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How Long Before Apps Overtake Physical Video Game Content Sales?
jamie writes "Horace Dediu crunches some numbers and comes to a startling conclusion: 'If you look at the red line above and its slope, it would indicate that, given time, the App store will overtake the entire physical media gaming industry. The time when that happens will depend a lot on the growth or decline of the physical game media business, but another four years seems a safe bet.' This follows on the heels of some earlier analysis of apps per iOS device and what that steady upward growth means."
Yuh-huh
which is totally what she said
Also, last years decline in physical sales was due to the Great Recession, and has already been reversed.
Buy a physical copy of an iPhone game. Go ahead. Go to your local game store and buy an iPhone game.
Oh, wait, you can't, because you can only buy them through the Apple App Store. (App Store cards don't count, you still have to download the game and don't get a copy on physical media.)
Guess what? Sony wants in on that action for the PSP2.
The answer is going to be "when the people selling games stop offering them any other way."
We've still got a few console generations to go, the Nintendo 3DS still uses physical media but allows downloaded games too. I'm incredibly unclear on how the PSP2 is supposed to work, I think the failure of the PSPgo (download only) means it'll still support physical media, but make no mistake: the era of getting games on physical media is coming to an end. Honestly, by the end of the decade, I expect all games will be download-only.
That isn't going to happen with something like Steam.
Steam has its own set of problems. It needs to fix the issues it has with "families", and how they want to use games. I want to buy a game and let my 7 year old play it without giving him my steam account. When he eventually moves out, he should be able to take it with him. When I pass on... does it just go poof?
Suddenly, simply having to take good care of your CDs doesn't seen all that awful. They can be passed around to who you want, when you want, and they don't disappear on you.
Of course, defective games infested with disc-checks and nasty DRM and anti-copying technology have eroded away so much of the convenience of physical media that people like you actually prefer to be locked into steams model.
I was in the mood to play privateer yesterday... so I dug up the CD, imaged it, and put it away, and fired it up minutes later (in dosbox). Took all of 5 minutes. That's how it -should- be, even with new games.
Is if you want to actually analyze game sales, the question isn't iPad shit, it is on computers. The reason is on PCs you now have a choice between retail/mail order and download for almost all games. Services like Impulse, Steam, and Direct2Drive sell pretty much every title online. Their regular prices are usually competitive with stores, and their sale prices are almost always better. So is a person wishes to, they can buy games online. It is a direct 1:1 comparison since we are talking the same games, the same platform.
THAT would be the thing to research. This just sounds like yet another tech journalist (using both terms loosely) who is infatuated with his iToys and thus wants to write an article about how they are T3H FUTURE OF EVERYTHING!!!11. Real research would have been to talk to game publishers and find out how their sales of physical vs download compare, and how that has been changing.
There's little data on it publicly, but Stardock, who runs Impulse and has published Sins of a Solar Empire, Elemental and Galactic Civilizations, says it is about 4:1 physical to online sales.
It is clear that the online market is large and growing. I personally buy nearly all my games on Impulse and Steam these days just out of convenience. However what I do has no bearing on what society does at large. Without hard data, it is foolish to say everything is going that way fast. It probably is in the long run, but who knows how long?
For that matter until game consoles start selling their games that way there is going to be a large physical games market there. Currently only some things, mostly smaller more indy type titles or older games, are sold for download on consoles. All the current titles are disc only. Given that consoles are a big segment of the gaming market (as are handhelds, which are also physical sales) until that changes you aren't going to see a move to "no physical media).
I think we'll see the day when physical media is more or less totally dead, but I could see it being 30-40 years before it happens.
Downloads don't revolutionize music consumption in the way the cassette did
Are you kidding?
Cassettes allowed portable playback - great. But digital downloads just made impulse buying possible. You can buy anywhere, anytime. It's not convenient to buy from a physical music store unless you're already in one.
Does my bum look big in this?
>>>because the disc got scratched.
I consider people who scratch discs to be lazy/careless. Ever since I bought my first CD player in 1989, I've never scratched a single disc. Not one. (And even the ones I bought used, they still worked despite the scratches.) Sure accidents happen - drop the disc; it breaks or gets scrathed; but if it happens to you habitually then I suspect You are the problem.
And you say "Steam" is the answer. Yeah steam and other online sites are great - until they go out of business and your ~$5,000 game collection stops working. I'll stick with the physical discs that I OWN forever, rather than just borrow. Ya know those Atari games I bought in the 70s? They still work. The Atari online game service? Not so much (it went bankrupt).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What do you consider Steam? It isn't physical media, and it isn't the Apple app store either.
Steam probably sells a sizeable percentage of all video games right now, and is steadily increasing it's market share.
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
The video game industry is not in danger until all these phones with games start getting dedicated buttons for those games. Touch screens and motion controls do not now, nor will they ever replace buttons.
Seriously, comment mod points are..umm...pointless, when the stories themselves should be modded -1.
How does this half-assed amateur blog nonsense make it to the front page of /. anyway? Is it really that slow of a news day for tech? Sheesh...
My
Well, I've stopped buying games that come in boxes. Several years ago, in fact. There are several factors: Availability, Price, Convenience, Backup/Returns being impossible or worthless anyway, and Impulse-buying. I don't really use App-stores at all (I have no Apple devices) - the nearest I get is Steam but is that really an "App-store"? I think possibly the WiiStore might count but the same holds for that as for Steam. Anything PC that I buy tends to come from digital sources, though, because I need to be able to move it between machines and have it follow me for several years (all my Steam games have followed me perfectly since 2003, so they have a much better reputation already than 99% of the app-stores, eBooks, music-stores, etc. out there).
1) Availability: Most of the games I've bought, I do *not* see on shelves in stores. That's if I bother to go into a store at all. Can you buy Altitude in a shop? No? Why not? World of Goo is available for the Wii but I've never seen it in amongst the Wii games at any shop I've ever been in. Because physical media production and distribution is expensive, and because shops decide what to sell (which means high-margin products mainly), and because the "PC" section of any games shop is shrinking by the day. Can I get GTA (the original version) or Quake? No. As soon as a game is a year old, it disappears and only re-appears in supermarket "bargain basement" stands costing almost as much as it did new.
2) Price: Most download games can be had much cheaper. Whether they are brand new or years old, they are usually cheaper online as a download. I don't need the boxes, the manuals, the flyers, etc. If I *really* do, I can just print them off from a PDF - the money I save by not having the maps printed by the games publisher is much more than the cost of printing out only the maps that I *DO* actually need. I throw the boxes out because, after decades of keeping them all, I've realised that I *NEVER* use them and only need the occasional manual for copy-protection. They also damage much more easily than an original install disk (and copy) placed in a proper disk storage case and kept safe. My entire software archive since my first CD-drive (and several dozen floppies) can fit into a box under my desk - approximately the same size as 10-15 games if I were to keep the boxes. The only thing I need to buy is a storage medium in a container - a DVD or CD case fits that description, or a USB key, but a lot of games only come in A4-sized thick boxes.
3) I have to go to a shop. Find a physical box of the exact type I require. Make sure it exactly corresponds with the game I want and is for the right platform. Take it to the counter. Have some guy put his sticky fingers on a disk that they ripped out earlier in case people stole it. Carry it home. Unpack it (so the packaging has a journey of about an hour). Throw the crap away. File the manual somewhere (or more likely just throw it). Take the CD and *carefully* make a copy (if I can) or install it. Then put that CD into some sort of case for long-term storage so it won't get damaged (and which doesn't take up the whole room). Or I just could click the link on something like the Steam / GOG.com store and have it installed within ten minutes while I'm using the computer for something else. When I'm done with it, I delete it. If I want it back, I double-click it (or at worst download it again). If I want to back it up, I copy a folder/file it into my normal backup paths. If I want to move it to another machine, I just double-click it from the other machine.
4) Backup/Returns: A lot of games can't be backed up from the CD / DVD. If I do, they often require hideous hacks that can affect the game and/or online accounts. With digital downloads (as counter-intuitive as it is to anyone who worries about DRM), I can back them up and restore them on other machines quite easily. If there's a problem with a game I've bought, it's usually only a) physical disk is broken or b) software is brok
I would mod you up if i could. I also prefer physical media. Sure nowadays its pretty much only an empty dvd box, but atleast it feels like you bought something. Digital doesnt give me that feeling. I might as well torrent it.
Man i wish the old cardboard boxes and big manuals were still standard.
is the fact that we are beginning to accept the term "app" as a distinctly different category/delivery method of software, rather than whatever poor comparisons/facts of the original story. We are now getting to the point where Steam/ITunes/et cetera et al. have become a distinct category of media, even though each one is an "app" in the original sense of the word.
Seems to me that this trend is essentially inevitable, whether it's the game industry or any other category of computer software. Simply put, not having to create, manufacture, and distribute physical media is cheaper, faster, and easier for everyone, and as the percentage of people with acceptable "broadband" speeds (which is pretty low, because it's very likely you'd put up with a 6 hour download of a big game in the background) increases, the drive to move away from physical media benefits everyone.
So, move along, no real story here, just some journalist looking to get paid by the word to repeat the obvious.
I've definitely found myself doing this more often, even as a longtime stalwart of owning the physical media. Previously I'd hear a song I liked, search the lyrics, find the name, read some reviews and unless I could find a really good deal on the album online, I'd wait and look for it cheap in the local music stores. Now within seconds of hearing the song I can have bought it for less than a quid (without having to buy the rest of the filler from the album if I don't want it) and be listening to it. It's just so damn convenient, I'd buy even more if it was cheaper (a quid seems like nothing so I'll impulse buy, but seven or eight pounds for an album makes me still think I'd be better off looking for bargains on the physical media, a price mark of maybe £3-4 would probably get me buying a lot more albums).