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How Much Longer Will Physical Game Distribution Survive?
GamesIndustry is running an interview with Theodore Bergquist, CEO of GamersGate, in which he forecasts the death of physical game distribution in favor of digital methods, perhaps in only a few years. He says, "Look at the music industry, look at 2006 when iTunes went from not being in the top six of sellers — in the same year in December it was top three, and the following year number one. I think digital distribution is absolutely the biggest threat [traditional retailers] can ever have." Rock, Paper, Shotgun spoke with Capcom's Christian Svensson, who insists that developing digital distribution is one of their top priorities, saying Capcom will already "probably do as much digital selling as retail in the current climate." How many of the games you acquire come on physical media these days? At what point will the ease of immediate downloads outweigh a manual and a box to stick on your shelf (if it doesn't already)?
I haven't bought a boxed game for a very long time.
Last time I did, was C&C First Decade Special Edition, because I wanted it.
The only reason I buy box boxed games for PC, is because I want it for show.
Else I mostly buy my PC games from Steam.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
Check out the sales of Eve online on march 10th. They are putting it out in a box set for the first time (well practically the first time). Before now it's been download only. If the number of people playing shoot up, that's a good indicator. Likewise if the box set falls flat.
I'm so annoyed right now I only have the manuals and disks from my original King's Quest I and Space Quest I. It would be awesome to have the whole box intact.
Then again, I was in primary school at the time... Stupid kids. ;)
.: Max Romantschuk
Think of the environmental impact of retail bit-selling, compared to online distribution.
Consider the cost of retail.
They should've gone online only for stuff like movies, music and games years ago.
In general, if I've paid for something, I want a tangible object.
I've this constant concern that *something* will go wrong in the digital process. I know it probably wont, and generally hasn't, but I'd still much rather be able to say "look - I _do_ own this, I've got the box and everything". That said, I don't have any paper records for, say, my banking. Priorities and all that.
I doubt it will go that fast, first of all not everybody has visa (or simular), which is often required for online buying thins online. And some people don't want to buy things online because they don't trust the visa-processors (see recent problems with visa-data). Others only buy things when they can physicly see them when shopping for other stuff. And what about people who don't want to have an internet connection on there gaming computer/console? This would be cutting there own sales-capabilities, even now when a lot of people buy songs via i-tunes (or simular) others want to have it on cd or vinyl just for show or nostalgy.
A fully loaded BD-ROM holds 27GB. You're going to download that, are you? We don't have "MP3 for games" yet. They're already pretty compressed.
The problem is that while network bandwidth does not follow an exponential increase in bitrate over time, disc format capacity does. So this would suggest that the gap between online delivery and physical media is going to get larger, not smaller.
On the contrary, its to MAKE more money by killing the used game market.
Boxed games aren't as cool as they use to be. I remember my original Sid Meyer's Pirates... There was a huge printed map and you actually needed to use it.
Manuals were on nice paper, and the disks needed space too. The glamour is gone now... The box is just for getting the game home. Cool materials are too expensive. I sure prefer to be able to download nowadays, but there will always be that special something that only physical media can give.
.: Max Romantschuk
You can see this already with PC gaming. Digital distributors like Steam have pretty much demolished the brick and mortar stores. My local GameStop barely has a PC game section anymore and it's not because the PC market is shrinking. In fact, it's growing.
Brick and mortar stores are dying and they know it -- for PC games anyway. It's like they are not even trying anymore. I am an independent video game developer, and I tried my best to let GameStop et al sell my company's game, but they do not even return calls. We have not even gotten an email back yet.
Meanwhile, our upcoming title is going to be sold in virtually every single online store -- some of them responded within a day of being contacted. Here's our list so far.
Brick and mortar stores are still clinging on for consoles releases. Retail stores pretty much are the only place to go when you want to buy the latest AAA titles (except Amazon, which is like digital distribution with very high latency).
I mean, seriously, who doesn't like those shiny boxes with the manual, maps and stuff like that? And having the original packaging even many years later? We're talking about some serious bragging rights here.
I buy good games as Collectors Editions in nice Boxes. A Game that I just want to play and have no other reason to get it I buy online. I think not the download business that will bring the boxed products down, but the direction of putting most of the games online and so tackle the piracy from that side will have th huge impact.
For normal releases, or episodes etc, I prefer digital distribution... :-(
But when there's a "life-changing" title that's just come out, I want the special all-singing-all-dancing metal box, bobble head edition on my shelf!
Would we see the end of these versions too?
At what point will the ease of immediate downloads outweigh a manual and a box to stick on your shelf (if it doesn't already)?
At the point where I can download a DRM-less installer or ISO and do whatever the hell I want with it.
Anything short of that, and I'll keep buying physical media.
Simply stated, if companies stop selling their games on physical media, then I shall stop buying their games.
I've been fucked over by DRM-laden downloads on the 360, thanks very much. Every time mine goes back for repair, none of my paid-for-DLC works on the new box I get back, and I have to get into an hour-long argument with tele-bozos to sort it out. I have no interest in extending that process to every game I own.
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> At what point will the ease of immediate downloads outweigh a manual and a box to stick on your shelf (if it doesn't already)?
Well, since you ask.
1. When they are immediate. Some games are (and NEED to be) very large, this is hardly immidiate. If it's over an hour to wait I could easily go out and purchase the game quicker.
2. When they are not restrictive. I have very old games that I still lvoe to play. This means I need to be able in install my game on any machine I like when I like. This generally equated to DRM free. And DRM free includea activation of any kind. I want to play it when I want to, I may be without phone/internet etc. I want to install and go. Machines change, but drm may stop me from playing it in a "emulator" (computers may change so much that I need to emulate my old hardware to play the game, however I still want to be able to do it) or on some classic machnie I have cobbled together out of old bits people have given me (which is way better than the machine I played on back in the day as the expensive stuff then is still junk now!)
These may sound liek a lot of requests but they are not. 1 is outside of the game producers infulence (as it should be) but 2 certainly aint hard to do.
+----------------- | What is the question!
If everything goes digital, you'd no longer be able to purchase games with cash. Sucks to those people who don't have credit/debit cards or those who want to use cash transactions to protect their privacy.
That's just what they'd love to happen, so they can screw us even more with DRM since we won't have a physical copy. Are you people all insane or what? How can you possibly think this is a good idea in reality?
Bit of a tangent here, but can anyone else remember getting the Ultima 6 box with printed map/dish cloth of Britannia and AUTHENTIC 'Orb of the moons' meaningless novelty souvenir nestled among the eight 5.25" disks? Amazing stuff. You can't get that over digital distribution.
On a related subject, will you all please get off my lawn.
making copies of games and putting it on torrents should be perfectly legal. Payment on activation anyone?
Need an ISP in South Africa?
I mean, I already have this game. I finished it. I spent some 70 hours playing it and decided I love it. I just want to pay the developers for their good work. Why should I pay extra to the retailers, packagers and a whole bunch of others I don't care about the least bit?
I wouldn't even mind if they were just selling the licenses, without any downloads at all.
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I'm in two minds. Steam works brilliantly and in the half a decade I've been using it, it's worked faultlessly over many changes in computer. Can't say the same for EA Store though. I stupidly purchased BF 2142 through the Store. Worked OK for a while but after the last change of PC, I can no longer run the game I've downloaded. It comes up with some "this is associated with another account" bollocks when starting up the game.
With an 8Mbit ADSL connection and unlimited off peak usage, downloading a 3 or 4GB game is no longer an issue, especially if there's a local content backup option like Steam provides. Because I live in the middle of nowhere and my nearest PC game shop is a 50 mile round trip, most of the time, I could probably download the game quicker than going to buy it.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
I never had that strangely placed sentimentality for boxes and manuals with games. With complex technical gadgetry sure, or things with beautiful designs, etc. But with games? The manuals are 9/10 times total crap, black and white and minimally useful.
I am much happier when I can hit pause and pull up a manual, well organized by important topics like controls etc. without having to flip through pages of tiny text. Furthermore, that online manual's pages will never tear :)
I've been a big fan of digital distribute for quite a while. Yes, I have minor concerns about DRM. Yes it's nice to be able to sell things you own. However, I am of the opinion that so long as you go into it knowing what you're getting (basically an indefinite rental) then you can properly evaluate the worth. I think this is partly why I feel much lower prices are acceptable for DRM encumbered products.
Maybe it seems like $4.99 for an iPhone game that was just as good if not better than the $29.99 Nintendo DS equivalent is too little to sustain an industry. However, as soon as you think a little deeper you see that nobody can buy those games used, eliminating physical game sales largest competitor: its own afterlife.
So as long as these publishers put up their games at a lower price point to reflect these harsher realities, or, alternatively, remove restrictions (at least re-enable these basic tenants of ownership and use, one way or another) then I'll be happy with digital distribution.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
... and have access to 50Gb to 100Gb dowload speeeds. But there are some parts of the world (and bits of the UK) that are still on the "Slow" end of the Broadband party (and are lucky to get 2Mb download speed)! Imagine trying to download a DVD image of a game (roughly 8Gb) using a 2Mb connection! It would virtually take you a week of constant downloading with no breaks! The average UK user has a download limit of between 2Gb to 30Gb a month! If they are lucky they can get a game a month if not it's a game every 4 or 5 months!!
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Just about all of them. The only game I've downloaded recently was World of Goo, and that was just the demo and I've not actually got round to installing yet.
At the point at which I can do the same with the digital version as I can with the physical version - i.e. when I won't accidentally lose it when a hard disk dies or when I do a disk clean up, when I don't have to be online just to play it, when I can install it on other computers depending on which one I'm using at the time, and when it can't be taken away from me just by someone at the distributor losing their records or going bust*.
* Yes, I know DRM can cause some of those situations on physical media, but that's why I avoid the dial-home DRM.
"Digital distribution" and "on-line stores" are not synonymous.
I buy most of my games and movies from on-line stores, but I still get physical media for my cash. This is also true for AAA titles - my copy of MutantExploder7 will land on my doormat on the day of release.
It is the prevalence of low-overhead (and sales tax avoiding) on-line retailers that has been killing bricks-and-mortar establishments for the last 10 years.
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When I can play them without having crud on my comp while using them.
The day when I can install them myself when my internet is down.
Not until then.
However, I hardly ever buy games.
All I know is that in South Africa, where the average internet connection is fast enough to download a whole game but ridiculously small caps (the average is between 1-3gb) restrict it, this kind of thing might take longer to catch on. The cost of bandwidth per MB is so high that it will outweigh the convenience of downloading for some time to come - and games are still relatively well distributed here in the retail space.
Give me an offline installer that I can run on any computer of mine to install the game, with no Internet connection required, no activation beyond possibly typing in a serial number I got when I bought the game (again, no Internet connection - no phoning home!), no limits on where or how I can install or use the game, no DRM etc., and we'll talk. I don't strictly need a physical CD-ROM and a printed handbook - I can burn the installer to a CD-ROM of my own, and a PDF handbook is OK as well -, but these are my terms. (Obviously, in the case of MMOs etc., some of the rules can be relaxed a little.)
In other words: I want to BUY games, not RENT them.
'course, the same thing applies to physical distribution as well. In reality, though, it seems that in most cases, neither digital nor physical distribution these days meets these requirements for most games, and consequently, I've bought hardly any games in ages. (And no, I have NOT downloaded them illegaly instead.) Games are nice, but not something I strictly *need*, so I'm fine with that. The games industry may need me (that is, customers in general), but I don't need the games industry.
It's possible to use a fairly good analogy: Distribution of NON-game software.
How many people get their software on CD nowadays? If you want to buy a codec, do you order it on CD or just download it? If you want a registered version of WinZip, do you call them to ask for any stores nearby where they sell it? Obviously not, you download it online.
The only reason this works is because most software is relatively small and/or cheap (i.e. below the hundres of dollars range). That makes it perfect for distribution online.
As it happens though, physical storage capacity of a carryable medium has always outpaced what can be conveniently transmitted in a short space of time. Games have been pushing this capacity to the limit, because that's what people have demanded. Most other software has not. It has therefore continually been better to sell games on physical media.
What would change this is if download speeds becomes so fast that even a sizeable chunk of data can be transmitted in a short amount of time (and I'd argue that the tolerance for waiting is more absolute than relative), and/or, that games stop maxing out physical media capacity, and/or that online distribution becomes so ubiquitous that NOT scaling your game to this size will deprive you of an important sales channel.
Although the first one has happened to some extent, there's still some games that max capacity. I'd therefore argue that physical distribution will continue to have some legs to stand on, until a watershed point where games MUST be small enough to conveniently transmit online.
How many of the games you acquire come on physical media these days?
All of them, except for "Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People" (which is from Telltale Games who always have an offer to get the retail box when it's released just for shipping costs), and "DROD RPG: Tendry's Tale", which doesn't have a physical box just yet (but it's predecessor "DROD: The City Beneath" also had the option to get the regular box when it came out with the price of the download deducted from the price of the box).
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
Check out the sales of Eve online on march 10th. They are putting it out in a box set for the first time (well practically the first time). Before now it's been download only. If the number of people playing shoot up, that's a good indicator. Likewise if the box set falls flat.
Whether or not online sales are good or not depends on the sales system adopted by the vendor. Personally I am very much in favour of credit card enabled instant gratification when it comes to Music/Movies/Software purchases but some online sellers can be pretty idiotic about selling their products. The model adopted by Apple with iTunes for example is pretty nice, unless you live in a country that doesn't have a national iTunes division. Where I live (a small European country) Apple happily sells iPod touch players but they don't have a national iTunes store so I have to drive to a neighbouring country every once in a while (which I do regularly anyway) and buy iTunes gift certificates. And it's not as if I need those just to buy music on iTunes but even to do simple stuff like the time I decided that I wanted to upgrade my iPod Touch to software version 2.0. The same goes for Adobe they price their products differently depending on where the customer lives. I tried to buy one of their products by download once only to find that it was less expensive to buy if you are in the US, for me it was actually somewhat more expensive than for US residents since I am living in Europe.... Why??? Does it cost 20%-30% more when a EU resident downloads an Adobe product form their store than if a US resident does the same? I don't think so. I bought a $50 license for Omnigraffle and paid the same price the Yanks do since The Omni Group doesn't discriminate. To add insult to injury I also don't live in a country listed in the drop down menu in Adobe's stupid online store so I couldn't buy the product by download anyway. Thankfully Amazon.co.uk doesn't seem to care where in Europe it sends the products it is selling so I could acquire the Adobe product product in question by the good old DVD over snail-mail route. This is cheaper than buying it from one of the local stores who tend to overprice this stuff even more obscenely than it already is by online sellers. I am definitely going to miss the DVD option.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
With a lot of ISP's instating monthly bandwidth caps physical distribution could make a comeback
For me, it comes down to the pricing.
I like to be able to pass on the games I've enjoyed playing (but don't like so much I want to keep on my library shelves for later replay) to friends that don't have the disposable cash to keep buying games, but would like to.
If I shell out £30+ for a game, I like the flexibility to do what the hell I want with it (in the strictures of legality). That includes passing it on, in the same way I do with books (which is how I keep my book shelves under control!).
When the titles drop to £5-10, then it hits more the psychological "disposable" point. In that bracket, I don't care so much about being able to pass it on quite so much (it's still rather irritating, but the tradeoff for some reason becomes 'acceptable'. That 'moral grey area'). At that point, I'm tempted by the digital, highly tied and encumbered titles (as long as they don't screw with my local PC drivers).
One of the recent things that really got my goat was the "Dawn of War 2" title that I grabbed as physical media, and STILL tied me into Steam (removing the ability to pass it on), and the continual nagging to get me to sign up to "Games for Windows Live", which I don't want to do, and won't to play a single player game (it nags EVERY TIME you load up and try to access your save game section, in single player mode!).
The reason that the digital music segment of the market works so well, is that it is low cost. With difficulty these days obtaining singles (that kind of died out in the 90s), you were forced to obtain albums (at circa £12-15, later falling to about the £8-12 mark). With the advent of digital downloads at about £0.80 per track, you had the option to buy just what you wanted, at a price that marked the product as 'disposable' per item (though it may clock up to a collection that definitely isn't disposable in its entirity).
The recent experiments on steam (cutting game price, and having sales increase by an order of magnitude or two) seem to bear this out.
...as long as, for example I can buy 'Empire: Total War' for £16 less off of Amazon, delivered to my house in a shiny box, than I can get it downloaded off Steam. Same with music, movies etc. If it is cheaper (or roughly equivalent) to buy a physical object, people will do that. If it is significantly cheaper or easier to get an electronic copy, then people will do that. People like to pay less money for things, and they also like to have physical stuff. The relative magnitudes of those factors will determine whether physical or electronic copies are sold. I'm all for digital distribution of games etc, but currently it is too expensive. And I like having a shelf full of pretty boxes :)
...if the big boys have their way.
The one killer bonus for them is that it nixes the second hand market at a stroke (and puts "rental" into their control). We've got three shelves of Xbox360 games here - most were bought second hand from Blockbuster/amazon/ebay at a fraction of the new price. Of course they will assume all current second-hand sales will instantly become full-price purchases, and be disappointed when they don't.
Also noticed that MS are starting to punt what could be considered "full" games via their online marketplace, at a comparable cost to shop prices for a new game. Testing the water...
One thing that turns me off about digital distribution of full games is the inability to resell a game. If you bought a title you regret (which has happened to me more than once) it's nice to pawn it off on some poor sucker (albeit, at a significantly reduced priced). Digital distribution is fine for small arcade games and the like, but for a major release it doesn't really cut it for me.
I love Steam too, but won't even consider getting most of my games from there because of the price.
In the UK, Dawn of War 2 was available on Steam on release day for £35, before VAT, which bumps it up to something around the £40 mark. In my local GAME and HMV it was selling for £29.99 including VAT. Rewards cards reduce the price on that too - I regularly get money off things at GAME. Ordered from play.com, the game cost £23 including VAT, and came through my door on release day.
I can understand retail stores need to add on something for stock distribution, staff, floor space, whatever - even play.com will be adding on something for warehouse space, shipping and others.
Can Steam really justify being so much more expensive than those? On top of this, the price of games on Steam doesn't fall anywhere near as quickly as it does in shops. Until it's at least the same price as shops, I'll still be buying physical copies.
Only stands a chance once the online versions are, you know, CHEAPER than what you can get in the shops.
For example, I got Dawn of War 2 (brand new and shrinkwrapped) delivered to my door for the price of £22.99 from play.com. However, if I was to buy it from steam, it costs £34.99, over £10 more - which is by no means a minor sum.
So somehow I'm paying less but getting more. I'd honestly rather have box + manual anyway, but paying less for that... Well, frankly you'd have to be an idiot to order it online. Even with priority mail it wouldn't come to £34.99.
Keep in mind this is a game that you have to unlock on steam regardless of HOW you buy it. I can give a number of other examples of steam games I've bought 'boxed' versions of which are, inexplicably, cheaper than the online one (including Half-Life 2, delivered to my door on the day of release before you could even unlock it on steam!).
Oh I also don't know if there's still a hidden tax fee on top of steam games. For a long time as a british customer VAT wasn't declared openly on steam titles and by the time I got to the checkout I had to add another 17.5%. I wonder if that's still the case, DoW2 would be close to £40 with that extra tax on...
Online games are just too expensive, none of the cost savings are passed on to the consumer and giving complete market control to these companies is pretty far away from being in the consumer's interest...
I don't see where I work will rush to digital distribution. That equals piracy, which is what makes the PC much less profitable to develop for.
At the moment Wii/PS2 are the most profitable platforms to develop for. Development costs are lower, and the markets are very large. With the PS3 and XB360 with internet connections, it's amazing piracy hasn't already turned next gen console development to the same as PC.
Music has concerts. Movies have cinema. What do games and TV have?
Forget fighting piracy, you can't, and if you try you cause the user to hate you and you fail anyway.
Money has to be made from advertising and/or charging so little and providing such a good service, customers can't be bothered to pirate (think allofmp3).
Our studio works on franchise games (safe money) and those will be some of the last games to stop being sold physically, because our games tend to be bought for other people as gifts on the back of the franchise (I'm under no illusion). Like DVDs in that respect. No body burns a downloaded rip as a gift.
If BluRay becomes cheap enough, then of course games from all platforms will be distributed that way. Who even on 3Mbit broadband wants to download 20GB games? Not me, that's for sure. It's all a question of media and the size of the game vs the size of people's broadband pipes.
And likewise it will be with the next media format, and the next, and the next. You can't compare MP3s and games because songs have a fixed size. Games do not.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
... I get all of them in physical media. (http://steamunpowered.eu/ for the details)
OK, I've bought a few from GOG, but they still do it right.
I think it's freaking ridiculous that I can go to an on-line shop and get a game delivered to my door, for half the price I can get it from Steam.
Digital media. It's much cheaper, but we get to keep the profits, pass none of the savings to the customer, and you pay more for the "convenience".
Analog -> 8-tracks, LP's, cassette tapes, VHS tapes,
Digital -> CD's, DVD's, floppy discs, CD-ROMs, game 'cartidges' (aka [[E]P]ROMs).
"Digital" does not describe the distinction between buying music on a physical CD versus (for example), paying to make a copy over a network (for example, the Internet) of that same music via Apple's iTunes. *BOTH* are "DIGITAL".
One *big* difference is that the digital copy on a CD is in an open, standards compliant DRM-free (except for some Windows users) format, whereas the downloaded copy (may) be in a proprietary DRM format.
I bought Dawn of War II from the supermarket ; because it was a lot cheaper than getting it on Steam - even if it is natively a Steam game.
Why, in this day and age, are physical boxed copies retailing for less than the digital variant? In this particular case, there is literally no difference between the end results - both methods have the game, installed in my Steam folder, registered to my Steam account. Neither has any resale value. I even had to wait to download an update.
I would rather have downloaded it all, it would have used less materials, and perhaps given more money to the developer (in theory). But for less money, I got more value - I got a disk with a "preload" on it. So physical distribution isn't going away until the download costs less than a retail boxed copy, or until they stop offering boxed copies altogether, and the latter is probably the route that they will want to take - no competition, no discounting.
I bought a physical copy of the first Half-Life back when it was released. When Steam entered the picture, I registered Half-Life to it, making the CD-Key useless since at least the online portion of the game was now completely tied to the Steam account. Then I forgot my Steam password and was unable to recover it - for five years. So I couldn't do much with the boxed copy of the game I had, nor could I access the digital distribution system.
However, a couple of days ago I suddenly remembered my Steam password, and installed Steam to see if my account was still alive. Not only did I find Half-Life associated with the account, but also several commercial mods and two expansion packs, that I had never bought. All of these easily installable with just a click of a mouse, and no requirement for the original Half-Life CD - which I don't have with me right now anyway. Turns out that the commercial mods/expansions were awarded at some point for free to those who bought Half-Life before Steam existed. On top of that I noticed the (apparently long-running) NVIDIA / ATI campaigns on Steam, through which you get a couple of games for free if you have their graphics card. Luckily for me I tend to be most interested in the deathmatch parts of first person shooters anyway :)
So all in all, I must say I'm quite impressed with digital distribution (at least when it comes to Steam), as long as you don't lose your account credentials. Makes me wonder what happens if Steam ever goes permanently down though. I think I'll continue buying physical copies of games as long as they are offered, so I have something to fall back to if the digital distribution part completely fails.
As long as smart people boycott Steam and Valve.
Steam has been doing this correctly for years now. Your subscription is well handled, the DRM is very reasonable, and when you log in you get access to any of your purchased games for download or temporary deletion if your disk space is cramped, and you can play your games on another computer by simply logging in. They've been adding classic games like some of the Thief and X-com games, and it all works well, even if they're offline at the moment.
I'll buy a boxed game when it's on sale or let people buy me games so I can unwrap them under the Christmas tree, but buying them a Valve compatible game means not worrying about losing their media or secret decoder license numbers.
Pricing is an issue with Digital Downloads though, the supplier won't be left with an excessive stock of games they have to get rid of for a low price. The benefit of physical media is, for the consumer at least, the price dumping that sometimes happen.
Another example, especially in these times, are shops that are closing down and selling their stock for really low prices.
I wanted to buy GTA IV for the PC just a few days ago, and looked at steam, they charged 50 euros for it which is the RRP.
Shops are charging around 25 euros for it, and talking to some of the local shops they are saying they dumped the price because it didn't sell as well as they thought it would.
On the flip-side, after re-installing my PC I installed the steam client and started an installation on all the games I have bought from there, and left it running over-night. Next morning when I woke up and all the games were nicely installed, patched and completely up-to-date.
Just noticed that you cannot type the euro sign on the slashdot forums, but the $$$ works just fine???
Annoying!
Boxed media is dead !! Pirate Bay confirms it !!
Which from what I understand, may be only a few months away. Sure, there will still be some on the shelves, traditional console or handheld games, but the PC games market will be very much download centric, and the consoles will rapidly move that way too. I say give it a year or two, and the shelves may have the stragglers, or boxed stubs with a single URL on a CD but the mainstream will be downloaded.
50% of all the money the industry earns comes in the three months before Christmas. People like to see BOXES under the Christmas tree. Nobody wants to get a little slip of paper with a note reading, "Here is the URL of your Christmas present."
Many, many games are sold at Wal-Mart. Whiny children who are bored shopping with mom get a new game to keep them quiet. This is a fact.
The benefits of electronic distribution are unquestionable. But for now, there are other benefits to retail distribution. By controlling manufacture, the console-builders guarantee that they get their cut.
I piss off bigots.
Considering the rising sizes of games and the "traffic management" policies that all the major ISPs have now, it's not very practical for digital-only releases.
For example, GTA IV was the best part of 15-16GB. Even if ISPs didn't cap people's downloads, even if the digital distributors didn't crumble on release day, even if "upto 32Meg" broadband got close to those speeds, even if the game actually worked on PC (beside the point) - it would still take absolutely ages for me to download on my 2Meg connection. While I'm well aware of the fact that 2Meg isn't the fastest, I'm a student. I don't have the money to spend on 50Meg broadband. But similarly, because I'm a student, I have nothing better to do with my time than post ./ comments and play video games.
I've learned from my digitally distributed mistake, and in future I will;
Not buy another GTA game for PC
Just pre-order the physical copy - sometimes you actually get that the day before release.
This makes perfect sense from a business perspective and is therefore somewhat inevitable. I think the biggest challenge yet to be solved is how you can easily give online distribution games as gifts. The winter season is by far the period of greatest sales in the games industry for obvious reasons. However, I think that there is a slight hurdle between what we have now, and something that parents can confidently use to buy games for their kids.
In the end, everyone just makes more money using digital distribution. Not only do you not have to finance, press, package, and ship the game; but there is no secondary market to speak of.
Its interesting how one mans "Spread by word of mouth" or viral marketing is another man's pirating.
Think Deeply.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Plain and simple CD's, DVD's, get scratched, get worn out, get lost, break. Then what do you have? Nothing. Sure you can create an ISO, or make backups, but some people don't know how, or don't bother before its too late. On the flip side of that, digital distribution allows you a flawless copy whenever you want, the only caveat there is that you have to trust that whatever company sold it to you won't go under and take with it any proof of you having bought the game in the even a future download is needed.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
At least until the new Battletoads is released
I've been wondering the same thing about comic-book stores. I know they tend to have customer loyalty and host gaming nights and such to bring people into the store, but with online distribution (or if you're a reader vice collector, can you just read them online?) what then?
Bark less. Wag more.
Music CD's have usually over ten songs, of which maybe two or three are good - it's not very smart to buy the seven others! That's why iTunes is great.
On the other hand, when you buy a game, you buy one game - there's no air. On the contrary, you get manual (hopefully), game in a form you can lend or resell and nice status symbol in your bookshelf (all your friends will be jealous of your copy of Dead or Alive: Extreme Valleyball 4!).
Then there's the question of DRM, the digitally distributed version being of the same price or even more expensive than one bought from brick and mortar store (particularly outside USA) and, of course the question what will happen to the game if you need to repair your console or your harddrive gives up the ghost.
I don't really think that iTunes and Steam are comparable exambles for digital distribution.
Chronologically late.
The issue isn't physical vs. non-phsyical, but rather arrangements of molecules (DVDs) vs. energy (WiFi/ethernet/fiber optic/etc.) Energy is physical to.
The alternative would be awesome, though: meta-physical data transfers.
We don't have "MP3 for games" yet. They're already pretty compressed.
Actually we have. It's called "procedural generated".
It might be not as extreme as in "Spore", but that's the current tendency among game developing studios.
Bandwidth have dramatically exploded recent years.
Storage size has also seen good increases.
But there's only so much content that a reasonably size team of artists can spit out within a reasonable amount of time and within a decent budget.
It took quite some time for games to start filling CD-ROMs.
And that was back a time of ever increasing screen resolution and color-depths, of cinematics, etc.
Now this tendency has curbed. Lots of player consider current graphics "realistic enough". We aren't much avidly awaiting a 100x increase of polycount or texture size for the next few years (some consoles like the Wii don't even bother bumping up the generation of their graphics hardware).
FMV cinematics slowly got replaced with in-game animations done with the engine it self (see almost 99% of recently released games - things like Command and Conquer series are rather the exception).
More studios resort to automatic/programmatic content generation for their assets to stay withing man-hours and budget limits (see for example the recent presentation of engines like Id's Rage which can handle lots of terrain details as the artist only paints heights and soil types. Or most recent FPS which use a dynamically generated sky box / time of day effects instead of relying on lots of artists designing lots of different settings).
Size requirement for games aren't increasing as much as the rest.
BlueRay disc are great for lots of usage (they will be useful to pack a whole TV-series' season on a single disc, they will be invaluable in fields that have to manipulate and backup huge amount of data, they will be great to store an exhaustive Linux distribution on a single media like Debian).
But the time until we start seeing multi-BD games will be long, even longer than the time before multi-CD games appeared, or even multi-DVD for that matters (there even aren't that much yet)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
About as long as physical music and movie distribution will survive: they all are fading away...
CU, Martin
While I like the convenience of Steam, let's not forget that if Steam goes belly up, games bought there will become unplayable. Yes, there is offline mode, but you can't switch to offline mode unless you're online and the Steam servers are reachable.
Whereas most of the games we have bought in physical form will still be playable even after the company who made them goes bankrupt, as long as the physical media haven't decayed enough to become unplayable. And there are precautions against that too, like VirtualCD.
There are also other possible pitfalls with Steam, like being banned. Let your 11 year old nephew play with your account for a few days, and he might get the account banned, and you lose access to all of your Steam games.
The most popular - the Wii - has 512MB of flash. That's less than one CD. The games typically come on a DVD. The downloadable games are pretty limited until storage can be expanded.
Playstation 3 can be retrofitted with a drive up to 500GB (largest available SATA laptop drive presently) which could hold a number of (Blu-Ray) games. Present retail configurations are 80GB and 160GB which could only hold a handful of games.
Until there is sufficient storage to cover all of the games some could want to buy (or the ability to burn a disk locally) physical media will remain a necessity.
I picked up Empire: Total War yesterday and didn't notice the little text, in about 6 point type on the back that said the product was activated through Steam, you needed a Steam account to activate the product and that if you didn't want to abide by the policies to return it to the store unopened. Yeah, sure, Steam works pretty well, but I hate the idea that I have to rely on something out of my control to make a product work. I don't like the fact either that they basically try to hide that info and only stick it on the side of the box because they are either legally required to or figured it would be a good idea to avoid a lawsuit.
Until someone invents a way to send cash electronically. (And I mean really send cash. None of the bullshit schemes right now where tons of various middlemen take their cut.)
We've solved the problem of distribution. Now we need to solve the problem of payment. And, highly preferrably, the problem of greed (as in "we don't want bullshit DRM schemes, either").
It's not far off, but sort of requires a bit more of a shift in mindset on the part of the publishers.
my friend bought Empire Total War yesterday. He fought for 2 hours to install steam, the game and then 4 hours to run it. Steam always responded 'unavailable' or something like that and refused to cooperate. He intends to return the game today, even if it means suing someone in case of refusal :-) He vows not to buy any game requiring steam or any other online authentication mechanisms again. I guess torrent sites will have 1 happy user more...
I think that game stores will disappear over time. I don't think this will eliminate the demand for boxed games.
Why cant you do both? Have a digital version for people who want it and a boxed version as well. But dont sell the boxed version in stores. Sell them both from the same website. If you want a boxed version they will send it out to you at extra cost.
For example Indie game Age of Decadence will do the following:
"$25 direct download, $50 for a box... plus shipping." "Boxed version will include a full color, professionally produced box (as good or better than what you see in stores), full color glossy manual, full color glossy map. And the aforementioned CD case, of course."
The best thing about this is that if you go for the boxed version you can download the digital version as well. So you can start playing straight away. Stardock also do this for games like Galactic Civilisations 2.
I think the only physical distribution of games we'll see is in the convenience stores, the way they'll have movies and some of the games for the older systems already. The game stores are the ones who should be terrified. The game companies want to remove the secondary market, same as the book publishers want to get rid of second hand bookstores. The convenience stores will be for the people too poor to afford an internet connection and will probably carry games for systems a generation behind the curve, the kind poorer people will be able to afford. Might carry a few current gen ones too, who knows.
Will they succeed? I think there will be a lot of pushback if they keep trying to use jacked up pricing. You can't bring a game to a friend's house, you can't loan him one when you're done. If your console croaks you might lose everything unless the game companies keep a "buy once, download as many times as you want" policy. If they're assholes about it, this will just drive the pirates to crack the games. I don't see an external media slot leaving systems any time soon, even if they're only used by a small portion of the market without net access. If they're big enough jerks about it, maybe there will come to be a market for current-gen emulators. Just buy a beefy PC, install the custom loader, play current gen games for free.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I enjoy renting and buying/selling used games... hard to do that without physical media... but I guess this is what the game companies prefer.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123249378212700025.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123505345097022545.html
I'll give up my physical box games when they pry them from my cold, ergonomically-incorrect-mouse-induced-carpel-tunneled hands. Part of my enjoyment comes from actually going out to a store and picking up the merchandise and checking out the pictures on the back and reading the game preview. Then after purchasing it I have it in the plastic bag (which I keep for secondary uses such as lunchs and pet debris collection) and glance at it from the corner of my eye as it sits on the passenger seat. The excitement grows until I finally get it home and installed. Hell, it's almost like actually having a date!
Now we see the violence inherent in the system.
I don't think this is entirely true. I have the PS3 and am online but I don't have a single downloaded game. I don't like them. I'd rather have the game itself. That way I know that if something happens I still have the game. If my PS3 crashes for whatever reason (which it has never done; it's just an example) I don't lose my games. But then again I also don't download movies and other media. I prefer to have the hard copy. Besides, you can take a hard copy with you to a friends house for a gaming night, if you just have it on your console then your friend is required to buy that game too.
I buy all my computer games used from Amazon.com. When they allow reselling of digitial copies I'll move over there...
I buy 100% retail boxed, tangible products. I want to be able to exercise the First-Sale Doctrine to re-sell my games after I complete them so that I can raise more money to buy more games. I also want the market to control the pricing of a product. Historically, after a few weeks on the market, retail-boxed items can be found for half the price of their digital counter-parts. Why? The game sucks. It may be fun at a $30 or $40 price point, but is a regret at a $60 price point. The market realizes this, and boxed games can be found for $40 whereas the digital copies are still at $59.99 (ooh, but free shipping and no tax!)
Digital copies are just a way to destroy the used-game market, undercut pawn shops (e.g. GameStop), lock out libraries, and permanently tie a person to a product so that they can never get rid of it.
You cannot give a download as a (Christmas) present.
The trouble is that the chance of actually finding what you want in a shop is very small. It's all filled up with mainstream crap.
You must have started playing games within the last 10-12 years or so, if the only manuals you remember are "total crap" and "minimally useful". It wasn't always that way. Take an old Microprose game, for example -- now those were manuals.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
As long as there are areas where connection speeds suck or download caps exist there's no way all digital distribution is going to take over unless they want to alienate their customers. Due to lack of any other options that are reliable I use a Verizon EVDO card for access. I've got 768 down MAX and a 5 gig cap. If something is download only and it's not tiny, I can't even consider it.
As long as parents and grandparents are giving video games as birthday or holiday presents, those games will be packaged in a box, or at the very least a download-this-game gift card a iTunes cards, except specific to one game. A seven-year-old kid can't tear wrapping paper off a download.
Even worse these gsames are actually stealing money from you as well. A physical game has resale value (or equity, if you will), a downloaded game has no value at all beyond the first sale. Speaking as someone who buys most of his games used (you'd be amazed at how much you can save on the latest-and-greatest game just by waiting a few months) and who frequently resells games that I no longer play, this is nothing more than a blatant theft of what has always been a fundamental consumer right (the right to resell the things you buy and to buy used goods from others).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
What happens in 8 years when that company is out of business of the game has been considered End Of Life? Look at how popular the 8,16,
and 32-bit consoles are now. Try buying a copy of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2.
I would be quite ticked if I had a game that I wanted to play several years from now and when I went to install it I could not activate it because the company was out of business.
I would be pissed if I would have had to DL age of conan; 32GB! I much rather enjoyed going to the store and start installing that beats within 30 minutes...only to be let down by it's horribleness
You repeat the summary's 2x usage of "digital" distribution, meaning network distribution. What sort of physical media are you guys using, LP's? (Then again there's no reason you couldn't put digital information on those too).
Has this become common terminology while I wasn't looking?
I don't trust companies enough to buy digitally. I know if I have physical media (be it for music or games) I know it's mine forever and I can re-install whenever I want (barring DRM like SecuROM, but that's what cracks are for)
If the company goes under and my PC dies, where do I go to re-download my purchase? Torrents are a viable option but then I'm doing something "illegal" so I don't see me switching to digital downloads at all until physical products are non-existent.
I saw someone mentioned EVE Online. I do play it and I did download it. However, I see that as a bit different. The game won't exist at all once the servers are shut down. The game itself was free, too. There also comes the issue of large games and downloadability. I don't have an issue downloading 20GB of something but if I buy a game, I'd like to play it and not have to wait a day or two. Also, my ISP might not like it...
-SaNo
And who don't have access to a High speed internet connection, Physical media distribution is the only way of getting games. I know of a slew of people in my area who live in the sticks, enjoy video games, and have no internet connection, so killing off physical media would be a complete shot in the foot for companies.
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
Rock Band 2. Awesome, lots of fun...comes with custom hardware.
Fallout 3...for the Xbox 360. I don't even have a network connection for my 360.
This article seems to be more about PC games than console games (and at the moment, the console market is 5-10x the size of the PC gaming market).
<Donut[AFK]> HEY EURAKARTE
<Donut[AFK]> INSULT
<Eurakarte> RETORT
<Donut[AFK]> COUNTER-RETORT
<Eurakarte> QUESTIONING OF SEXUAL PREFERENCE
<Donut[AFK]> SUGGESTION TO SHUT THE FUCK UP
<Eurakarte> NOTATION THAT YOU CREATE A VACUUM
<Donut[AFK]> RIPOSTE
<Donut[AFK]> ADDON RIPOSTE
<Eurakarte> COUNTER-RIPOSTE
<Donut[AFK]> COUNTER-COUNTER RIPOSTE
<Eurakarte> NONSENSICAL STATEMENT INVOLVING PLANKTON
<Miles_Prower> RESPONSE TO RANDOM STATEMENT AND THREAT TO BAN OPPOSING SIDES
<Eurakarte> WORDS OF PRAISE FOR FISHFOOD
<Miles_Prower> ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND ACCEPTENCE OF TERMS
bash.org
OTOH, I would personally preffer to pay extra to get that box set, with a nice thick manual (I know, doesn't happen anymore - anybody remember the Fallout Survival Guide? That was worth reading alone just because of the humor and excellent presentation value). Back in the days, I actually -enjoyed- opening the box and reading through any of the well written manuals before even starting the game itself. Admittedly, it would be hard to point out any recent game that had anything resembling actual manual - mostly they settle for quick reference card style pages with the entertainment value of a dead possum.
If there are "Collector's Edition" versions, why not go that extra mile for all physical copies?
Feel free to charge extra for printing out that manual, and maybe extra hardcopy map or reference table. In fact, I was recently replaying the MechWarrior series, and the difference between MW2 manual and MW4 Mercenaries alone was exemplary in illuminating the ongoing decrease of the manual value. MW2 had full specs for all Mech configs listed on separate pages. MW4 Mercs has... short listing that's largely useless (oh, sure, that chasis carries erPPC... so where the hell do I aim to take it out?).
Yeah. I like them kinda games ;)
In short, if the publishers -really- were looking for incentives for their customers not to resort to piracy, adding extra value such as described above -would- ensure that people, and here is the key phrase, willing and capable of actually spending money on their product... would.
Call me a silly idealist. Or just somebody with memory of times when there was a consideration of the overall presentation of a game, not just the part you see on the screen.
Given the fact that the size of games (and movies for that matter) is increasing far quicker than people's broadband speeds are, I'd say physical media are going to be around for quite some time. Some PS3 games are absolutely enormous. Far bigger than you could ever download (20-30GB!). Even the ancient Half-Life 2 is about 3GB I think, or 4-5GB by the time you've got all the extension packs that come with the boxed copies in the stores.
Nope... discs are going anytime soon. However don't think that means I don't think downloadable games aren't going to take off in a big way:- Some of the best games are downloadable (World of Goo on the Wii and PC for instance).
The day games become digital distribution is the day I pirate EVERYTHING, and stick with emulators/ROMS for all the older consoles.
For things like movies or videogames, I want to own a physical copy. Digital copies feel empty, I don't feel like I actually own anything.
Unless the prices are drastically reduced (I'm not paying $60 for a digital copy of a video game. EVER) then I will always prefer the hard copy.
Steam and digital distribution are great for finding older games. I don't pick up the latest games on release I fit them in when I have the time and sometimes that is a year or three down the road. If they weren't a screaming success they're hard to find in a store.
with special covers and special paper things and stuff won't die that easily...
storage
on my 360 alone i currently have 32 games 1 is four disks 1 is 3 disks and 10 are 2 disks total about 47 disks assuming DVD10s that's roughly 470GB the largest drive for a 360 is 120gb and $150
maybe it'll work on PC where storage is cheap but personally if i want to play lost odyssey i don't want to have to wait for a 4DVD download to finish the entire reason i gave up PC gaming was the wait times for install/patch are too damn long sure as hell don't want to have to download from blitzed servers on release day
I don't like the increasing trend of releasing with lots of bugs only because it's simple to update after release. I get the impression the more "online" the game is, the worse it is when released
They are learning the painful lessons music and movie "industry" have been seeing: The physical media isn't so valuable. When your business plan is tied to one and only one media, you will be in trouble when the next new thing comes along.
The last physical game I went to the store to buy was World of Warcraft: Rise of the Lich King. I know what game before that I went to the store to buy: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. Any guess what the game before that I went to the store to buy? But I have been playing a lot of games on PC, more than I do on consoles. In that sense, the media for WoW is worthless. However having the access code in a timely manner is. In a few months, the data on the WoW:WotLK disks in those boxes will be nearly worthless since it will be patched and repatched but the sticker on the disk with the code will be as valuable as ever. Blizzard could handle this stuff online where they even provide an online way to buy/upgrade today but I suspect they are prevented from doing it at launch due to Activision wanting to satisfy retail/"brick + mortar" demands.
I think people are too enamored with the "collector" side of buying media. That is fine if they want the giant collection of stuff but to say it is valuable beyond looking at is crazy. My attitude changed on the last time I moved. I had a ton of just "games". Boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff. Games from primordial (stuff like Apple or Commodore) to DOS era to more recent games. The problem is I bet a majority of it is doesn't work any more where either I lack the hardware or software or both to make it run again nor in most cases would I care to get them to work again. I'm sure someone will think it is neat to have a box with goodies for Ultima 4 for the Apple II family but as a game it is impossible for me to use. Even for recent games, it turns out once I'm done with a game I rarely come back and visit them so why operate under the illusions that holding onto the disk and box is value added? Even for a moderm game that I've finished, say Fallout 3, if it stopped working tomorrow I'd shrug and erase it and move on to the next game.
My purchases are 100% physical. The one game I play that cost me money where I have no disk is EVE, but with EVE you pay for the account, not the client that you download.
For me, the box and manual are part of the product. The best games often come with custom covers or special editions - look at Ico, which came in a cardboard case with art cards. These people actually gave a damn about the product.
Now we have people who don't want to do a physical version at all, who see it only as a means to make money, and DD as the most profitable method? They can keep their crap.
Nothing can outweigh a physical box and manual - there is no compensation for part of the product being absent.
Without reading the article I'm guessing that he is looking at some things going to a download distribution model and then applying this to other things.
This doesn't work for games however. We can look at dead tree newspapers dying but we cannot say that books will go away because another paper product has lost viability. Sure some people are willing to get digital books to read on their Kindel or PSP but an awful lot of people like holding and owning books.
With games you have people who are already willing to get their content through Steam, this doesn't mean that that is how everyone wants to do it. There is something about opening your new game that you do not get out of a digital download.
And really which is better picking up today's new release and showing the manual to your jealous coworkers.. or saying "yeah, it is downloading at home" and then going back to work because you do not have a shiny new manual to distract you?
So if games do stop being sold in stores I will get all my games via download.... Hello PirateBay!
In canada's yukon and northwest terrirtories the phone companies literally charge $10/GB for bandwidth, making digital content delivery un-desrirable. pay $60 for a game on steam, and then another $60 to the phone company to download the content. No thanks, I'll buy it boxed and only pay once.
- Better to speak your mind than to remain silent, or someone may speak for you.
For one thing, fewer and fewer people have access to unlimited bandwidth contracts as time goes by (my area's providers have all rescinded those plans a few years back) so downloading a game on a pay-per-use plan can jack up the price significantly. Another problem is the rise in interest from local governments in imposing taxes on online purchases, which they would certainly claim digital downloads are a part of. I'd rather avoid getting double-taxed for both the simple act of purchase and its digital nature as well (assuming a tax plan like this comes to pass, which is almost a certainty in the near future). Finally, there's our dearest friends at the RIAA. What if their pals at Mediasentry discover that you're downloading massive amounts of gigs through your interpipes and snag your IP address? Their typical work ethics means they'd just ASSUME you were downloading from illegal sources and BINGO, you're getting slammed with a lawsuit from the RIAA for half a million dollars. Good luck defending yourself from the Righteous Inquisition Army of Autocrats.
Even if box sales fell to, say, 10% of all sales, do you REALLY want to cut 10% of your sales by removing your games from the shelves of Frys/Best Buy? How many sales would you lose by NOT having it sitting there on the shelf staring at me when I walk into Frys to buy a printer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet
Here be signatures
It never will when you get stuff like this in your hands: Doom version 1.1 artwork/manual etc.
BEHOLD! It is HE, The Mighty KING OF DRM ESCROW! bum buum buuuuummmm!!!!!111one!1
Wouldn't the best solution be to allow ISPs to cache the bulk of game data? I'd imagine it would work like this, you dowload a few megabytes from Steam or whatever and that initiates the download of a multi-gigabyte signed and encrypted file from you ISP. Everyone wins, less bandwidth for the game company, the ISP isn't using bandwidth outside their network, and the enduser gets the fastest download possible.
I want physical media!!! I want to own something that I can do whatever I want to with! I want nice boxes and printed user guides!
Digital Distribution is not good for games because what happens if they stop distributing them? That would an end to retrogaming.
Digital Distribution would put an end to the used game market. I'm sure the game companies dont care about the used market, but it goes hand in hand with retrogaming.
Once everything is distributed over network servers, how will you install that game on a later date to play when that network no longer has that game?
Its bad enough that update content is distributed this way, because it means retrogamers in the future probably wont have the latest versions of then old games, they're trying to play.
I think its just bad all around and the concept treats gaming as if its just a money making system, and not a history of entertainment, art, creativity, craft etc that should be perserved and accessable by gamers at any time through out time, provided one takes care of their games and consoles etc.
I would not expect gaming networks and distribution systems to be maintained indefinitely on platforms as they become "last gen" or " the gen before last gen".
What happens when I want to play something like Metal Gear Solid 4. There's no way I'll be downloading something that large, installing it..... then deleting it when i'm done....then a month later a friend comes by and want to see what the open looks like and I can't just pop the disc in.
And when you buy that long-waited-for Empire: Total War, you get Steam, and spend HOURS (well, it's a day after the launch) getting said game patched.
Really ruins your experience... especially if you could just download pirated version and stop caring about multiplayer, activation, steam preventing you from even seeing an intro for hours, that you cound spend sleeping, because you go to work like the next guy.
Well, if that's what's it's going to be, I say I'll stick to them torrents. They're so damn easier. Sega, Valve, Ubisoft - they're all going too greedy. And I wish it's still times when you got those five floppies of Space Quest or Larry, or Master of Orion, waited for it to copy to your smallish, pre-internet-era HDD, and then just plainly enjoyed them.
Boy, I wish I could just play the game I just brought home from the store.
Plain old sigh.
Steam has done this forever, its not new. Even Call of Duty and a couple EA games if I remember are offered through steam. For online only games, WoW and CS:S, why not online only, have to be online to play.
Thats it, I think its going to be a huge market, but I think Steam has had their foor in the door for years and will hold that advantage down the road when Apple figures out they can do it...
If games go to download-only, they'll miss out on my dollars. I don't spend any time online shopping. I buy games occasionally when I go to a mall or Target or wherever and have some time to kill, browsing through the shelves, and see something that catches my eye. While the average Slashdot reader probably doesn't match my description, I'm sure that there are many, many people who do.
Bottom line - I'm not going to spend time hunting online through game download pages for something, but I very well might make an impulse buy off the shelf.
I've enjoyed buying games at the PlayStation Network store. So far, I've purchased Flower, Magic Ball, Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty, Super Rub-a-Dub, and others for my PlayStation 3. I've also bought No Gravity, SOCOM, and a few other games for PSP, also directly from PSN. That, and the occasional movie rental.
Downloading games is great for some games. You'll note that none of these games were fairly small - maybe topping at around 1GB for 'Quest for Booty'. That's where the true value comes in for downloadable games, when they aren't too big.
The PlayStation3 uses Blu-Ray for its media-based games. The guys at Insomniac Games said they pretty much filled the Blu-Ray for both Ratchet & Clank Future, and Resistance 2. I just got Killzone 2, and I'm willing to bet they did the same. A dual-layer Blu-Ray disc is 50GB. I'm not sure I want to download 50GB for a video game. Yeah, I know hard drives are getting bigger - but that's a lot of stuff to download before I can play my game, and if I start downloading now, I'm still not gonna be able to play it tonight. Compare that to my running out to Target (5 minutes from my house) and picking up a physical PS3 game.
Downloading that much content will also cause problems if my cable company implements a monthly bandwidth limit.
I think we'll see certain game publishers leaning more to downloadable games from places like PSN or XBL. That just makes sense for a lot of games. But for the AAA titles out there like Killzone, Battlefield, Ratchet & Clank, EA Sports, etc. you'll still see them on physical media, even 5 years from now.
Until I get broadband. That's how long.
1) Install Steam
2) Exit Steam (Can't have it running while you copy over)
3) Copy 'Steam\steamapps'
4) Launch Steam; log into account.
5) Profit (via entertainment, not $$$)
Is anyone really surprised that the CEO of a digital distribution company is predicting the end of physical media in the near future? The fact of the matter is that while the technology is there to allow people to download full games, the convenience is not. While sure, downloading a retro game is a snap, downloading a 1+ GB game is, for most American, a lengthy proposition, forcing them to leave their PC running overnight and/or making their computer unusable for several hours. Why bother when, for the same price, I can drive 5-20 minutes (for most people) to purchase the game at the nearest retailer, often for less due to a sale or member's discount?
Also, having a physical copy guarantees (unless that physical copy is destroyed) that even if your computer dies, you will still have a copy of that game for the foreseeable future. If I buy the game from a service like Gamers Gate, and then I reformat my computer sometime in the next two years, there's no guarantee that I can reinstall that game because there's no guarantee the business will last that long. I still have physical copies of games from the early 90's in my collection at home; even though the companies have long since gone belly-up (with a few exceptions such as Blizzard and Bethesda).
A few years to see all digital distribution or even majority digital distribution for blockbuster games? Not happening unless everyone gets T1 lines in the next few years.
We got the silly EU-directive that said all games must be sold in dvd-cases.
Nowadays, PC software sold in the United States tends to come in "IEMA size" cases, which are about the size of a DVD box set: twice as thick as a typical DVD keep case. Windows Vista OS comes in such a box.
And we lost all the fun stuff that used to be in those game boxes
A double-thick case still leaves plenty of room for manuals or other feelies. Or does this European directive require the use of single-thick cases in particular?
So I read about a new RTS game, Dawn of War II, and since Strategy games are my favorite type of PC game, I picked it up at Best Buy while on vacation.
I've been a computer programmer for my whole life (well, since age 10). I was part of the Microsoft team which put out the first version of Windows NT. I know how computers work, inside and out. I know how operating systems work, although I will admit I don't use Vista for anything except playing games so I'm not very good with it.
I go to install it on my MacBook Pro with 3G RAM and 512MB video card running Vista 32 Home Basic (I have MSDN with all the Vista versions, but this is the smallest install so that's what I used).
First, it makes me install something called "Steam." This is something I have assiduously avoided installing because I have heard it is very intrusive and prevents you from actually owning any game you own, but since I was on vacation and could easily wipe my Boot Camp if it did something unsavory, I decided to go with it. This Steam install seems to take a very, very long time (an hour or two) and forces me to create some sort of Steam account, which I do because it didn't ask for any information other than name and e-mail address. (I would have given it a fake name too, except for the fact that my e-mail address is a give-away for my name anyway.)
Finally, it gets Steam installed, which does lots of back and forth on the Internet and then keeps running in the background. Mind you, I'm trying to install a single-player game for which I own the DVD and it's sitting in the drive. But, the game is not installed, I learn, when I tell it I want to play the game and there are no games listed in the "My Games" section. Well, that's stupid, so somehow I figure out how to tell it to install the actual game Dawn of War II.
This goes amazingly slowly. I mean, it's already been over an hour and I don't even have a game installed. This takes about two hours - no joke - to install 3.6 GB of game from a DVD. I can watch a 2 hour 7 GB DVD in the same amount of time, so I have no idea why copying files takes 2x as long as viewing them. Hard drives just aren't that slow.
So, I eventually gave up and let it install overnight and came back to it the next day.
There is no desktop icon for Dawn of War II, so I hunt around the hard drive to try to run the installed game. I finally found it, and all it seems to do is run Steam, connect to the Internet and hang. I try running it a handful of times, and then I run the Steam program (which was actually running the whole time in the system tray, wasting my memory and CPU resources). There, it says Dawn of War II is installed so I attempt to launch it (with the launch button). It shows some multiplayer code on the screen and says I need to enter it into the game to get it to work. I ignore it because I couldn't give a damn about multiplayer, I just want to play the game already after several hours now in the second day of trying.
The game hangs for a long while. I cancel it and re-launch several times. Finally I just give up and let it sit there for like 30 minutes. It does something about patching, or installing, or updating, and pops up a command line window which then disappears again after a while, and finally dumps me back at the Steam games list which now has a button saying "news" and some comment about it being fully installed. You mean, it's only now fully installed after three hours?
Anyway, so I launch it again, and nothing. I kill the program, exit Steam, and try again. Still nothing. After a few more tries it turns out it was popping up an error message underneath all the other windows, saying that my Windows Paging File size must be at least 1.5GB. Wait, what? Why? I have 3GB of RAM and I don't want any virtual memory being used. But, it doesn't care, and eventually I give in and tell Windows that it can allocate a paging file anywhere between 16M and 1536M (1.5GB). I re-launch the game and, guess what... Same thing! So I tell Windows it can create a paging f
As far as I'm concerned, physical games will survive for as long as the downloaded types will be DRM-tied to an account that someone (like Steam) can cancel at anytime for any reason, or otherwise deny you access to.
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity. -Isaac Asimov