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

[Squilliam]

If cartridges were reuseable, it would remove the cost of flash entirely. In other words, there could be a standard distribution flash cart size. The cart is only used to transport the game from one physical location to another when the user doesn't have access to broadband and/or doesn't want to use kiosks with their own external media.

So for example a place like Gamestop would carry these reuseable carts already preloaded with a game. When you first buy a game it costs say 60 or 70 USD to offset the price of the flash cart.

After that, each time you go there to get another game, you get a 20-30 USD credit (cost of the cart) which brings the game back inline with the DD cost of 40 USD. Basically once you've put in that initial investment the cost of games going forward would be the same as the DD cost and there is no costs being eaten up by the publishers for disposable media.

Gamestop then erases the game image on the cart and replaces it with whatever new game is coming out. Or keeps it as is if demand for that game is still big. And the cycle repeats.

There are essentially heaps of possibilities. If you consider the distribution costs you could even turn the point of sale into the point of manufacture. Have you even been into a book store where they can print and bind a book on demand? With flash all Gamestop has to carry is a kiosk which is tiny by comparison. That kiosk could potentially just print a logo onto a box and onto a cartridge and spit out a game. So if the game is say the latest Halo release with 90+ reviews etc and you know you'll want to keep it you'll still have your physical media option. Once you remove the cost of distribution, sold stock, damaged/stolen stock the actual real costs will be lower than physical discs because you never print more than you sell. Beyond this publishers can offer a cheaper download option at both the point of sale and online as well as a more expensive physical option since retailers will be able to offer games at the exact same price as online.

Another possibility is rental or buying only the parts of the game you actually want. Say for instance your friends are bugging you to get online with a certain game you could rent it for a few days or even just buy the multiplayer aspect. So if a publisher wants to really push the multiplayer of a title in order to say develop a healthy online community they can offer the multiplayer component only to people with say a cost of entry of $30 rather than $60. With discs this isn't quite as practical however with a cartridge it'd be easy to accomplish. That way publishers can price discriminate between buyers day one rather than relying on future price cuts. They can also change the price of the physical game to reflect any discounts applied to the online versions as well.

If you take the Xbox 360 model, you could use the consoles HDD as the actual reuseable cartridge. So long as replacing it is cheap enough the users of the system will know that if they lose it or break it they can replace every game in their library as soon as they get a new hard-drive. Infact it could even go as far as to save everything including saves and media files so there would be no risk to the end user in doing that. Im quite surprised Microsoft hasn't done some form of kiosk distribution in the 2nd world countries like Brazil where they can offer a cheap(er) local price. These kiosks could be placed practically anywhere especially in countries which are intelligent like New Zealand where noone uses folding money anymore.

Boycott,
SB

Boycott indeed.

 

[eastmen]

YES! The first 1GB cards hit the market and the PSP already 900MB/1.8GB capacity. And Sony had a plan that they would provide High Quality movies and games with heavy media content.
If you do a quick torrent search you can see just how big these games are.

http://palgn.com.au/sony-psp/2360/sony-announce-psp-line-up-for-euro-launch/

used this for some launch games

World Tour Soccer 158MB
F1 Grand Prix 160MB
Wipeout prue 153MB
Fired Up , 185MB
World Rally 215MB
Ape Academy 83MB
Lumines 162MB


I don't think they needed anywhere near the capctity in 2004/5 that umd offered Even now the number of dual layer games is small

And i find it strange that anyone in here would think a "fiver" isn´t really gonna be a problem when they need to buy games. And at the same time there is a clearly defined issue among gamers, that games are expensive, to expensive, and people are buying used games to save money. Any dollar matters on price.

DS games were $25-$35. 3DS games are going to be more expensive with many speculating that costs could go all the way to $50 . Costs will go up , a $5 isn't a big deal and there are advantages that come with it .

But my point was, that nothing about the future of flash is proven by this move. Sony chose a different approach, just as Nintendo did with the Gamecube and Wii. Nintendo is the "Cartridge" maker among the console producers. And they moved away from Cartridges in order to save money and gain capacity.

The only problem is cd offered a huge leap up from carts at a huge price decrease. 64MB carts cost $30 while cds were $1 at 750MB .

Today though that is changing . Bluray is at 25/50 gigs for under $1 but flash is coming down quickly . Look back at 2005. Bluray offered something flash couldn't . They had 25/50 gigs while flash was suck at 2GB and under. So it was offering over 12 times the capicty or 25 times the capacity of flash. Today there are 64gig sd card on the market. Sandisk is releasing a 128 gig card this year.

For the first time since the advent of cds flash is at the same capacity levels of optical formats. Even BDXL stops at 128 gig discs from what i can see. Before the next gen consoles come out flash may have surpased the capacity of lburay.

The only thing left is cost , but we all know that as larger capacity flash becomes viable the lower capacity flash drops in price because more of it cna be made on a single wafer.

Sony the Disc defender among console makers did something else, and i can see plenty of reasons, i guess they can make their own chips? i think they can save money on hardware and i got a hunch they are going to try harder for digital downloads. And i absolutely don´t see them moving to any cart based media on the PS3
I think

The ps3 isn't what matters. The question is about the ps4. Bluray won the format war but its sales aren't what anyone wanted them to be. With the format war done sony may want to refocus on the console war and flash is one way to win it

 

[-tkf-]

http://palgn.com.au/sony-psp/2360/sony-announce-psp-line-up-for-euro-launch/

used this for some launch games

World Tour Soccer 158MB
F1 Grand Prix 160MB
Wipeout prue 153MB
Fired Up , 185MB
World Rally 215MB
Ape Academy 83MB
Lumines 162MB


I don't think they needed anywhere near the capctity in 2004/5 that umd offered Even now the number of dual layer games is small






DS games were $25-$35. 3DS games are going to be more expensive with many speculating that costs could go all the way to $50 . Costs will go up , a $5 isn't a big deal and there are advantages that come with it .

The only problem is cd offered a huge leap up from carts at a huge price decrease. 64MB carts cost $30 while cds were $1 at 750MB .

Today though that is changing . Bluray is at 25/50 gigs for under $1 but flash is coming down quickly . Look back at 2005. Bluray offered something flash couldn't . They had 25/50 gigs while flash was suck at 2GB and under. So it was offering over 12 times the capicty or 25 times the capacity of flash. Today there are 64gig sd card on the market. Sandisk is releasing a 128 gig card this year.

For the first time since the advent of cds flash is at the same capacity levels of optical formats. Even BDXL stops at 128 gig discs from what i can see. Before the next gen consoles come out flash may have surpased the capacity of lburay.

The only thing left is cost , but we all know that as larger capacity flash becomes viable the lower capacity flash drops in price because more of it cna be made on a single wafer.

The ps3 isn't what matters. The question is about the ps4. Bluray won the format war but its sales aren't what anyone wanted them to be. With the format war done sony may want to refocus on the console war and flash is one way to win it

compare that to flash games from 2004/2005?

Ridge Racer 32MB
Madden 2005 16MB
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 32MB
Spider-Man 2 16MB

At some point i can see flash taking over discs, but i seriously doubt that pressing a Blu-Ray disc with upto 50GB data will be matched by flash media when the PS4 comes. Blu-Ray is selling in big numbers and the production prices must have dropped since launch. And of course any decent next gen console should have the only Hi-Def format that is spread worldwide, even nintendo supported a movie format with Wii

 

[AlphaWolf]

First out of the blue posts.

Turns out you were talking about movies in a Console section.

No I'm not talking specifically about movies, but you can't exclude movies from the format discussion, when movies were at least half the damned reason for them to develop the format in the first place.

No explanation HOW it was hindered, nothing to back up claims that 1.8GB flash storage was in any way a feasible way to store games in 2004.

2GB flash devices existed in 2004, but 2GB was in no way necessary for any PSP game.

You already did state the obvious once, so i don´t see how it could be a problem for you to explain exactly how you think that UMD failed as a game format.

Sony proved that Disc Based handhelds could work and work well, and they went with another proven route with the NGP. My point is still that this proves nothing for the future consoles.

You can't separate the movies from the format because that was at least half the reason it was developed. I seriously doubt they would have developed it at all, except that they wanted to deliver movies. Having to develop UMD's for games only (as they do now) is certainly not ideal.

And that high capacity disc is already out there, HD-DVD, maybe it could come back as a games format, now that would be fun

There's a number of already lab developed red laser high capacity formats that aren't HD-DVD. I'm not putting money on them, but I wouldn't exclude them, just yet, from next generation either. It really depends if they consider DVD support at all important. I'd just as soon they leave out an optical drive myself as it saves a lot in terms of size.

 

[corduroygt]

In a DD world you aren't going to be able to resell your games, though you might be able to relinquish access back to the publisher in return for credits.

Isn't that essentially a rental anyways? I'd be fine with that as long as the pricing was reasonable, since the costs are very little. Look at how well Netflix streaming has been doing for very cheap. However, being tied to the monopoly of a single DD retailer is not good. I'd prefer having the choice of multiple DD retailers so they can compete in price.

 

[Squilliam]

Personally I don't see more than 90% of games in the next generation requiring more than 8GB of space. 98% of games will probably fit into 16GB of space, so capacity arguments which consider price per gigabyte should only consider how much space is actually needed rather than how much space is available. Between procedural generation, real time lighting and real time cutscenes as well as improved texture compression as well as backwards compatibility to legacy Xbox 360 consoles I doubt that most developers will go over 8GB especially as direct download is becoming more important as a means of distribution.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

In a DD case I would expect filesize to become much less important. Bandwith probably is a lot less expensive than producing, storing and shipping disks. Just look at all those usenet providers. For a couple of bucks a month you can download insane amounts of data but all that I now of seem to be doing pretty well.

Costs of creating content are probably another thing that will keep filesize down. This generation games have already become much shorter and I expect that to be the case again next generation.

I don't see sony using flashcards next generation. Looking at how they want to market the playstation as a entertainment device and how BR is important for them I don't see them releasing a console without a BR drive. It's kinda the same for MS though they only got dvd anyway so it might make more sense to improve their streaming services. Especially as that could be done on their whole product range (pc, zune, windows mobile, xbox) which in the long term might be a bigger deal than a optical drive in the next xbox. Though it would kill backwards compatability. Now I don't care much about that (if you want to play old games you got the console anyway and as soon as there is a decent offer of next gen consoles games nobody cares about the last gen console anymore anyway).

Maybe Nintendo is the most likely? Multimedia on optical disks isn't a big deal to them anyway and while I expect them to come up with a pretty decent machine next gen probably 8gb will be enough at the start. So the ''free'' extra performance, smaller and cheaper console might just do it for them.

 

[Xenus]

I hope you don't mean to get shorter again next gen versus stay as short as now. That would be awful I love my 40 hour RPG's. Actually assuming they don't increase the specifications for display again I expect the game length to start creeping back up again as they get used to producing assets for HD.

 

[AlphaWolf]

It's really only shooters that have gotten shorter, but I think that's mostly a case of effort being moved from single player to multi-player.

 

[corduroygt]

I guess no one here cares about better audio or more detailed character models and more varied textures for next gen with all this 8GB is enough talk.

 

[AlphaWolf]

I guess no one here cares about better audio or more detailed character models and more varied textures for next gen with all this 8GB is enough talk.

I don't think you can go a lot past that and still do digital distribution anyway. 12 hour downloads is pushing it.

 

[corduroygt]

I don't think you can go a lot past that and still do digital distribution anyway. 12 hour downloads is pushing it.

ME2 PSN download is 12GB, and DCUO is 15GB already. Speeds are only going to get faster and bandwidth is only going to get cheaper. I can download about 10GB/hour, and with Steam style pre-loading, downloads won't be too much of a problem for some. There will still be a physical format though, DD-only won't work with the other half of the user base. For that, nothing beats optical discs for cost/GB and price floor.

 

[Squilliam]

I guess no one here cares about better audio or more detailed character models and more varied textures for next gen with all this 8GB is enough talk.

The highest selling games of the generation could mostly fit on a 4GB sd card... Thats the market they're targeting next generation.

 

[eastmen]

compare that to flash games from 2004/2005?

Ridge Racer 32MB
Madden 2005 16MB
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 32MB
Spider-Man 2 16MB

At some point i can see flash taking over discs, but i seriously doubt that pressing a Blu-Ray disc with upto 50GB data will be matched by flash media when the PS4 comes. Blu-Ray is selling in big numbers and the production prices must have dropped since launch. And of course any decent next gen console should have the only Hi-Def format that is spread worldwide, even nintendo supported a movie format with Wii

But whats your point , there were 256 meg sd cards , 512 meg sd cards , 1 gig , 2 gig cards.

So its obvious they could have fit games on them. Some of them could have been tweaked a bit and pushed down 30 megs to get to a 128meg card.

It was certianly possible for the psp to go with flash .

 

[corduroygt]

The highest selling games of the generation could mostly fit on a 4GB sd card... Thats the market they're targeting next generation.

Unless you're talking about the wii, this is not true. Even the Call of Duty's are more than that, and Halo required two discs.
Besides, there are plenty of multimillion selling games that are won't fit in 4 or 8GB, and we're talking 2 years out from today at the minimum. Multi-disc games for 360 are getting more and more common as time passes, and PS3 games are not going down on size either.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

The highest selling games of the generation could mostly fit on a 4GB sd card... Thats the market they're targeting next generation.

X360 has had some difficulties with the DVD already and that's with 512MB of RAM, even the most conservative estimate puts next gen at 2GB. I don't think 8GB of storage is going to get us very far. Sure for a lot of games that'll be enough, but take the biggest games today and put them through next gen filter and you got a bigger game.

 

[-tkf-]

But whats your point , there were 256 meg sd cards , 512 meg sd cards , 1 gig , 2 gig cards.

So its obvious they could have fit games on them. Some of them could have been tweaked a bit and pushed down 30 megs to get to a 128meg card.

It was certianly possible for the psp to go with flash .

I just compared the size of launch games on carts, it´s pretty obvious that there is a clear difference in size. Obviously the cart based games were reduced heavily in space compared to the superior storage of UMD.

Even today the biggest DS games comes in at around 256MB and that is 6 years after launch..

At that time there was a choice, space vs speed. Space on carts were expensive while UMD made it cheap.

Vice stories with 100+ songs on a cart?

 

[-tkf-]

Personally I don't see more than 90% of games in the next generation requiring more than 8GB of space. 98% of games will probably fit into 16GB of space, so capacity arguments which consider price per gigabyte should only consider how much space is actually needed rather than how much space is available. Between procedural generation, real time lighting and real time cutscenes as well as improved texture compression as well as backwards compatibility to legacy Xbox 360 consoles I doubt that most developers will go over 8GB especially as direct download is becoming more important as a means of distribution.

There is no minimum required space for any game, there is just a question of compromises and choices that have to be made during the development of the game.

Vice city could have been done in monochrome with C64 tunes and fitted on a CD.

More space less compromises, there is no way around this simple fact.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

X360 has had some difficulties with the DVD already and that's with 512MB of RAM, even the most conservative estimate puts next gen at 2GB. I don't think 8GB of storage is going to get us very far. Sure for a lot of games that'll be enough, but take the biggest games today and put them through next gen filter and you got a bigger game.

I hope so. As on the PC even though 2+ gigabytes of memory have been standard on almost all sold PC's, it's still extremely rare to have games take up more than 1x DL DVD.

Now, PC's are coming standard with 3-4 GB of memory (with gamers often having 8-24 GB), and 1x DL DVD is still roughly the max size of the vast majority of games. Even those that are PC exclusive, DOW 2 and Civ 5 for example. There are exceptions, but they are still pretty darn rare. And when you consider that most PC games have to include low, medium, and high res texture sets since they don't know what video card a system might have or how much system memory a system may have. The actual used data is probably less than 1x single layer DVD for almost all PC games. Take out movies and audio and it's quite likely that game data + textures take up far less than 4 GB for the vast majority of games.

IMO, at most I'd expect that next gen consoles will do like the PS3 and game data will still fit on less than 1x DVD's but they'll use the extra space for Movies and uncompressed audio.

But I'm hoping that once developers aren't limited to the current gen limit of ~256 megs of video memory that we'll FINALLY see some advances in texture quality. Of course, either optical media will need to get significantly faster or consoles will have to come with mass storage devices faster than the 5400 rpm notebook drives that are generally used.

Regards,
SB

 

[corduroygt]

Take out movies and audio and it's quite likely that game data + textures take up far less than 4 GB for the vast majority of games.

Just like Dead Space 2 with its hours of pre-rendered FMV?