.
Not much better than paying real money to buy a "licence" to download DRMn'd glory where I've got to register to play, can only play it on a registered System, and only that as long as the publisher doesn't go bankrupt.
Back before plumbing, people had to get buckets of water out of wells and bring them inside before they could use water. Would we consider this practice absurd?
Before the advent of speedy online delivery, we go buy games at a store before we can use it. Same concept.
Working within the technological limitations of your day is never "ridiculous." I submit that making baseless predictions about the future is ridiculous!
I have zero problem with downloading software, including games. Like most people, I grab shareware and open source software online all the time. But I do want to be sure that I can retain the data I bought a copy of. I don't want to hop on a website and have to prove I bought the damn thing, and download it again if I need to reinstall my OS, or lose the game when the company I downloaded it from goes out of business for whatever reason. Driving to the store can seem like much less of a hassle than DRM locked data. Especially gigs of locked data.
I don't think they'll be laughing. They'll be more likely in awe of the fact we actually owned a re-usable, permanent physical copy of the media we purchased rather than having to set up a bank order to transfer a monthly licence fee for the right to continue using it.
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...Yes, folks. Back then, I could simply hand over $50 and I had full first-sale rights on the game. It came as an actual physical product that looked nice sitting on the shelf, worked even round at my friend's house for co-op play without us having to buy a license each, and when we were bored of it we could make about half that money back by selling it to someone else.
I mean, can you imagine it? It's a wonder the global economy didn't crash earlier, really.
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If you're able-bodied and live less than a couple of miles from the town centre, you have no excuse.
Are you kidding? Every time I get anywhere near the fricking thing, they ring the bell and I have to go inside to help shoot arrows against Huns or Teutons or whoever the fuck's attacking us this week.
The big hang up I have with software I get online is that they usually want me to pay the same retail price as if I bought the boxed item. This forms a big disconnect in my head which essentially drives me to buy the box set instead.
One area that would certainly benefit is the mmog games. There is little real reason to buy the base software but that model is still used regardless. people with slow connections will be at a loss but even after months of release these people who do require boxed versions would be back in the same boat as many game updates easily overwhelm dialup connections. This is what probably holds back consoles with harddrives - how do you deliver games where storage isn't a given?
If the industry wants to change direction they will need to realize we will not pay the same price. Yes I know that publishers make up their money with new releases but something has got to give.
what i fear will happen is that we will be paying the box price for over the line delivery and a new upcharge for the box version. the industry will take a grand idea and exploit it in the worst possible method.
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Not to sound trollish, but we can already download many applications, music in mp3 format and movies/shows ALL LEGALLY. Wouldnt it be assumed that major applications and games would follow the same concept? Companies spend a large percentage on packaging and shipping alone. A large amount of money could be saved this way.
But even these other problems are overcome, the process of buying some sort of physical media is NEVER going to go away. When people pay money for something, they like to be able to hold the thing and say "I own this". The same is true of music. People want the jewel case with the nice artwork and a shiney disc. How often have you been in the store and seen people just browsing the shelf, reading the boxes and looking for something new? There is something going on here that is more than just buying data. Something that won't happen if you don't have boxes in stores.
Even if discs went away, and all content came over the net, you STILL wouldn't be rid of boxes in stores: Those boxes turn into impulse purchases.
Our grandkids may laugh at us. They will see predictions like the one in this article and laugh in the same way we laugh at the jetpacks-and-flying-cars future of the past.
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If you RTFA he basically says single player gaming is like masturbation, which I suppose could mean that it's practiced and loved by EVERYONE ... but that's not what he meant. He meant to say that multi-player gaming is the "wave of the future" and that single player games are dead. Let's think for a moment some of the biggest selling games of all time - which were all single player (not co-op, or p1 vs. p2) - Pac man, Super Mario Bros, Zelda, just to name a few. Even the GTA series are not co-op. I think he overrating the whole online player vs player gaming theory. Multiplayer online gaming can create competition out of the simplest concept, and sometimes make it fun. That doesn't mean that it's good game programming.
The real challenge in game programming is making a fun challenge that doesn't involve two humans competing against each other. Have they all just given up on AI? Have they all just given up on inventing new challenging puzzles? It's sounds like the easy way out.
All a game has to do it give two players a gun and let them try to shoot each other, and unfortunately that's what we see all too often.
The guys in this article seem to assume the internet as it currently exists will always be there, ripe and ready for their use. How can they be so sure?
The reality is the telcos in the U.S. are gearing up for a full-court press to get "their share of the pie" and could really mess things up, access-wise. If they succeed, say goodbye to the open internet as you now know it.
Businesses are furiously clamping down on any type of net access in a futile effort to keep their Microsoft-based PCs working from one hour to the next. Businesses will increasingly move towards closed intranets with extremely limited access to the general net.
Ma and Pa consumer are out big bucks for a PC which worked good for the first week, okay for the second week, slow for the third week and barely works at all at the end of the first month. They are less and less enthused with this PC/internet thing which keeps sucking money out of their bank accounts. The cure seems as bad as the injury, what will all the additional programs needed just to keep the base functionality of what they bought in the first place.
The U.S. federal government insists on retaining control of the internet but continues to show an absurd willingness to sacrifice the public good for the benefit of a few "business buddies" who give money to elected officials.
Will the internet as it currently exists still be functional five, ten years from now? That's a dicey bet at best and any business which bets the farm on internet-only access to their product is not paying attention.
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By offering direct download of a piece of software, the software creator can *cut out middleman* (e.g. distributor) like Fry's, BestBuy, Egghead... etc and now take on more margin/profitability for itself even though the software is the same price to the consumer.
If you pay $50 for a game, whether $40 goes to MSFT and $10 goes to cheapsoftware.com or all $50 goes to MSFT, it stills costs YOU, the consumer $50. However, now MSFT financially looks so much better and the distributor, who was counting on you buying the game from them (rather than from another distributor) is the one that's left out in the cold.
You think MSFT (or any software creator) would actually reduce the price of the software from $50 to $40 and "pass on the savings" doubt it. You'd probably get a 'convenience fee' as well.