What are the margins on those things?? I've seen £50 for £45, so more than £5.
Alternative distribution to optical disks : SSD, cards, and download*
- Thread starter Cheezdoodles
- Start date
At some point consoles will go DD before 100% of console gamers are ready to move to such a model. At that point it's going to be more cost effective to stop accommodating those that don't have access to plentiful bandwidth/generous caps or those who like OD's built in advantages. Sony and MS isn't going to want to incur the cost of keeping physical as a standard to placate a fraction of the userbase.
If DD gets anywhere near 80-90% of packaged sales most retailers are going to stop carrying physical disc anyways.
MS and Sony wants the console gaming market to be as big as possible. But they aren't going to sacrifice profits to do it. Plus both are incentivized to go DD only since they both get to serve as the stores with the majority DD sales.
Moar data....
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news..._still_prefer_physical_games_over_digital.php
Anyway, this thread is celebrating it's 10 year anniversary. So this is my highlights of the current status....
Ubisoft said the future is games as a service exclusively.
Sony continues to expand PS Now, said they will invest more into it for next gen. But exec said PS5 will still have physical/optical. No info about DRM.
Both mid-gen launched with a bluray drive. Still no sign of an optical-less SKU from either company.
MS doubled down on bluray with UHD playback, but want games as a service exclusively to ditch optical. Or not. I can't decode MS PR anymore.
Polls still show a strong preference for physical on the console side. Next gen will have to be optical, but maybe optional SKU without.
Nintendo dropped out of the home console competition. Went portable level hardware with docking option. ROM-based media.
All non-portable consoles still come with both an HDD and ODD, even the niche high-end SKU. No SSD yet.
Drama: Sony pissed off fans making GTS always online even for single player content. Time will tell if this remain the only outlier.
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news..._still_prefer_physical_games_over_digital.php
Anyway, this thread is celebrating it's 10 year anniversary. So this is my highlights of the current status....
Ubisoft said the future is games as a service exclusively.
Sony continues to expand PS Now, said they will invest more into it for next gen. But exec said PS5 will still have physical/optical. No info about DRM.
Both mid-gen launched with a bluray drive. Still no sign of an optical-less SKU from either company.
MS doubled down on bluray with UHD playback, but want games as a service exclusively to ditch optical. Or not. I can't decode MS PR anymore.
Polls still show a strong preference for physical on the console side. Next gen will have to be optical, but maybe optional SKU without.
Nintendo dropped out of the home console competition. Went portable level hardware with docking option. ROM-based media.
All non-portable consoles still come with both an HDD and ODD, even the niche high-end SKU. No SSD yet.
Drama: Sony pissed off fans making GTS always online even for single player content. Time will tell if this remain the only outlier.
Kind of surprised the article doesn't go into the influence F2P could have on some of those statistics. Specifically, those with a digital preference spending more time, but less money on gaming.
They are only wanting to draw people's attention to the report, plus talking about money which is what devs reading Gamasutra mostly likely care about. 
Seeing more money is spent per month on physical games than digital content is usefully informative.
Seeing more money is spent per month on physical games than digital content is usefully informative.
They are only wanting to draw people's attention to the report, plus talking about money which is what devs reading Gamasutra mostly likely care about.
Yeah, looking at the article there doesn't seem to be any editorializing or analysis at all, it's just a straight info dump of a selected portion of the report. I tend to want to couple the what with the why but, as you say, just putting the information out there and linking to the report serves a purpose.
The graph from the report included in the article puts New vs Used game sales at 28% vs 16% of the overall spending. Since you can't buy used games digitally, the ratio of spending on new vs used would be even higher than that when only considering physical sales.
It discredits the circa 2012 PR drive from big studio execs who all of a sudden said used games is piracy and kills the industry with one disc being played by 10 people. Used games spending is a small percentage, the data instead supports the theory that used games grows the user base by creating a secondary, accessible tier. And used game still generate DLC and microtransaction income.
Only the really bad games fill up the used bin in the first week. They found a way to maximize the investment in publicity instead of investment in the game. So the next step (before a court sets precedents) is to change the entire distribution model to be exclusively a service. They also circumvent gambling laws. It's brilliant, in terms of capitalist douchebaggery, but it will backfire. The market forces will simply rebalance differently.
They are on the verge of making you pay for your second playthrough. This is my idea, I want 5%.
Only the really bad games fill up the used bin in the first week. They found a way to maximize the investment in publicity instead of investment in the game. So the next step (before a court sets precedents) is to change the entire distribution model to be exclusively a service. They also circumvent gambling laws. It's brilliant, in terms of capitalist douchebaggery, but it will backfire. The market forces will simply rebalance differently.
They are on the verge of making you pay for your second playthrough. This is my idea, I want 5%.
The two numbers are oranges and apples. There are no guarantee used games means a full price sale otherwise, and it also means lower sales elsewhere. Loss of value from loss of ownership, lower price tier not reaching some lower income markets. It's obviously nowhere near the claims of a doubled sales fantasy from a mandatory DRM world. The positive and negative might end up a negative sum. It was the analysts guesses explaining EA throwing MS under the bus about their online DRM plans.
https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_study.pdf
https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_study.pdf
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UHD blurays was just a means to an end for MS the increase in cost wasn't very much and gave them more 4k features for their box. I would expect to see sku's without it next gen unless we get a 7nm opticalless xbox one s next year at the $200 mark
Your forgetting stuff like EA access and Gamepass as a way to replace used sales and make moeny off it instead of places like gamestopThe two numbers are oranges and apples. There are no guarantee used games means a full price sale otherwise, and it also means lower sales elsewhere. Loss of value from loss of ownership, lower price tier not reaching some lower income markets. It's obviously nowhere near the claims of a doubled sales fantasy from a mandatory DRM world. The positive and negative might end up a negative sum. It was the analysts guesses explaining EA throwing MS under the bus about their online DRM plans.
https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_study.pdf
It's (conservatively) 36% of the total revenue from full-game purchases and people who trade in games are unlikely to buy additional content for games they intend to sell. It is obviously a net negative for developers and publishers. To be clear, I'm not arguing that because of this we as consumers should care about this. We should act in our own interest and if people want to sell and buy used games more power to them. I am saying that I understand why companies making content would prefer to get all of the money possible from sales of their content and it is indisputable that that would be a larger number if used games didn't exist even if there wouldn't be a perfect conversion rate of used game sales to new game sales.
The thing is that a big percentage of people who buy used games would not have bought them new. The same thing with piracy. When Denuvo was working and it took a year or more to crack games there wasn't a massive surge in PC game sales.
Optical is here to stay until at least the next next gen console come out.
Optical is here to stay until at least the next next gen console come out.
Considering the dev's make 0 off of used game sales any small percent that will buy is still a gain.
The reduced impression of value and the risk of not being able to resell a game when it's not up to par, are also having an impact on the market the other way around, with fewer impulse buys. Those who don't like the game, and can't resell it, wouldn't buy any DLC anyway.
OTOH, the new buyer will access the game either as a gift, borrowed, used purchase, and might like it more than the reviews suggest, and then buy DLCs or microtransaction. There are gains and losses to any decision to change what the user gets for his money.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
That's an odd one as financial results from the larger publishers show that the digital/physical split was approaching 50/50 for 2017. I guess the discrepancy could be that people that tend to buy more games also tend to buy more digital games. Hence a poll that only asks buyer preference without also correlating it with purchases per year would show that more casual buyers prefer physical media.
Not necessarily true. Steam cut down on piracy significantly by making game purchase and installation far less of a hassle compared to physical media. While not all people were pirating games for convenience this seems to hint at convenience being a factor for piracy. Steam's frequent sales likely also contributed to this.
GoG coming onto the scene with DRM free digital purchases is also reducing the amount of people pirating due to DRM concerns, however, not all publishers are willing to offer a DRM free version of their game, so GoG remains a relatively distant second to Steam.
While there is no hard data, it's notable that Doom, which used Denuvo at launch, saw massive sales over and above what is typically associated with a good shooter on Steam. Doom was also unavailable through pirate channels for a good 1-2 months. Sales far exceeded the developers expectations and the developers were quick to reward buyers by almost instantly putting Doom on sale constantly. 50% off within 2-3 months of launch. Price permanently reduced shortly after that. Then continued 50% off sales on the title ever month or two.
In general games that are unavailable to pirate within the first 2-4 weeks of release sell better than titles that are available as 0-day releases. However, in general this isn't huge as the rise of digital distribution and the frequent sales of digital games has greatly reduced how often games are pirated compared to 10 years ago. IE - far fewer people are pirating games now than 10 years ago.
Hell, even China is seeing a reduction in piracy now that Steam is officially available there. While piracy is still huge there, Steam and Tencent opening digital storefronts is steadily eating away at it.
Regards,
SB
And for the publishers, physical releases also cost money to produce, distribute and warehouse. Every boxed copy that was produced that could have been converted to a retail sale that wasn't due to the availability of used copies of the game is money spent by the publisher that isn't getting a return. Of course, this is something that would be a consequence of physical releases regardless of used games sales.
We can keep pushing the needle back and forth, but it is going to stay firmly on one side from a publisher perspective.
How big is big and, given no other way to buy games besides buying them new, what is it that you think these people would do? Stop buying games? Buy fewer games? The latter is still a win for the publishers.
