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

[-tkf-]

Yes, DRM is one of the bad things, but for selfish me, I do not care, because I am not in your situation. But it should/could be as easy as creating 1 master family/household account. And then sub/member accounts. And then everybody in that master group gets to play the game.
If you want to play at the same time, then you can pay 25% or 50% or 75% of the original price to allow it. And you limit it to like 5-6, since most households will not have dad, mom and 3 kids playing COD6 at the same time. Atleast MS/Sony/Nintendo should reward them for buying 5 consoles then Its just that we are not there yet, but its not hard to do, but the DD only people are still not a big enough group to listen to I guess.

There is plenty of options for DD and DRM, problem is that we will most likely see the choice that publishers think will get them most money. I am using Steam as an example because it is without any doubt one of the best digital distribution systems ever made, for several reasons. And i have a way to big "ohh i need this" library of games. But the way it works with a "family" is a prime example of where DRM goes wrong and eventhough i paid for every game in my library, my personal usage is limited to an extent that is not fair imho. Every single game in my steam library should be playable as long as it isn't played by more than one at the time in my household.

Sony is another good example, they used to have 5 activations in place, which made their DRM on downloaded games pretty much flawless in a normal day usage, since very few would have 5 consoles dying, 2 dead consoles and a 2 extra consoles would still work within the limits of DRM. But in true Sony fashion, somewhere along the life of the PS3 they reduced it to 2 activations, lucky for us, it's pretty easy to deactivate dead consoles, but i am at the limit with my 2 PS3's.

My point is, as always, with DD you loose control of your purchases, you are basicly subject to the fickle nature of copyright holders and greed, not to mention general capitalism. THQ DD might end up being a bit to "fun" :-/

As of now yes, but we are talking about putting in the groundwork for the future. But it is not about scraping it now, its about being prepared for when its an obsolete distribution form that does not add profit to the bottom line.

Preperation is just putting a Harddrive in the console, nothing else.

Are you saying people are unsubscribing from their DSL, Cable, Fiber connections to have the same internet experience on 3G/4G? Well they are in for an ugly surprise, now my parents that are retired and only does internet banking and read newspapers and other light surfing and alternate living in Norway and the Philippines its fine. Normal household with 2 adults and 1.2 kids, no chance they will get a decent working internet experience. Heck do youtube on 2 terminals and online gaming on one and maybe some streaming music etc that is not a good experience over a 3G link, maybe on a 4G.
Want IPTV into the house, great, my biggest customer are upgrading from 100M to 1G to support 3-4 tv's in one house, not happening with 4G. Put up a new building, your great 4G connection sucks due to messing up line of sight.

Yep, you are making my point, those that rely on Mobile Data for their internet needs would have a problem with DD only games. They are out there so they would be lost as customers with a DD only platform.

 

[Blazkowicz]

How much shelf presence does league of legends have? It's the most played online multiplayer game in the western world.

Yes, and Counterstrike before that, though it also was released on the shelf (dunno how much significant that was)
But on PC it's natural to download games, you have keyb/mouse for web browsing, a practice going 15 years of downloading shareware, demos, free and warez games, almost no one left using the PC off-line anymore.
Same on tablets/phone you have built-in pointing device and not much point of using it off-line (except for transfering music/video/content from a PC to tablet)

On console, you mostly have to make do with a gamepad, and it's significantly usable off-line. Dunno how well you can do web browsing on a Kinect, and a controller like a wii mote is a liability for playing for some games.
You have a huge number of people using the on-line capabilities, but also a huge number of people not bothering and especially a common scenario : Mum walks in a store, buys a game, wraps it in gift paper and gives to the kids for birthday, XMAS etc.

 

[Brad Grenz]

How did retailers originally get into the low margin console business in the first place? There are many ways for console manufacturers to please the retailers in order for them to stock the consoles. The games themselves don't have huge margins the retailers only make $12 bucks on a $60 release and they don't make money on the consoles themselves. Retailers aren't in the business for the money from the games that's why very few game only retailers exist, they are in the business to get other business through the trade of games. If retailers can get that foot traffic without devoting the shelf space then they'll be for it and not against it. If 50% of people will download anyway then the best strategy is to make the best use of the 50% who won't and in this case cartridges, game cards and kiosks are an advantage not a disadvantage.

But they don't make that $12 only once. They'll make that 5-10 times per owner over the coarse of a generation, plus profits from high margin accessories. That's plenty to justify the space and inventory for a lot of stores.

But I should point out that in your no optical future everyone is downloading one way or another. There is no 50% "who won't". If everyone has to download there is no Luddite business for retail to capture, only people trying to give gifts or who can't get a debit or credit card. This will be a tiny fraction of overall game purchasing, too little to keep specialty retailers alive as anything but retro shops (and then it will be a tiny fraction of GameStop's current retail footprint), and perhaps too little for Big Box retailers to even bother with videogame sections.

Sure, they could still have impulse buy racks of giftcards at the register, but no one is going to line up for a midnight launch of the Call of Duty: MW4 gift card when they could be unlocking their preloaded digital copy bought directly on their console at home. And the problem remains that you won't be able to buy the console anywhere, and there won't be stores marketing your hardware through fliers, websites, and in person advertising. You'd need multi-billion dollar transmedia advertising campaigns to even approach that kind of presence.

 

[-tkf-]

How much shelf presence does league of legends have? It's the most played online multiplayer game in the western world.

World of Warcraft have been on the shelfs at the local supermarket since it was launched. Dunno how much they sell though, but some copies must be sold since they keep it there.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Wow's xpac was on the NPD chart, so likely hundreds of thousands of copies at retail in the US alone.

 

[Squilliam]

You have a huge number of people using the on-line capabilities, but also a huge number of people not bothering and especially a common scenario : Mum walks in a store, buys a game, wraps it in gift paper and gives to the kids for birthday, XMAS etc.

I don't think anyone believes that any console manufacturer would even dream of not offering physical media. However if half or less of the use the console gets doesn't involve an optical drive then the justification for the drive diminishes.

But they don't make that $12 only once. They'll make that 5-10 times per owner over the coarse of a generation, plus profits from high margin accessories. That's plenty to justify the space and inventory for a lot of stores.

If they need to be compensated in other ways then they will.

But I should point out that in your no optical future everyone is downloading one way or another. There is no 50% "who won't". If everyone has to download there is no Luddite business for retail to capture, only people trying to give gifts or who can't get a debit or credit card. This will be a tiny fraction of overall game purchasing, too little to keep specialty retailers alive as anything but retro shops (and then it will be a tiny fraction of GameStop's current retail footprint), and perhaps too little for Big Box retailers to even bother with videogame sections.

No optical doesn't mean no physical presence nor physical distribution. The fact remains that once a significant proportion of games are downloaded you reach the same circumstances whether you have optical drives in your console or not. So from the perspective of a console manufacturer your retail price is $50 higher at every price point whether the drive receives significant use or not.

Sure, they could still have impulse buy racks of giftcards at the register, but no one is going to line up for a midnight launch of the Call of Duty: MW4 gift card when they could be unlocking their preloaded digital copy bought directly on their console at home. And the problem remains that you won't be able to buy the console anywhere, and there won't be stores marketing your hardware through fliers, websites, and in person advertising. You'd need multi-billion dollar transmedia advertising campaigns to even approach that kind of presence.

Retailers are marketing the Wii U and it receives day and date digital distribution of full retail titles. Consoles are significantly popular regardless of their distribution means so retailers would be foolish not to offer them even if the total number of games sales have fallen. There are few other devices which have the chance to sell to 1/3rd of U.S. households twice a decade.

 

[AzBat]

Who says you need to download the whole game all at once? Why can't it be done in pieces to make it easier for customers who have data caps? And why can't do pre-launch downloading to help with congestion at launch? Also, how about using your NFC-enabled cell phone to download your game(or a portion of it) at a store or kiosk? Then using NFC transfer it to your console? There's all kind of ways to do DD without a Dvd or Bluray. Some of you just don't have an imagination or faith.

Tommy McClain

 

[AlphaWolf]

I have plenty of imagination, but I completely lack faith. It's just not going to happen as last long as it would leave anyone behind. There's still enough users not online to make it a no go.

 

[Squilliam]

What will the market look like in 2015? The internet will be faster, the caps will be larger, flash memory will probably be less than half the price per GB or even less if one of the new technologies pays off for non volatile memory. It'll be two years into another generation yes but it is three years into the future. What if 70% of the use consoles get by then doesn't involve the optical drive? It means including a component which compromises the look and price as well as noise levels of a console which if you include it you have no real option of removing.

 

[Brimstone]

What will the market look like in 2015? The internet will be faster, the caps will be larger, flash memory will probably be less than half the price per GB or even less if one of the new technologies pays off for non volatile memory. It'll be two years into another generation yes but it is three years into the future. What if 70% of the use consoles get by then doesn't involve the optical drive? It means including a component which compromises the look and price as well as noise levels of a console which if you include it you have no real option of removing.

One of the the key arguments I've read for cloud gaming is to handle large data requirements for games. Game data size is poised to explode. John Carmack has already proven you can get higher quality pixels with large data sets.

 

[Brad Grenz]

No optical doesn't mean no physical presence nor physical distribution. The fact remains that once a significant proportion of games are downloaded you reach the same circumstances whether you have optical drives in your console or not. So from the perspective of a console manufacturer your retail price is $50 higher at every price point whether the drive receives significant use or not.

If physical copies of games are being sold, they will be on optical discs. No other medium makes sense financially. So it's either download only, or download+optical disc. Those are the only scenarios even worth debating.

Besides, you're completely ignoring the perceived value an optical drive can add to a platform for things like Blu-ray playback, backwards compatibility, etc. So for (realistically) $25 per unit you get a greater perceived value to consumers, the support of the largest game retailers, and the ability to effectively distribute games in parts of the world where the internet infrastructure isn't very good. That's money well spent. No one's likely to take major losses on the hardware next gen anyway.

Retailers are marketing the Wii U and it receives day and date digital distribution of full retail titles. Consoles are significantly popular regardless of their distribution means so retailers would be foolish not to offer them even if the total number of games sales have fallen. There are few other devices which have the chance to sell to 1/3rd of U.S. households twice a decade.

For some, but not all games, and they still have discs to sell (and that they can rebuy and sell used over and over again). But a digital distribution only console would be nothing less than an existential threat to a company like GameStop. They would be foolish not to marshal every bit of leverage they have to fight it. This includes boycotting the platform and throwing their support behind any available alternatives. If, for example, only Sony went digital only, you'd see GS become enormous boosters of the next MS console that still has games they can sell.

 

[Squilliam]

One of the the key arguments I've read for cloud gaming is to handle large data requirements for games. Game data size is poised to explode. John Carmack has already proven you can get higher quality pixels with large data sets.

How will game data sets explode when you need to make every game available for download? It would be a challenge to distribute 20GB+ games over the internet so developers have incentive not to let the game sizes increase too rapidly.

If physical copies of games are being sold, they will be on optical discs. No other medium makes sense financially. So it's either download only, or download+optical disc. Those are the only scenarios even worth debating.

Besides, you're completely ignoring the perceived value an optical drive can add to a platform for things like Blu-ray playback, backwards compatibility, etc. So for (realistically) $25 per unit you get a greater perceived value to consumers, the support of the largest game retailers, and the ability to effectively distribute games in parts of the world where the internet infrastructure isn't very good. That's money well spent. No one's likely to take major losses on the hardware next gen anyway.

The price of a high speed Blu Ray drive approaches $50 retail at Newegg. So even if you can get it for $30 the price has to include all margins, extra shipping costs and warranty costs for the few % which break down and at high speeds that will be at least a couple %. If you include media playback the last I heard it adds another $9.50 to the price and backwards compatibility is probably a noshow anyway. You're looking at adding $50 to the retail price which whilst it doesn't add much to a $400 console it becomes a significant extra when you're trying to get to $199.

For 2nd world countries if you include a removeable HDD you can easily give strong incentives by giving cheap localised pricing, which is something you can't do with discs. If the games cost say $30 in Brazil and $60 in Portugal you don't get any cross competition or parallel importing problems.

For some, but not all games, and they still have discs to sell (and that they can rebuy and sell used over and over again). But a digital distribution only console would be nothing less than an existential threat to a company like GameStop. They would be foolish not to marshal every bit of leverage they have to fight it. This includes boycotting the platform and throwing their support behind any available alternatives. If, for example, only Sony went digital only, you'd see GS become enormous boosters of the next MS console that still has games they can sell.

There are options to appease even players like Gamestop. For instance you could make all license transfers store only which means that whilst Gamestop would have lower margins on used titles the publishers don't lose out and Gamestop would still have a business because they wouldn't have to compete with the private used game market. They could add a fee of say $10 for license transfers which means that publishers wouldn't mind taking slightly smaller margins on the games themselves in physical retail because they can gain part of the 2nd hand revenue stream as well.

 

[Brad Grenz]

The price of a high speed Blu Ray drive approaches $50 retail at Newegg. So even if you can get it for $30 the price has to include all margins, extra shipping costs and warranty costs for the few % which break down and at high speeds that will be at least a couple %. If you include media playback the last I heard it adds another $9.50 to the price and backwards compatibility is probably a noshow anyway. You're looking at adding $50 to the retail price which whilst it doesn't add much to a $400 console it becomes a significant extra when you're trying to get to $199.

Entire Bluray players can be had for $40 these days. Naked drives are only $50 at Newegg to create separation between them and DVD drives which are already at their price basement, which coincidentally makes the "premium" Bluray drives hardware higher margin.

 

[Squilliam]

Entire Bluray players can be had for $40 these days. Naked drives are only $50 at Newegg to create separation between them and DVD drives which are already at their price basement, which coincidentally makes the "premium" Bluray drives hardware higher margin.

Entire players? Pretty much only if you're talking about $60-70 for the cheapest LG I can find. The drives won't be cheap either as they'll likely need minimum an 8* player (~34MB/S peak) minimum vs the 5* IIRC in the Wii U or the 2* in the PS3. Then you have to consider adding a buffer to help make up for the slow transfer speed and high latency which entails yet another cost.

 

[Brimstone]

How will game data sets explode when you need to make every game available for download? It would be a challenge to distribute 20GB+ games over the internet so developers have incentive not to let the game sizes increase too rapidly.

With a cloud service you stream the game.


With megatexture different compression ratios could be offered. Disc based vervion 100's of gigabytes...dowload version 20 gigs but lower image quality as a result of aggrsessive compression.

 

[Squilliam]

100s of GB? How many games are trying to take advantage of megatexturing? I'd wager no more than the number of ID games in development at present.

 

[owen]

Who says you need to download the whole game all at once? Why can't it be done in pieces to make it easier for customers who have data caps? And why can't do pre-launch downloading to help with congestion at launch? Also, how about using your NFC-enabled cell phone to download your game(or a portion of it) at a store or kiosk? Then using NFC transfer it to your console? There's all kind of ways to do DD without a Dvd or Bluray. Some of you just don't have an imagination or faith.

Tommy McClain

The day that happens is the day I stop playing video games. And the that same day everybody body stops using cash and we live in a credit card only world.

 

[Brimstone]

100s of GB? How many games are trying to take advantage of megatexturing? I'd wager no more than the number of ID games in development at present.

Lionhead demonstrated Mega Meshes. Square might be using something similar with the Agnis demo...they are certanily using lightmaps.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Entire players? Pretty much only if you're talking about $60-70 for the cheapest LG I can find. The drives won't be cheap either as they'll likely need minimum an 8* player (~34MB/S peak) minimum vs the 5* IIRC in the Wii U or the 2* in the PS3. Then you have to consider adding a buffer to help make up for the slow transfer speed and high latency which entails yet another cost.

$40 may have been an exaggeration. Here's one for $48, though. You have an exaggerated sense of the cost this would add. It isn't 2006 any more.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Who says you need to download the whole game all at once? Why can't it be done in pieces to make it easier for customers who have data caps? And why can't do pre-launch downloading to help with congestion at launch? Also, how about using your NFC-enabled cell phone to download your game(or a portion of it) at a store or kiosk? Then using NFC transfer it to your console? There's all kind of ways to do DD without a Dvd or Bluray. Some of you just don't have an imagination or faith.

Tommy McClain

I think NFC is more about transfering kilobits than megabytes but that's not a silly idea, you would pay by NFC and transfer by wifi on the cell phone, but you have a few issues (high end phones with only 16GB storage and no SD card, attending the phone while 10GB are transfered at a few megs per second, unless you can put the phone in a locker, be issued a key and walk out to do some shopping for an hour or so)
Of course there could be a human version of the kiosk too, you give cash over the counter and a USB drive, you're not outta phone for an hour.. Or alternatively, your shopping resort would need strong wifi everywhere so many people can download (locally stored) games..