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

cal_guy said:
A single 4K movie for download shouldn't require more than 20GB.
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Depends on the quality. There is no reason to compromise anything for 4K, it's high end users and the tv sets are expensive. Let those that don't care enjoy Netflix in 4K.
 
A 4K movie taking only 20GB will not look any better than a bluray upscaled with a high quality upscaler. If they want to sell 4K content, it has to look significantly better than a 4K upscaled bluray. That makes streaming 4K a bit stupid right now. If they don't want to give us a quality 1080p, why would they offer a 4k version?
 
With the transition to HEVC which greatly improves compression quality at higher resolutions and the fact that you can get away with a smaller increase of bitrate over a relative increase of pixel area you'll be surprised at of how little you can get away.
 
Rangers said:
Actually to me "initially" is the only place digital pricing makes sense. On launch day it's 59.99 everywhere. At that point you're just trading convenience of digital versus trade in ability/loan ability of disc. And I dont think that's such a clear win for disc, I think it's more a matter of preference. Where digital is really weak is how the prices STAY high for way way way too long. I was just able to pick up COD Ghosts XOne for $6 on disc. $6! It's 59.99 on XBO store. Granted I got a sale but it's been $20 on Amazon for weeks.

The thing is Steam (which I can look to as a mature ecosystem, arguably where consoles may end up at one day) isn't foolproof either. Yes it has lots of wild sales on indies and older stuff, but new games stick to that MSRP for a long long time on steam too.
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You don't buy keys for steam, uplay or origin on the mother sites. You go to sites like kinguin g2a etc and buy them there.
There is healthy competition and especially titles that still are new and hot drop in price way faster. And every game that has had a steam sale at some point will be on those sites atleast at the steam sale price.

If console dd starts to distribute keys in a similar style it's going to take off in a crazy fashion.
 
Rangers said:
Actually to me "initially" is the only place digital pricing makes sense. On launch day it's 59.99 everywhere. At that point you're just trading convenience of digital versus trade in ability/loan ability of disc. And I dont think that's such a clear win for disc, I think it's more a matter of preference. Where digital is really weak is how the prices STAY high for way way way too long. I was just able to pick up COD Ghosts XOne for $6 on disc. $6! It's 59.99 on XBO store. Granted I got a sale but it's been $20 on Amazon for weeks.
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That's an anomalous result, though. Traditionally the COD games have been evergreen with their prices stable around $40 for years. Ghost was just way overproduced, especially the Xbox One version where console hardware sales lagged far worse than expected. Retail copies for PS4 still sell briskly for stores so they aren't looking to clear them out. Amazon still sells that version for $40. Obviously certain circumstances can result in a cheap physical game, but I've gotten awesome deals on digital games faster than seemed reasonable, too.

In any case it's disingenuous to suggest pricing is completely static on digital. Both manufacturers are offering frequent and deep discounts, and on PSN every week there is a list of the 10 or 20 titles that have had their regular price reduced.
 
Again for X1 since I bought: Got COD Ghosts new for $6, got BF4 new for $15. Saw on CAG where you could get MGZ GZ (I think all versions) used for $10. Saw gamefly sale where lots of used games are cheap like, 360 version Ghosts $10. That's just from barely looking. Even your own example, COD PS4, is $40, and I'm sure it's 59.99 on PSN. That's a large difference.

Digital pricing past initial, is still simply not close to disc. Disc has many retailers all free to do there own thing, and some of those retailers are bound to discount deeply. But anyway I suppose this will spiral OT quickly. I didn't suggest digital pricing was completely static, just that it tends to stay high too long.
 
MrFox said:
Seriously, the same price seems very unfair.
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It is worse than unfair, it simply won't work, everybody would lose if the industry at large were to try enforcing such practice. AAA games are sold at that price because games.have resale value, second hand market is what allows lots of big buyers of new games to sustain their buying habits.
 
Some above posts pulled over from another thread, respawned in response to EA claims of 10-15% of console title sales are download games.

Peter Moore - Chief Operating Officer
As Frank mentioned in his remarks, we saw about $71 million in full game downloads, which excludes mobile. And that was split about 50-50 PC versus console. And I had mentioned on the last call that we were seeing somewhere in excess of 10% now for full game downloads on the Xbox Live and Playstation network.

We’re seeing that continue to grow. Now it’s between 10% and 15% of the initial sales that is going digitally full game downloads on those platforms. And if we take UFC as an example, which only shipped with two weeks of the quarter left, we saw at the high range of that 10% to 15% band.

So we’re continuing to see a progressive move toward gamers being able to download, because they can now on the next-gen consoles, full games on day one and week one of the ship. I will also add that the transition, though, is working well with our retail partners. Progressive retailers such as GameStop are preselling well our sports titles that are the ultimate edition SKUs, which give $40 of digital content for only an incremental $10.

So our retail partners are able to play in that digital space as well, so I think we’re balancing out this transformation between physical packaged goods and digital well, and our retailers are able to play in that space.
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Nisaaru said:
You do realize that Ghost for X1 was a combined 360/X1 disk package with a digital download key?
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They offered a digital cross gen version last fall, but that is not the only boxed version sold for Xbox One. In fact, that version was $70 instead of $60.

Rangers said:
Again for X1 since I bought: Got COD Ghosts new for $6, got BF4 new for $15. Saw on CAG where you could get MGZ GZ (I think all versions) used for $10. Saw gamefly sale where lots of used games are cheap like, 360 version Ghosts $10. That's just from barely looking. Even your own example, COD PS4, is $40, and I'm sure it's 59.99 on PSN. That's a large difference.
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OK, but like I said that Ghost deal is an outlier, not typical. And right now you can get Injustice on PS4 digitally for $8 on sale. LEGO Marvel is $10. MGZ: GZ was part of the twofer deal last week on PSN. So if you're the type to wait for deals that can serve you both digitally and physically.
 
Looked it up to verify your claims, Lego Marvel is 10.50 but it requires PS+. Which I guess, is a thing.

I know there are digital deals, and I expect them to get better, but I still say in the main titles stay 59.99 on digital a lot longer. Marvel for example was already only $34 normally on PS+. You cant compare Marvel to COD either. Although they were released at the same time. COD is much more desirable generally.

I think you often see 59.99 games discounted as much as $20 shortly after release if you wait a couple weeks, one major retailer should have a sale. That doesn't happen on digital.
 
Interesting digging up this old thread. Nothing changed, all the issues which were talked about still remain. Flash is still nowhere near a cost effective medium. But Holo disk is being released for sure in 2012, so that will definitely make bluray obsolete.

With only 10-15% DD, I can only imagine what would have happened to the console without a BR drive. I don't think the fake impression of value with DLC bonus is going to fool anyone. The idea is to prevent the "used" tier and the "overstock bargain" tier from existing. I don't think DD is going to be something that provides a lower price, it can only go up. Steam seems to be some exception, but most steam games are available in torrents, so it's the typical PC "piracy" tier they compete with. I'm not sure it's a good reference for future digital prices on consoles. The Digital Download is being pushed by publishers to control a higher price. The argument that the middleman is being removed to benefit the gamer is a scam. High demand games have a high order volume, so you get bargain overstock and lots of used volume. DD is the exact opposite model, they have enough demand to keep the price high and no other tiers to compete against.

I don't think we'll ever reach a 50% split with Bluray vs DD at the end of this generation, at least not for AAA games.
 
MrFox said:
But Holo disk is being released for sure in 2012, so that will definitely make bluray obsolete.
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For what markets? Consumers would not respond well to the death of BD only 8 or so years into it's lackluster adoption. I can see it dominating in the archival storage market if the proposed life cycles stand up to scrutiny (I mean is it really so beyond us to improve upon LTO-x tape?).
 
The thing with writeable blu ray is 10x50gb (aka 500gb) is £35 according to amazon a 500gb hdd isnt a lot more and a 1tb external dive is even cheaper per mb. I know which i would rather own
 
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