Contrary to what you say, I believe the opposite will be true. With hard disk Space costing approx $1/Gb I see no reasons why we will not have a full and complete back catalogue available from online stores. We are not restricted by shelf space in the same way that 'bricks and mortar' stores are.
Which do you think will be the more appealing marketing? "Come to our site, Top 10 titles available to download" or "Come to our site, 10,000 titles available to download including this weeks top 10" (I know neither is catchy:))
Back-catalogue will be always be cheaper for a site owner to purchase rights to (if they are not pushing costs back to the user in a micro-payment model - then same holds but it is the consumer who will get it cheaper), as the copyright holders will hopefuly already have made their costs back, and so any sale at all will pure profit.
There is no reason why you should have to pay twice for the same content. If you are logging in to a server (which you will need to for your account details), then the service provider will already know what you have paid for.
The only think I can say supporting the people who fear change, is that anything new is made by humans, and humans will make mistakes. However in the medium/long term fair prices and practices will be adopted, as consumers will reward those providers that do.
There are 2 important facts which back up the fact that CD/DVD delivery is not consumer friendly.
Firstly I have done my own analysis of TRSTS Data on the console market. It is very interesting to note that for the period I was examining (last year) 84% of the money was being made by 16% of the titles, which is a very high degree of polarisation for a market. For me this was indicitive that:
there are a lot of bad games around
that games are too highly priced for consumers to feel safe making 'impulse' purchases.
The other piece of research that is relevant, was looking at the gaming habits of gamers, and was written at the end of the 90's. There they showed that on average 80% of gamers make it to level 2, and that only 10% of gamers will complete a game.
Online delivery has the opportunity to change all of that, as finally we can adopt a pricing scheme which is able to cater more fairly to ALL of the players, and no longer just to the hard-core. The effect of that should be that we are able to get more game players, as more people will be able to purchase at a value they think fair.
There are at least 2 models which can be applied to online delivery, subscription and micro-payment. These are not mutually exclusive, and cater to different sorts of player.
Subscription is very analogous to Pay TV channels. For the most part there would be a catalogue of titles available to play within your subscription each month. This caters to the person who has a given amount of time for video games each month, however allows this player to enjoy a wider variety of titles than traditional delivery. Like in the PayTV realm there is still the option of having special one-offs, which can charge what they want. That's just life.
With micro-payments, then you would only pay for what you actually play, and would be presented with an account at the end of a period. This model caters to the lighter gamer, who probably has other uses for their leisure time. However by offering this, then a distributer is able to significanlty lower the cost of entry, thereby making gaming finanically acceptable to a whole new set of people.
The original author seems to fear change - and automatically assumes that because the pricing model changes he will be worse off. I believe that nothing could be further from the truth. Capitalism protects us as consumers, because if one company starts building in unreasonably high profits, then another company will come along and take away all of their business! The costs of digital distribution are already significantly cheaper than opening up physical shopfronts, and this is only set to get cheaper.
Bringing new gamers in to play would be (and should be) where game's companys are able to increase their profits. Anything that gets more couch potatoes doing something stimulating, and away from the TV is a very good thing.
Playstation 2 games are typically on DVD these days, even on broadband it takes a while to download a full DVD.
The point of download on demand gaming is that you do not need to download the whole disk at the beginning of your game. A PlayStation 2 has 32Mb of memory inside it, which will be the maximum you require to start playing the game. Add in some compression, and the fact that you need run-time workspace too, and you will be looking at more like 5-10Mb to get started on the game.
If the game sucks, then that is all you will ever download of it - if the game rules then sure over the coming months you will end up downloading the whole 4.5Gb, but you will have had a lot of hours of entertainment for your money.
This has to be a better alternative than downloading ISO images from your favorite P2P network. Having a decent online delivery system is just what you need to avoid your AUP violations.
When we are talking about PC gaming it is very difficult to use cost reasons, as the excuse for not having what you need. A quick Froogle shows you can spend up to $673 for the latest nVidia card, to improve your gaming experience. And that will be out of date in 6 months!
The $40 a month for basic broadband (Cable TV Sucks) is a fraction of that cost, and IMHO having broadband will increase your whole life, let alone gaming experience, far more than pushing some extra pixels around.
That said if you can't afford some internet, then obviously you won't be buying a GeForce! Sadly though that does mean that you won't be able to enjoy more recent releases on your system. Which if you are playing titles that are a number of years old, then you have a number of years until you will be encountering the digital delivery when newer releases switch to it. Hopefully the internet will have come down in price enough for you at that point.
The Blockbusters of the world are the ones who are really shaking over the death of physical media, because they're not needed if everybody gets their rental content delivered online
The fact that the Blockbusters of the world are shaking is because they are showing an incredible lack of foresight about the advance of digital delivery.
Even in the digital age, as consumers we still need an 'online store' to distribute the downloads available. Sure we could end up with a whole load of proprietary servers, one for each games publisher, or even one per developer - however as we have seen recently in the downloadable music market, iTunes is winning in the market because it has the largest catalogue available. People are busy, and will always want 'one stop shops'.
Blockbusters, as the world's largest rental brand, should be ruling this market. They should have the most experience, in getting people to part with their $$$ for the right to play for a period of time - and then securing repeat business again and again. Having a load of 'bricks and mortar' stores is not what makes their business tick - it IS letting people pay less than an outright purchase, for a reduced set of rights.
If they fail to see what it is that makes their business unique, and how to innovate and apply that to the new online age, they deserve the fate that they will surely get.
Slashdot Mirror
Which do you think will be the more appealing marketing? "Come to our site, Top 10 titles available to download" or "Come to our site, 10,000 titles available to download including this weeks top 10" (I know neither is catchy :))
Back-catalogue will be always be cheaper for a site owner to purchase rights to (if they are not pushing costs back to the user in a micro-payment model - then same holds but it is the consumer who will get it cheaper), as the copyright holders will hopefuly already have made their costs back, and so any sale at all will pure profit.
There is no reason why you should have to pay twice for the same content. If you are logging in to a server (which you will need to for your account details), then the service provider will already know what you have paid for.
The only think I can say supporting the people who fear change, is that anything new is made by humans, and humans will make mistakes. However in the medium/long term fair prices and practices will be adopted, as consumers will reward those providers that do.
Firstly I have done my own analysis of TRSTS Data on the console market. It is very interesting to note that for the period I was examining (last year) 84% of the money was being made by 16% of the titles, which is a very high degree of polarisation for a market. For me this was indicitive that:
- there are a lot of bad games around
- that games are too highly priced for consumers to feel safe making 'impulse' purchases.
The other piece of research that is relevant, was looking at the gaming habits of gamers, and was written at the end of the 90's. There they showed that on average 80% of gamers make it to level 2, and that only 10% of gamers will complete a game.Online delivery has the opportunity to change all of that, as finally we can adopt a pricing scheme which is able to cater more fairly to ALL of the players, and no longer just to the hard-core. The effect of that should be that we are able to get more game players, as more people will be able to purchase at a value they think fair.
There are at least 2 models which can be applied to online delivery, subscription and micro-payment. These are not mutually exclusive, and cater to different sorts of player.
Subscription is very analogous to Pay TV channels. For the most part there would be a catalogue of titles available to play within your subscription each month. This caters to the person who has a given amount of time for video games each month, however allows this player to enjoy a wider variety of titles than traditional delivery. Like in the PayTV realm there is still the option of having special one-offs, which can charge what they want. That's just life.
With micro-payments, then you would only pay for what you actually play, and would be presented with an account at the end of a period. This model caters to the lighter gamer, who probably has other uses for their leisure time. However by offering this, then a distributer is able to significanlty lower the cost of entry, thereby making gaming finanically acceptable to a whole new set of people.
The original author seems to fear change - and automatically assumes that because the pricing model changes he will be worse off. I believe that nothing could be further from the truth. Capitalism protects us as consumers, because if one company starts building in unreasonably high profits, then another company will come along and take away all of their business! The costs of digital distribution are already significantly cheaper than opening up physical shopfronts, and this is only set to get cheaper.
Bringing new gamers in to play would be (and should be) where game's companys are able to increase their profits. Anything that gets more couch potatoes doing something stimulating, and away from the TV is a very good thing.
If the game sucks, then that is all you will ever download of it - if the game rules then sure over the coming months you will end up downloading the whole 4.5Gb, but you will have had a lot of hours of entertainment for your money.
This has to be a better alternative than downloading ISO images from your favorite P2P network. Having a decent online delivery system is just what you need to avoid your AUP violations.
The $40 a month for basic broadband (Cable TV Sucks) is a fraction of that cost, and IMHO having broadband will increase your whole life, let alone gaming experience, far more than pushing some extra pixels around.
That said if you can't afford some internet, then obviously you won't be buying a GeForce! Sadly though that does mean that you won't be able to enjoy more recent releases on your system. Which if you are playing titles that are a number of years old, then you have a number of years until you will be encountering the digital delivery when newer releases switch to it. Hopefully the internet will have come down in price enough for you at that point.
Even in the digital age, as consumers we still need an 'online store' to distribute the downloads available. Sure we could end up with a whole load of proprietary servers, one for each games publisher, or even one per developer - however as we have seen recently in the downloadable music market, iTunes is winning in the market because it has the largest catalogue available. People are busy, and will always want 'one stop shops'.
Blockbusters, as the world's largest rental brand, should be ruling this market. They should have the most experience, in getting people to part with their $$$ for the right to play for a period of time - and then securing repeat business again and again. Having a load of 'bricks and mortar' stores is not what makes their business tick - it IS letting people pay less than an outright purchase, for a reduced set of rights.
If they fail to see what it is that makes their business unique, and how to innovate and apply that to the new online age, they deserve the fate that they will surely get.