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Metal Gear Solid V PC Disc Contains Steam Installer, Nothing Else
dotarray writes: The boxed copy of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain reportedly contains nothing but a Steam installer. That's right, even if you fork out real-world money for a physical copy of the game, you'll still have to download the whole thing from the internet.
The game officially launches tomorrow. Early critical reviews are quite positive, though you should take that with a grain of salt until the game is more widely distributed. Game Informer says, "Unlike the linear design of previous entries, The Phantom Pain rarely assumes you have particular weapons and equipment, so the missions are brilliantly designed with multiple paths to success." The Washington Post notes, "The Phantom Pain’s openness feels like Kojima finally found a technical platform broad enough to make use of all of those tools and trusts players to build their own narrative drama from the way they choose to put these tools together for each mission." IGN has this criticism: "... where Phantom Pain’s gameplay systems are far richer and meatier than any the series has ever seen, its story feels insubstantial and woefully underdeveloped by comparison." Metal Gear Solid 5 is launching for PCs, current consoles, and previous-gen consoles; Digital Foundry thinks is likely to be the last true cross-generation AAA title.
Judging from the trailers, it seems that the title is nonetheless appropriate, as multiple characters have prosthetic limbs. Knowing Kojima's body of work, the title is deliberate and thematic.
It's what happens when you watch Star Wars Episode I
What happen? ....
Somebody set up us the STEAM.
We get signal.
What!
Main screen turn on.
It's You!!
How are you, gentlemen!! All your GAMES are belong to us. You are on the way to pwn3d4g3.
What you say!!
You have no chance to survive make your time. Ha Ha Ha Ha
Take off every INSTALLER!! You know what you doing. Move INSTALLER. For great justice.
You pay for the game, you expect the game to be in the box, but it's not there: Phantom Pain.
Hate to break it to you, but things are cheaper nowadays. I can't even begin to think what my 1000-game Steam library would cost, or the size it would take up in real disks / packaging. Probably several SHELVES judging by the DVD's I have in front of me.
And, to be honest, my girlfriend bought a tablet Windows PC - the cheapest available - and it came with a year of Office 365 for up to five machines. We've since installed all five copies of the latest office. Back in the day, to do that legitimately, would have cost a lot more - hell, it could easily have cost upwards of $500-1000. Sure, next year we have to pay a pittance to keep it up, but we also get all the new versions too, and the option to use what we want.
That would have been unthinkable before online downloads. And, even now, if you buy volume editions on a proper licence of Windows, Office, Server, Exchange, etc. they are ALL downloads. You can pay extra for a DVD, but who the hell is going to do that?
To be honest, factored over the life of software, downloads are not a huge deal. And Steam is as "permanent" a licence as you can get nowadays. Why that stops replayability, I don't know. And the used game market is dead because I can get my own copy in a year's time for less than a used copy would ever be able to go for. We actually cut out a middle-man there.
To be honest, when done properly, it's hard to argue against it. Certainly my Google Play and Amazon Instant Video libraries are more useful, convenient and cheaper than anything on DVD too. And when it comes to DRM done properly, it's hard to pick fault with Steam, to be honest. There's a reason I have 1000 games on it. I'd be shocked if they cost anywhere near the cost of 1000 DVD-ROM's, even blank ones, plus the cost of storing those online for 24/7 download for 10 years, let alone the licence to the software in the first place.
I had something similar with logic analyzers from HP. I ordered an upgrade to enable new features on about 50 logic analyzers.
A week later the shipping department called me. Asked me to come get my delivery. I asked them to drop it at me office. They laughed and said, no you need to come unpack it.
Got downstairs and found a full pallet, shrink wrapped with boxes. After 2 hours of tearing down the pallet to individual boxes, I opened one up. Inside were foam spacers holding a smaller box - the size of a legal sheet of paper, about 4 inches thick. Inside that box was another set of foam spacers, holding a paperboard envelope. Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper. With a single license key printed on it. A 60 digit license key, mind you.
I had 50 boxes of individual license keys. I spent 3 hours unpacking all of them, then another 10 hours going to each individual logic analyzer to type them in. Mind you, you couldn't just put any key in any logic analyzer. It had to match the serial number, so you had to search all the papers to find the correct one.
Works upgrade experience ever. Thanks HP! (Now called Agilent, I suppose)