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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)?
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.
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.
Now that's not true. I've only been online about 10 years and i can actually notice the exponential increase, something like this:
1999 56k
2003 256kbit
2004 512kbit
2005 1MBit
2006 2MBit
2007 4Mbit
2008 10MBit
At least, that's been my experience in the UK. Here's another diagram going from 1982(log scale, so it's exponential)
Now do a list of game sizes. It will probably go something like this (install size):
1995 20MB
1999 400MB
2004 4000MB
2008 10000MB
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The amount of money in the US that will go to Social Security and Medicare this year completely dwarfs the money spent on Iraq over the past six+ years.