Alternative distribution to optical disks : SSD, cards, and download*

I don't drink Coffee.

Like I've said from the start , consoles also suffer from piracy , its existed since the start of consoles. Some wide spread some not as much but all platforms so far have had it (except the two newly released).

DD does not cause piracy and that piracy on consoles is almost as wide spread as it is on pcs because platforms like steam have removed reasons to pirate along with drm lasting longer

 

No-one said consoles are piracy free (although currently the two major platforms are).

Why are you iterating this assertion when even your own evidence contradicts you?! Your own article says piracy on consoles is less! It's outrageous to claim consoles that require hardware hacks to run downloaded games have piracy equivalent to PC with zero evidence supporting that and plenty of public assertions saying how bad piracy is on PC, even if some greatly exaggerated.

Here's an article quoting crazy figures from 2011. Even if they are exaggerated and even if the levels of piracy are only 10%, that's still massively more than console.

I was going to look up more, but just a quick search throws up countless articles from devs and pubs saying how they are affected by PC piracy. The evidence is overwhelming and relentless. And as of right now, the current gen consoles are infinitely better than PC for security because piracy isn't an option. Yet you claim PC piracy is about the same as on console! Just admit PC piracy is way bigger than consoles, even if it's not enough to damage the platform (I'm even throwing you a bone there!).

 

Yeah, but the percentage seems to be higher when you take into account the number of users...

I think you should take the PS3 numbers away & a commenter said a much. The author had this response...

Back to the original article...

Just something to think about. Eastmen isn't totally crazy(most of the time I wonder though sorry bud but at least you're fun to read!).

Tommy McClain

 

The problem with that argument is the '250 million' user figure for PC which is a grossly oversimplified total number based on GPU sales (which ignores upgrades). A better number would be the total number of Steam users which was 125 million by Feb 2015 and roughly ~40 million in 2011 (http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a358885/steam-sees-over-100-growth-in-2011/), even if you loathe Valve it's hard to see how you could be a PC gamer without at least having a Steam account. Based on these updated numbers the PC is still by far the platform most impacted by piracy.

 

250 million gaming PCs, 25 million PS4, and the latest ubisoft earnings shows the PS4 is selling more than any other platform.

This is whack. (my new favorite word is whack, I learnz it on B3D, I think it means bad)

 

That's one reference from Intel, a source with no investment in console gaming and trumpeting PC gaming, that uses VGChartz as one of its references, created to counter the claim that 90% of PC games are pirate copies. It was not its intention to investigate piracy properly on consoles, and it only deals with the console comparison by some highly speculative numbers, which notably include Nintendo and Nintendo's utterly crap security is hardly representative of how resistant to piracy consoles can be, whilst also making up numbers for PS3 that didn't play out because the security was locked down. It's hardly what I call unbiased or thoroughly researched. How do they even conclude piracy has increased on consoles without a history of piracy on previous consoles?! The real emphasis of the article is to counter the 90% figure and highlight that alternative models (F2P) can stem PC piracy.

 

...well said

Anyway, as far as my experience goes on the field, PC piracy is very high. I've seen indie games reaching 90% of piracy (all from people that played 50%+ of the game).
For AAA titles it is a nightmare, simply put.
Luckily, the user base is so high that you still earn money but... go to check how much assassin creed sold with the OEM leak, and how much it sold later. Then, you may get an idea.
And leave those half-journalists that write... about things they dont really know.

 

GPU sales also fail to take into account companies like the one I work for who do a lot of 2D and 3D graphics (or simulations) and therefor use GPU's.

The IT department usually give out the bundled games key in a raffle.....

 

Like I said Shifty "Just something to think about." I'm not giving credit of one thing over another. My reply was dealing with the idea that everybody(including you) were discounting every idea or data point that Eastmen provided to backup his claims. It seemed to me he tried to back up claims with sources, but to me it didn't seem anybody was actually reading them & only providing one sentence out of many as a counterpoint. Personally I didn't think that was very fair. But that's just me.

Tommy McClain

 

That's a 'discussion style' eastmen evokes, with indirect responses to direct questions, and people posting long, considered arguments only to have a different point raise. And then claiming MrFox was moving the goal posts! Someone else posting the same concept (you or Rangers, say) would get a more reasoned response because we know they'd deal with counterarguments.

As for the one sentence, that one sentence is IMO all that's needed. When someone says, "piracy on PC is no worse than on console" and links to a Forbes article to support their argument, a quote from that same article saying, "piracy is not as bad on console," blows great holes in the supporting evidence, such that one even questions if it was read before being linked to.

 

I just pointed out what he was actually doing. I wrote longer posts that responded to more things but like I said those who did not like my ideas would simply ignore them and move on to something else.


What else can we talk about in this thread , its the same crap going on every year when this is dragged up for a few years.

You have one group that says bluray is the best and ignores when its not (and its not in the majority of things)

then you have one group who points out when its not the best.

Its the same thing every year except every year the pros for bluray get smaller.

Cost of replication and speed of replication seem to be the only strong points of bluray at this point in time.

Flash and DD have faster transfer rates and seek times

Flash and DD allow for larger games

Flash allows for smaller cases with a smaller retail foot print

DD allows for plastic game cards that provide an even smaller foot print and a staggering reduction in shrink.

Flash and DD allow for the removal of an expensive piece of hardware from the console.


The pros get bigger for Flash and DD each year. Towards the end of 2016 these points will be the same or more in favor of flash / dd .

While bluray will still hold onto cost of replication as its sole win but I'm sure we will have the same talk then as we have had each year since this thread was created.

 

Except you just keep ignoring the market advantages of physical media (stock clearances, secondary markets, etc) that DD eliminates and are grossly underselling the cost and replication advantages of BD (or any other future physical format).

No decision is made in a vacuum or solely on technical merits, in fact technical merits often take a back seat to economic factors (RIP SED displays ). You're bang on that we've been going in circles, there just hasn't been much to change the cost factors in physical media or to radically expand broadband infrastructure in the last 5 years or so.

 

The most critical advantage of bluray is control and ownership. Do you remember the million threads about that? The gamers expessed as much in polls and market research. The loud cheers at E3 2013 made it clear, so did the sales, so did MS backtracking. DD is making zero progress towards this advantage because it cannot, hence why discs are still 80% of AAA games sales. And since some prefer DD, and the HDD is necessary for indies and very lucrativr DLCs, having both in a single sku was a no-brainer. The HDD is mandatory and cannot be removed.

I'm still waiting for your explanation why all three consoles have a bluray drive and why none even have second dd-only SKU, like the psp-go did.

 

PSP GO came late. I wouldn't be that surprised at a later model of any conosle that's DD only for extreme cost savings.

 

The infrastructure wasn't ready when the psp came out. It was only years later that day1 digital for all games was possible (and at the time each publisher had to allow it, was it ever a TCR?) What exacerbated the downfall was the cost of local storage that made the psp-go only a little less expensive if at all. But by that time, used psp games were plentiful so gamers saw the value proposition not even worth the much smaller size advantage. It was a train wreck. The advantages of DD for portables are gigantic, and that wasn't enough.

The idea of making a second sku at launch for lower price was done by MS (in reverse) with the arcade 360. They certainly would have like to do this with xb1 considering they supposedly didn't want an optical drive. Why wait mid-gen? Why didn't they even try?

 

Of all the people in this forum & the one that had the most vocal anti-DRM stance that I can remember & you seriously ask this? Unbelievable.

MS completely changed their whole plans to appease the outcry. Head of Xbox was changed, CEO is gone. It's not surprising they haven't done a digital only system yet. I suspect that if they can do some early evangelism & give more upside & less downside to going digital then we might have slim chance of them trying a digital only console SKU alongside a Bluray console for the next generation. But at the rate they are going now I'm not even sure a Xbox console next generation is even guaranteed.

Tommy McClain

 

Arcade SKU was identical save for HDD. An optical free SKU would need a whole new case, mobo possibly to maximise space reduction, and in fact entire new internal design, and provide another headache for stock management. What if consumers don't want it? What if they do and you're left with lots of the full-fat models? The other option is release a full size XB1 without optical drive and save $20, which if you pass on to the customer makes little difference. It makes little sense at launch as an unnecessary complication.

Now when it's late in the product's life and you want a miniature device to sell as a toy, like PS2 slim, you can introduce a new model and manage the full-fat model inventory with the knowledge of what people have been buying and what you have in the chain etc. That $20 is then a sizeable chunk of the total price. Might even be able to skimp on storage and go flash memory for something exceptionally small, PSTV style.

 

So are you implying a vocal minority on a discussion forum continues to make 80% of gamers buy discs instead of DD?

It's MS actions and some of their employees open contempt of gamers that was responsible for the movement existence. Xbox gamers started the movement. The most important question was whether we were just a vocal minority. Current sales proves it was a correct representation of the public. Keeping discs alongside DD was the correct business move. They better figure out correctly which distribution media to offer next gen, or the same thing will happen (unless of course it is plotted industry wide, almost like a cartel but not quite, that fear was the reason for the movement targetting Sony even more in the end).

The reason we can't resell a DD game is because they can prevent us from doing so, and it is profitable. The reason we have used games on disc and ownership forever, is because they do not have control of our purchase. Nobody cares, in the anti-drm movement, whether they make a discless sku or not, or if they offer download accelerator discs with the digital game cards. This actually would have been great for those who prefer DD.

All they had to change was adding real discs (which they did) in addition to the rest. They didn''t because the plan was precisely removing ownership, kill used games, planned obsolescence, and offer perks to convince gamers the loss of value is worth it. No more killing ownership? No more perks. It's business. And it's most probably the third party publishers who are responsible for this, not microsoft. Their narative in 2012 was that used games is theft.

As I said before, the goal of the distribution format is to make the gamers, the publishers, and the manufacturers all happy for a healthy gaming industry. It's a complicated compromise.

 

Thanks for totally ignoring my response about DD-only Xbox console. If I'm implying anything, which I'm not, you're burying you're head in the sand like an ostrich.

Tommy McClain