IF: Blu Ray wins format war THEN: Sony laughs all the way to the bank?

[FireGoblin]

I dunno.. I think I just prefer having a "hard" copy of my data whether it be games, apps or any other form of digital software/media.. At least then you know you "own" it and are in complete control over the security and integrity of your data..

To me, this comes back to the functionality of the WHS - as it supports transparent RAID-like data duplication this worry would be - if not removed - at least reduced.

I too prefer 'hard copies', but the market is going to move to eDistribution whether we like it or not.

 

[baten]

There is also the retrocompatibility issue. PS4 must have a BD Player in order to be able to play the PS3, PS2 and PS1 disks - as otherwise, it would mean you have to buy the games again, in downloadable form. So a driveless PS3 is out of the question. I guess we will get an 8 layer BD/200 Gb, which should be enough.

More - the PS4 has the potential to be much less expensive when it launches - since BD will cost next to nothing by then, and it will have a Cell variant that will be paid off in other products.

 

[Graham]

Imagine paying hundreds and hundreds of pounds building up an exhaustive game library only to see it entirely destroyed when your PS4's HDD goes bust/online storage acc goes tit's up..

Not to mention that fact that having games stored entirely online, or on a HDD will give massive headaches as the possibilities for piracy would be tremendous..

Using a system similar to a gamercard, the purchased items are tied to the account, so if your machine did die, you can simply redownload them. A lot better than a scratched/broken disk too I'd imagine a cd key like system with retail purchased games, which attaches them to your account. This could be done at the retail end too.

Piracy can be reduced significantly with digital distribution, to the point of burned disks, etc. You can easily encrypt the executable to the user account, and have that as a separate download - give every account a public key of it's own. They probably already do this anywho. And you can do things similar to steams preloading. The problem is when the OS gets cracked, ala the xbox boot loader. However the 360 has proven to be somewhat resilient so far.

 

[Bad_Boy]

It's funny I think the whole blu-ray/ps3 thing is a mutual relationship when it comes down to it.

Blu-ray needs PS3 (atleast in the beginning for sales), and the numbers in the last 6 months have shown this.
And PS3 needs blu-ray to win (as the topic illustrates), so sony has a chance of "laughing to the bank".

So in the end, considering how things turn out. Putting blu-ray in the PS3 could turn out to be the smartest thing Sony has done for the PS3 (dispite the negativity), or if it doesnt win it would be the dumbest (dispite the praise). Its a huge risk, but if it goes their way the outcome could be huge.

 

[inefficient]

Piracy can be reduced significantly with digital distribution, to the point of burned disks, etc. You can easily encrypt the executable to the user account, and have that as a separate download - give every account a public key of it's own. They probably already do this anywho. And you can do things similar to steams preloading. The problem is when the OS gets cracked, ala the xbox boot loader. However the 360 has proven to be somewhat resilient so far.

Analog outputs called, they just wanted to say hi to your funny digital plan.

 

[Rolf N]

I think people need to take a step back and look at the rate of change in technology over a period of six years. It it definitely a very long time - I'm on an internet connection 25x faster that I had six years ago.

That's because you live out in the woods
I have an internet connection now that is three times as fast as the one I had six years ago, at roughly the same monthly rate, i.e. I don't go high-end with my connections but at least I'm consistent about that. I'm on 2MBit/s now, and 6MBit/s is within reach/almost affordable/possible without unwieldy equipment. Six years ago it was 768kbit/s and 2MBit/s within reach. Same difference.

 

[oi]

I'm not quite sure I share the optimism with some of you for how our internet connections will develop in the near future. I had a 100/100 Mbit connection five years ago, and as far as I know that's still the fastest connection that you can get your hands on as a consumer in Sweden (not counting SUNET). So yeah, I'm fairly sceptical towards the notion that we'll start seeing anywhere near Gigabit connections for consumers anytime soon.

Anyways, as I'd rarely see maximum speeds (my harddrive back then usually sounded like it'd explode once you got up to around 8 MByte/sec), downloading a CD would take roughly 1.5-2 minutes, a DVD around 10, and a theoretical 50GB BR download would then take about 100 minutes. I guess I might be spoiled, but there's no way I'd wait 100 minutes for a download that I paid for. 10 minutes would be acceptable, since I could go make a cup of coffee and have a smoke or something. But digital distribution as a replacement for buying stuff at a store is imo fairly retarded if it'd be faster to walk to the nearest store and just pick it up. Of course, in five years I guess 99% of us will be obese couch potatoes, so I could see a potential market for it even if the bandwidth wouldn't be up to snuff.

edit: Of note is of course that the examples above were from peer to peer connections. To this day it is still rare to approach even 1 MByte/sec from commercial sites outside of Sweden, with the exception of Microsoft, ATI, Nvidia and the like.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think people need to take a step back and look at the rate of change in technology over a period of six years. It it definitely a very long time - I'm on an internet connection 25x faster that I had six years ago. I have no reason to believe I'll be on anything less than 25x what I have today by the time the next gen of consoles arrive.

The bigger problem is adoption. The peak technology out there now is something like 100 Mbit in Korea I think. Places in the US have 20 Mbit IIRC. The UK just about 8 Mbit in some places. And that's in the built-up areas. In the Sticks, you're generally on low-grade broadband as far as the phone exchange will reach. Thus any console that uses purely downloadable content will be unuseable by certain people, and not very well useable by others, depending on download size. I don't think for 50 GB games it'll be viable.

However, what might be viable is far smaller games using procedural content, both on the fly and in a pre-build. When you install it, it could create art assets etc. on the Flash drive, inflating to however many GBs. That might be one solution. I still think an optical medium will be required though, certainly next-gen.

But this is kinda irrelevant. As others have mentioned, if the only reason to not include an optical drive is because your MS and the only drive is their BluRay, you wouldn't give it a thought. If that's the standard, you use it. There are no enemies in business, and you don't snub technologies just because it's a rivals. If not 'sleeping with the enemy' means losing sales, any successful business will generally throw back the covers and pick out a hot-water bottle.

 

[scooby_dooby]

The issue is really HDD space not bandwidth imo, if you had a ton of HDD space with a little creative thinking alot of the problems could be avoided.

For example, you could have multiple versions of an HD movie, a quick play version that was 6-8mbit, that could stream/download in approx 30minutes, and then have the true 16-20mbit version that could download in the background. That way, when you purchased a movie you could have multiple options to view it depending on how quickly you needed, and some smart software could ensure that within a day or two that version is upgraded to full HD w/ all the extras etc. Of course, this would require 20-30gb of space for a single movie, so you can see how integral HDD space would be.

Same goes for games, some creative thinking could solve alot of the problems. For example, you could have games downloadable 24-48hours before launch, and then have them enabled with a unlock key, that way the people download could actually get it faster than retail stores, and unlock it on day 1. They could also split the games up if feasible, even if the whole game is 12gb, the first 3 hours might only be 2 or 3gb which is much more manageable, the rest could background DL. Not a solution in all cases, but another option.

Bandwidth should be there on the consumers end in 5 years, it already is in Urban ccentres in Canada (6-8mbit) but it's the server bandwidth that's the issue, and of course affordable mass storage.

With all that said, nobody is fortelling the end of physical media here, it will be a combination of the two without a doubt.

 

[wco81]

People really need to read up about Toshiba and Warner's actions and then Microsoft's shenanigans (which at this point is little more than obstructionism) before casting aspersions.

There is a reason why every CE maker is on Blu-Ray. It was offered to all of them and pretty much all accepted except for Toshiba because of Yamada, the "father of the DVD" who wanted to keep the spoils for himself again in the next-gen format.

Some might remember before E3 last year that there were intensive discussions. The holdout was Yamada and he forced the whole company not to compromise. Contrast that to the launch of the DVD where Sony and Philips backed off in favor of one standard.

 

[blakjedi]

but there's no way I'd wait 100 minutes for a download that I paid for. 10 minutes would be acceptable, since I could go make a cup of coffee and have a smoke or something. But digital distribution as a replacement for buying stuff at a store is imo fairly retarded if it'd be faster to walk to the nearest store and just pick it up.

Of course people sleep though... so new releases could be d/led while you sleep or go to work. You could pre-order and its made available to you on the day of release but its been in the background d/ling for two days (new release bittorrent style) and video games could also be done like movies... on demand.

 

[oi]

Of course people sleep though... so new releases could be d/led while you sleep or go to work. You could pre-order and its made available to you on the day of release but its been in the background d/ling for two days (new release bittorrent style) and video games could also be done like movies... on demand.

Sure, and I could also order a game from an online retailer and have the game delivered over night. The only point for me as a consumer that would make digital distribution a relevant alternative would be for the (potentially) near instant delivery. Of course, if it turned out to lead to a significant decrease in price due to not having to bother with a disc, manual and box, I would view things differently. But how pricing would change with a mass-shift into digital distribution is not exactly easy to predict, since they could very well just stay with the same prices and keep the (assumed) increased profit.

 

[wco81]

Physical gaming media has a big advantage for consumers: Used games market.

You lose the ability to buy cheap and recoup some of your money back by selling used.

Also, notice all the talk about WHS. That's a very MS-centric view, that you have to have the console complemented by other MS products to get certain key features. If they bundle an WHS appliance with the console, that's one thing. But there's a strong preference for self-contained.

 

[DemoCoder]

Bandwidth does not operate on a Moore's like law of yearly improvement, it operates in aggregate jumps over a long time. Infrastructure changes are far slower and bandwidth = infrastructure. Upgrading bandwidth means upgrading the network, the wiring, and that happens far slower. Most people are still getting DSL through copper cable or coax laid down decades ago, it is only clever modulation schemes that have pushed bandwidth up in the countries like the US and those are running out of steam.

Hollywood can't run a business model based on a few lucky bastards living in a new housing development, or in a few metro-areas.

Furthermore, the carriers: cable and phone companies, are pissed off that they pay to build the infrastructure, but someone else (an IPTV pure play or third party online movie distributor) reaps the high margins, that's why there was such a debate over net-neutrality.

If you think HD movie distribution or IPTV is just going to arrive in major set-top boxes or consoles without the old carriers, you may be in for a rude awakening. You can already see MS looking to avoid the fight. MS's only hope is partnership.

 

[Onlooker1]

the challenge for digital delivery to the home: bandwidth caps and pricing schedules.

The US is spoiled, relative to many markets. In Australia nobody has an "all you can eat" plan. The limits are crazy low. My father had the entry level limit, and I ate through it just by buying him a new imac and having it update itself.. Just for my very average browsing habits, I had to increase not one but two tiers higher. There was only one tier left for me to move to! bit torrent is hardly used in australia for this reason.

The PS3, despite the sparse store, still has its 690mb x 2 version free download of GTHD, and 200mb hd movie previews, and several 100mb+ firmware upgrades. That would require the HIGHEST tier broadband schedule in australia. Xbox360 would undoubtably require the same thing. And this isn't even delivering movies or selling full games!

SE Asia is mostly ok, but some of europe and australasia are ruled out of even the current services unless the subscriber wants to pay top dollar for his internet connection and still risk losing it each month due to going over the ultimate max. Even in the US, if there is a big move to downloading HD movies and e-distribution of games, some big providers have hidden caps that WILL step in and shut down the game.

Consoles/tivo/whatever are going to have to come cap in hand to the consumer broadband networks asking for their permission to get to the homes of their subscribers without eating the users monthly allowance. And guess what will happen: they'll have to pay, which means we'll all pay, one way or another.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Bandwidth does not operate on a Moore's like law of yearly improvement, it operates in aggregate jumps over a long time. Infrastructure changes are far slower and bandwidth = infrastructure. Upgrading bandwidth means upgrading the network, the wiring, and that happens far slower. Most people are still getting DSL through copper cable or coax laid down decades ago, it is only clever modulation schemes that have pushed bandwidth up in the countries like the US and those are running out of steam.

Hollywood can't run a business model based on a few lucky bastards living in a new housing development, or in a few metro-areas.

I'm still on old coax cable and can hit my 10mbit limit if the server can keep up, the entire city of edmonton has access to these speeds, not just certain neighbourhoods. I'd imagine it's the same for most other urban centres in Canada, not sure what the situation is like in the states, but Coax seems to be good enough for some fairly high speeds.

I'd think 8-10mbit is good enough for IPTV, if the bandwidth was there on the serverside, which it isn't currently. MS uses 1/4 of my available bandwidth at best.

 

[avaya]

I still find it puzzling that people are assuming that within the next 10-years digital distribution for large files (>1GB) will be a primary method of content delivery.

For a content provider it will always comes down to the lowest common denominator. Most people with broadband do not have connections in excess of 8MB, this is only a select percentage. Most people have bandwidth caps on those connections. Most people will not wait hours for a game to download.

Most broadband connections in the UK for example are under 1Mbit and they are heavily capped.

I don’t think any content provider (games companies, movie studios) thinks digital distribution can be the primary method content delivery in the next 10 years. Maybe in Japan/South Korea/North America – but even that is highly doubtful.

Digital distribution on a worldwide basis is a long way off. Were someone to do it they would almost certainly limit their potential audience and user base heavily.

I’m still not convinced that people want to go entirely digital either. I believe most would prefer a physical copy of their game/movie rather than it being tied into a hard drive and existing in some intangible space. I mean even with all the hoopla over iTunes/music downloads and how its cutting into record company margins, the vast majority of iPod owners hardly use the store (CD “sharingâ€￾ and ripping is the primary method of song accumulation) and Apple only cover their costs for music on the store. Furthermore the legal download market still accounts for less than (bit sketchy here ,saw it in the FT) 5% of the entire music market. CD sales may have been falling but they still totally dominate.

Now if that sort of situation exists in the music market, for content which is trivial to distribute over a network it is a big leap to think video and games can be successfully distributed over the network in the next 10 years. This is all before we even consider the bandwidth costs - and there is no free lunch there.

Back on topic, I think if Blu-Ray wins Microsoft would definitely put in a Blu-Ray drive for the next Xbox. That's a no-brainer, it is no different from them using the DVD drive they have right now.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Back on topic, I think if Blu-Ray wins Microsoft would definitely put in a Blu-Ray drive for the next Xbox. That's a no-brainer, it is no different from them using the DVD drive they have right now.

Unless we have a better, faster medium by then. Though, the appeal of a HD movie player will still probably be fairly strong in 5 years, so they may opt to stick with optical media for that reason.

On the flip side, if BR loses, do you guys think Sony will adopt HD-DVD in PS4???

 

[archie4oz]

The peak technology out there now is something like 100 Mbit in Korea I think. Places in the US have 20 Mbit IIRC. The UK just about 8 Mbit in some places.

Actually you can get Gigabit FTTH for around $70-120/month in Japan these days...

I'm currently at between 3MB-5MB, (25Mbps+ is my normal low), while the US may have been one of the slowest to adopt broadband, the "competition" in the marketplace is forcing more and more speed. I haven't researched anything, but I believe I am in either a test market, or a new rollout, because Comcast is not touting the speeds I mention, at all.

Actually the rollout of broadband in the US was actually quite fast. It's how the US defines broadband that's part of the problem. Also there's actually very little competition in the US for broadband, on average it's more of a duopoly at best. If anything the *lack* of competition is driving DSL costs up.

People really need to read up about Toshiba and Warner's actions and then Microsoft's shenanigans (which at this point is little more than obstructionism) before casting aspersions.

There is a reason why every CE maker is on Blu-Ray. It was offered to all of them and pretty much all accepted except for Toshiba because of Yamada, the "father of the DVD" who wanted to keep the spoils for himself again in the next-gen format.

Some might remember before E3 last year that there were intensive discussions. The holdout was Yamada and he forced the whole company not to compromise. Contrast that to the launch of the DVD where Sony and Philips backed off in favor of one standard.

You're bringing history into the discussion! Stop it! How are we supposed to equate Toshiba == Good and Sony == bad if you keep that up!

Democoder is right on the money about build out.

I'd think 8-10mbit is good enough for IPTV, if the bandwidth was there on the serverside, which it isn't currently. MS uses 1/4 of my available bandwidth at best.

8-10mbit is a little weak for IPTV, plus IPTV services generally require QoS guarantees...

 

[habbe]

Bandwidth should be there on the consumers end in 5 years, it already is in Urban ccentres in Canada (6-8mbit) but it's the server bandwidth that's the issue, and of course affordable mass storage.

It's probably going to use multicast so the bandwidth on the server side isn't an issue.

Or let say it is going to be Multicast, Because Unicast isn't very cost efficient for streaming TV (That would be live TV as we know it, i'm not talking about "on demand")

But we ain't going to see global multicast in the near future so the service is probably going to be bound to an ISP(or several).