Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[grandmaster]

Amazon.com already does this for XBLA games btw. When you buy a XBLA game from Amazon (sometimes Amazon may have a good sale that isnt on regular XBL), you're just buying a download code.

Not much good if you have a crap internet connection. Secondly, the older generation would be far more likely to want to buy *something* as a present to give to a child rather than a download code.

Don't get me wrong, digital distribution is obviously the future, but it's exactly that. The future. And I'm not sure the actual physical product will ever go away.

 

[Barbarian]

Forget the piracy argument. PS3 remains totally secure. Xbox 360 was only hacked because Microsoft didn't encrypt the DVD-ROM firmware (other hacks would've been killed by dash updates), and even then it's highly debatable if piracy has had any discernable impact.

DRM for Digital Distribution would not only fight piracy, but it would most importantly fight second hand sales. Both console manufacturers and game publishers don't make a dime from second hand sales. There is a tremendous desire from both parties to kill that market. A lot of people could be pissed off, unless prices for new games come down (ie $40 instead of $60), which they should considering packaging+shipping+retail makes estimated 50% of the current cost.

 

[Barbarian]

Um..nobody plays games on Netbooks that are 7GB+ in size...

Well, there are only few games that would run on a netbook at all, but my point was not to compare netbooks to consoles, but rather to highlight the fact that a similar transition to disc less device has happened already.
The faster internet speeds plus the advent of big'n'cheap flash cards have allowed for that.
All I'm saying is, by 2012/2013 flash will be even bigger and cheaper. Internet will be faster and even more people will have it. Cutting the optical drive would noticeably reduce the manufacturing/warranty costs.
The PSP is rumored to drop the UMD any day now. Of course the PSP is portable so that makes sense for right now (actually made sense even when it launched). Give the industry few more years and the same trend will spread outside of portable devices.

 

[one]

Everytime someone writes about total digital distribution on a game console, I chuckle remembering what Bill Gates said at the time HD DVD was still strong... almost 4 years ago. Look at what people wrote back then on these forums!

Online distribution drives market growth. Those who like physical media will continue to buy games offline, and those who are too lazy or busy will buy them online while exposed to ads.

PSP2 will abandon UMD. I use VAIO Type P with 64GB SSD and it's working great for apps like Skype, but I don't play games on it.

 

[Crossbar]

DRM for Digital Distribution would not only fight piracy, but it would most importantly fight second hand sales. Both console manufacturers and game publishers don't make a dime from second hand sales. There is a tremendous desire from both parties to kill that market. A lot of people could be pissed off, unless prices for new games come down (ie $40 instead of $60), which they should considering packaging+shipping+retail makes estimated 50% of the current cost.

Those arguments are very strong in favour of a DRM push from console makers and game publishers. This may be one of the reasons why the PSP suddenly got much better support from game publishers.

Up until now it seems like the wide spread piracy of games for the DS, PSP and the 360 has in some sense been beneficial for the platform holders as it has helped sell hardware units and helped spreading games to groups that would not normally have been able to afford all those games and grow the gaming community much faster than it would have done else. The same thing could in some sense be said about the used games market and rental services.

However, the game market may now have reached a critical size that no longer needs that kind of "subsidies" in order to grow the market. The current game discs will remain on the market for a long time, but as Barbarian points out they have some serious flaws for certain interests, so the platformholders and the game publishers may slowly start to turn the consumers to new habits.

A new attractive pricing policy for downloadable games would definitely help me change my habits. Microsoft and Sony could introduce that with a flick of a switch if they wanted to, but I guess they currently are to dependent on retail. It will be interesting to see how the flashbased PSP will be handled by the game shops. If they will treat it as a turd or if Sony will be offering attractive ways for them to make money on it?

 

[NRP]

Personally, I hate swapping disks to play different games. I would be very interested in a digital distribution system next time around. Provided it's implemented correctly, of course.

 

[Crossbar]

Personally, I hate swapping disks to play different games. I would be very interested in a digital distribution system next time around. Provided it's implemented correctly, of course.

Me to, I always buy the downloadable version of games that are offered both on disk and as DLC. My sofa is very comfortable.

 

[GuestLV]

Digital Distribution doesn't mean everything needs to be downloaded online. It would be trivial for MS to setup ATM style kiosk to copy content to USB memory sticks or whatever.

The faster internet speeds plus the advent of big'n'cheap flash cards have allowed for that.
All I'm saying is, by 2012/2013 flash will be even bigger and cheaper. Internet will be faster and even more people will have it. Cutting the optical drive would noticeably reduce the manufacturing/warranty costs

You mean in USA ?But people in other countries are want to play next generation games too
people in Russia still dont have official MS Live.A few Baltic countries still miss official SCEA or MS Games distributors (repair services etc) Do not forget about Rest of the World
And many people still wish to go to shop and buy new game in a box , return home and play immediately

 

[Crossbar]

You mean in USA ?But people in other countries are want to play next generation games too
people in Russia still dont have official MS Live.A few Baltic countries still miss official SCEA or MS Games distributors Do not forget about Rest of the World

Good point, those countries will probably keep trailing the other markets for some time until the consoles come down more in price, but digital distributions may actually help bring down game prices a bit so it may not be a bad thing for countries with weaker economies if the internet speeds are bearable.

Not to mention that Sony just recently started pushing the PS2 in a number of countries in South America. Different strokes for different folks.

 

[GuestLV]

for countries with weaker economies if the internet speeds are bearable.

2mb(200kb/s download speed) is bearable? In this generation ebay helps me a lot

 

[DuckThor Evil]

DRM for Digital Distribution would not only fight piracy, but it would most importantly fight second hand sales. Both console manufacturers and game publishers don't make a dime from second hand sales. There is a tremendous desire from both parties to kill that market.

It shouldn't be too hard to kill the second hand market, while still distributing games on a physical media aswell. Just ship the game with an activation key that ties the game into a single console or some equivalent method.

 

[Barbarian]

2mb(200kb/s download speed) is bearable? In this generation ebay helps me a lot

An average "level" in the last game I worked on was about 300MB, if my math is correct that will take about ~25 minutes to download over 2Mb connection. Not optimal, but reasonable.
If the Digital Distribution push is serous, I wouldn't be surprised to see a requirement for the game to be able to start as soon as it has it's first level (Steam already does this to an extent).
Right now files streamed off optical disc often have lots of duplication in them to minimize seeking. If the game is guaranteed to run off flash (or at least cache to it) a lot of the data can be reduced/compressed further.

 

[Barbarian]

It shouldn't be too hard to kill the second hand market, while still distributing games on a physical media aswell. Just ship the game with an activation key that ties the game into a single console or some equivalent method.

Except GameStop will probably refuse to sell your games if you did that. With Digital Distribution you don't need GameStop so it all works out.
That's of course over simplifying things, but you get the idea. As long as you need retail, a lot of options are no go.

 

[GuestLV]

I wouldn't be surprised to see a requirement for the game to be able to start as soon as it has it's first level

Farewell GTA5 !

Right now files streamed off optical disc often have lots of duplication in them to minimize seeking.

Stream them from HDD(SSD)

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Except GameStop will probably refuse to sell your games if you did that. With Digital Distribution you don't need GameStop so it all works out.
That's of course over simplifying things, but you get the idea. As long as you need retail, a lot of options are no go.

Well I think that the only situation where GameStop could make that threat is, if only 1/3 console manufacturers would use the activation key method, then GameStop threat would be considerable, but if even 2/3 would go for it, then GameStop really couldn't say too much about it imo. If GameStop would refuse to sell the games, then their business would shrink signifigantly. The death of second hand market, but still maintaing retail sales wouldn't be that bad situation for GameStop, even looking at their current used games business numbers as the new situation would boost new game sales probably by a large margin.

I think that even if GameStop would stop selling new games, it would only create a temporal hole, that would be filled in a short time frame by other old and new retailers.

 

[GuestLV]

Complete(without drive option) Digital Distribution may be good for USA Japan ... I doubt MS or Sony wish to sell consoles in ''first party'' countries only

 

[Barbarian]

Farewell GTA5 !

Sorry, I should have said "level" in quotes. GTA4 can easily be partitioned into 4 islands (or more, if designed with this in mind), since it takes some time to unlock all of them, and technically only the first one will be needed right away. Obviously, some games will take longer to "preload" this way.
Maybe having a requirement is a bit too strong, it will be difficult to phrase in an objective way. MS/Sony have similar "recommendations" right now when it comes to load times, frame rate, anti-aliasing etc. These are not enforced but are heavily encouraged.

 

[Crossbar]

Complete(without drive option) Digital Distribution may be good for USA Japan ... I doubt MS or Sony wish to sell consoles in ''first party'' countries only

Don´t worry all current gen consoles are disk based and that installed base will be supported for a very long time and there will be plenty of games made for them.

Like I just said Sony has just started a marketing push of the PS2 in South America. The platformholders will adapt to the market if there is a way to make money and push the console and game formats which fit it.

 

[liolio]

Personally, I hate swapping disks to play different games. I would be very interested in a digital distribution system next time around. Provided it's implemented correctly, of course.

I hate that too Clearly my flat is tinyand full, the 360 is not that accessible neither are my game boxes... It clearly bother me I know I don't play some games because it's painful to change change a disk for 10 minutes of gameplay. For intance I'm playing Mass Effect actually and sometime I would like to do a break and play another game (think a tornment in Naruto TBB for example) and get up find boxes etc; is super bothering when you only intend to play 10/15 minutes...

I think that there are way too have the best of both words. Ms could stop asking you to insert the DVD when you want to play a game that's present on the HDD. Playing from disk would not require any special action but if you want instal it then there could be some synchronisation with your live account that mark you as owner of the game. It should be the same for games bought through online distribution, basically every time you want to play the game your live account would be checked to make sure you own the game.

It wouldn't not kill second hand market but that would be a blow as you could not instal game that have been already installed you could still play from the disk.

On top of that MS should ask for a fee to allow to register the disk more than once (one part would go to Ms the other to the editor). Second hand market would became even less attractive /gamestop and likes lower their margins on second hand games.

I think it could be a win/win situation, Ms and editors would take their share on the second hand market, for retailer second hand market would be saved minus lesser margins.

 

[Sonic]

I'm all for digital distribution as long as it's just an option for those who would prefer it over physical media. There are some inherent problems with digital distribution when it comes to the USA, especially if the ISP's have their way and can cap your bandwidth and charge you megabucks once you're over it.

Ahh so Christmas season comes along and you decide to plunk down and buy a few games. Let's say the games average around 10 - 30 GB. Some will go over their bandwidth limit and then get charged by a rather large amount just for buying and then downloading the games. Not good I say, not good at all. If net neutrality somehow passes and there are no bandwidth caps then digital distribution (from the home at least) might be viable, but until then probably not.

A company like Best Buy or Walmart might have reason to fear digital distribution because of reduced game sales at their stores. So to make up for lost revenue on games Sony and MS will need to provide them incentive on the hardware side. If they can get a good $20 - $40 per console sold it would probably make up for the lost game sales.

I do like the digital distribution idea for retail stores. One can go in and purchase the game and have it written onto a flash disk. Maybe the retailers can actually sell the flash disks for each game being sold and make some money off of that.