Predict: The Next Generation Console Tech

[MrSpiggott]

Your describing a scenario where people play all their games all the time, constantly changing between them. I don't think many people work that way at all. I think it's far more typical for someone to buy a game and play it until they've had enough, and then they buy a new game. In your example, after losing all your games, you'd only need to download the latest couple that you were playing when it died to pick up where you left off. Or if four people share a PS4 and play completely different games, maybe as many as 8 games would need to be downloaded which'd be a few days, typically in a household of normal internet usage.

I frequently delete my old PSN titles from my PS3. They are always on PSN to download again should I want, while I also know I'm not actually going to play them again, in all probability.

Oh I agree that you'd download your most current games first, but kids like to play old games sometimes.
And it would annoy me, just having the thought that I can't play a certain game for months even though I legally own it. Simply slotting in a disk seems so much easier.

As a consumer I need to be convinced that a DD game offers an advantage over a physical copy, other that perhaps price, I really haven't heard one with the current or likely near future infrastructure available.

 

[corduroygt]

This gen MS made the 360 with a built in optical drive and a removable hard drive that wasn't included in the low-end model. I predict it will be reversed next gen, with the hard drive being standard and the optical being a removable blu-ray drive that won't be included in the low-end model. It will be more marketed towards casual/motion control gamers that will buy smaller titles from XBL. Not all games will be simultaneously released on Digital and Disc, but some will. Retailers might also refuse to stock the new xbox arcade so it might only be available to order online.

 

[eastmen]

Oh I agree that you'd download your most current games first, but kids like to play old games sometimes.
And it would annoy me, just having the thought that I can't play a certain game for months even though I legally own it. Simply slotting in a disk seems so much easier.

As a consumer I need to be convinced that a DD game offers an advantage over a physical copy, other that perhaps price, I really haven't heard one with the current or likely near future infrastructure available.

and what happens when a disc is scratched and doesn't work. I think with children that will happen far more often than the hardrive or system breaking .

The fact is that once you download the game there will be very few times you'd have to redownload it.

The advantages are simple

No more easily damaged discs
No more games sold out at stores

Faster loads
Faster streaming for levels
Cheaper prices.

And those are just a few .

I love that I can buy a game on steam and enjoy the game without having to go on a wild hunt to find and buy it. I like being able to buy on steam two months in advance and it will just preload

 

[Toaddio]

and what happens when a disc is scratched and doesn't work. I think with children that will happen far more often than the hardrive or system breaking .

The fact is that once you download the game there will be very few times you'd have to redownload it.

The advantages are simple

No more easily damaged discs
No more games sold out at stores

Faster loads
Faster streaming for levels
Cheaper prices.

And those are just a few .

I love that I can buy a game on steam and enjoy the game without having to go on a wild hunt to find and buy it. I like being able to buy on steam two months in advance and it will just preload

You need to take yourself out of the equation. YOU are not the consumer, and that's an important fact. Remove your personal experiences out of the discussion and look at the facts that are left.

 

[MrSpiggott]

and what happens when a disc is scratched and doesn't work. I think with children that will happen far more often than the hardrive or system breaking .

The fact is that once you download the game there will be very few times you'd have to redownload it.

The advantages are simple

No more easily damaged discs
No more games sold out at stores

Faster loads
Faster streaming for levels
Cheaper prices.

And those are just a few .

I love that I can buy a game on steam and enjoy the game without having to go on a wild hunt to find and buy it. I like being able to buy on steam two months in advance and it will just preload

I don't think you've listed any real advantages there.
XBox360 can already install disk based games to hard disk so there'll be no improvements in load times or level streaming.
Anybody who is organised enough to preload a steam game two months in advance can certainly preorder a game from amazon and feel safe in the knowledge that the box will arrive on your doorstep come launch day.
I suppose disks are more fragile, although it's not something I've encountered myself, but then we enter the horrible logic loop that any child clumsy enough to keep damaging disks is also likely to damage the machine they are playing on and thus requiring the games to be downloaded again. Work colleges have lamented the mixing of consoles and fizzy drinks.

I'm not against digital downloads. I think it's inevitable and once the infrastructure is in place and it's as effortless as downloading an iPhone app then I'll pat it on the head and welcome it into my house and never think of disks again. But that infrastructure is not there yet. I am incredibly envious of your download speeds and can understand why you you'd be an advocate of DD, but you must see that the majority of the world wont be up to your level in the next 4 years. Particularly with the recession and all the cutbacks going on.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I agree that DD only for the next (and probably even the generation after that) would be too soon. Not only because of the DD but also because of other reasons. However, I don't see why we couldn't see full games also available as DD for the next generation consoles. I guess it would even be already possible on the current consoles. Steam proves that people want to buy full games like this and while not everybody might have a high speed connection or a high datacap there is still a large amount of people who do have that. For example in my country there is no ISP that has a datacap. As for speed, for downloading you don't really need more than 4mbs and I guess that is commonly available in most places these days. Sure it will take a night to download a game but I don't think that is a really big issue.

 

[eastmen]

You need to take yourself out of the equation. YOU are not the consumer, and that's an important fact. Remove your personal experiences out of the discussion and look at the facts that are left.

How am I not the consumer. I own all current gen systems but i'm tired of discs , i'm tired of stupid preorder bonuses that are diffrent at every store , i'm tired of sold out product.

mabye not everyone feels that way , but i'm sure there are plenty that do. But don't tell me I'm not the consumer.

 

[Xenus]

What he was trying for is while you may be a consumer. you are not the average consumer or even the lowest common denominator consumer. Aka what works for you may not work for others and if it doesn't work for the vast majority of the consumer base they are going for your personal ideas on the matter are not much of a help.

 

[eastmen]

What he was trying for is while you may be a consumer. you are not the average consumer or even the lowest common denominator consumer. Aka what works for you may not work for others and if it doesn't work for the vast majority of the consumer base they are going for your personal ideas on the matter are not much of a help.

Game formats have changed multiple times through the history of gaming. Another change what affect anything.

 

[Xenus]

True but they aren't going exclusively Digital download this generation for reasons outlined in this thread because it artificially limits their market.If you don't believe that I don't know what else to tell you.

 

[Toaddio]

mabye not everyone feels that way , but i'm sure there are plenty that do. But don't tell me I'm not the consumer.

You're not. That's your fatal flaw. You have to have the intelligence to pull yourself out of the middle of the situation and look at the facts from a distance. You haven't been able to do this thus far.

You are A consumer but not THE consumer. Software engineers often times have a problem differentiating these realities. You apparently can't differentiate between your needs and the needs of the user base.

You have to realize that what you want is irrelevant, and rightfully so.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I agree that DD only for the next (and probably even the generation after that) would be too soon. Not only because of the DD but also because of other reasons. However, I don't see why we couldn't see full games also available as DD for the next generation consoles.

We already have a few full-game downloads, so having them next gen seems a given! How much of the library is made available will be the big question mark.

You are A consumer but not THE consumer. Software engineers often times have a problem differentiating these realities. You apparently can't differentiate between your needs and the needs of the user base.

You have to realize that what you want is irrelevant, and rightfully so.

Who is THE consumer then? I'd like to meet this person! Or is reality that there is a wide range of consumers (anyone who buys consoles and games for them) covering a lot of tastes and needs, all of which are targets for the console companies, and all of whom need to be considered when designing a new system if you don't want to alienate potential customers.

If console A releases with no DD, and console B releases with full game DD availibilty alongside normal distribution - heck, let's give them a DD only model to save costs, so there's no price difference - which is eastmen more likely to buy? And many thousands like him? Clearly his position isn't irrelevant. It's a piece of the whole picture, it's representative of a section of the market, it's all money that the console companies want, and they are going to have to consider it, unless their plan is to ignore everything but the lowest common denominator. That's a vallid strategy to reduce complexities, but you are then artificially limiting your market, and if a rival manages to pitch a product that serves both the needs of the mainstream and the varied needs of the wider market, they'll have the upper hand in terms of potential install base and forward momentum.

Tell me, is it a lack of intelligence on your part that you don't see this, or just that is was an argument that hadn't occured which doesn't reflect on your intelligence at all?

 

[Squilliam]

In my very humble and often wrong opinion, the big digital distribution push will come not from the console games themselves. I think it will come from small utility software which doesn't take up much space at all.

Now im assuming the razor/blade model is deal or otherwise shelved for the next generation.

I believe what games like Wii Fit on the Wii proves is that applications are definately in demand for consoles so long as it is the right application. If you limit yourself to just games / media then you limit your potential audience.

Apple doesn't struggle to make money because their walled garden is a lot more open than a home console. Unique possibilities have opened up and the market has developed because of that relative freedom.

I think that one of the console makers is going to open up their console and benefit from a significant competitive advantage, at least in the short term. So whilst the value to data ratio for games might not be worthwhile for universal digital distribution of games. It does make a lot of sense for utilities and 4-16GB of flash could go a long way.

 

[Arwin]

Speaking of how wildly variable 3G internet is, here are two tests I did within a minute of each other through my iPhone. I must add, there's a 2GB data cap here for that, which is laughable if you want to use it as your main internet connection. It's early morning here so these are the best results you're going to see out of it. During the day its 0.5Mbit or less.

I ran the test a bunch of times at different times and the ping is never less than ~250ms.

Tried it here too ... got 200ms as best results for 3G (with five bars), with 1300ms as worst (3 bars)! Ping for wifi is around 80ms, and direct connection on PC (though going through 2 routers to the cable modem) is 30ms. Best speeds on 3G are 3.5 / 0.28 and on WiFi 10.73 / 3.62. PC best speeds are 28 / 3.6 ... (my WiFi is the limiting factor here for the download speeds on iPhone as my laptop gets the same results when on Wifi)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ping for wifi is around 80ms, and direct connection on PC (though going through 2 routers to the cable modem) is 30ms.

That surprises me. My Wifi ping is 34ms. I can't see why Wifi would add as much as 50ms to a transmission unless you are struggling with packet loss.

 

[Arwin]

That's the iPhone. I expect my laptop wifi will show something like 30ms as well.

 

[Toaddio]

Who is THE consumer then? I'd like to meet this person! Or is reality that there is a wide range of consumers (anyone who buys consoles and games for them) covering a lot of tastes and needs, all of which are targets for the console companies, and all of whom need to be considered when designing a new system if you don't want to alienate potential customers.

There are billions of consumers but only one console released every 5-10 years and that one console has to cover the largest potential userbase possible. What you or I want as individuals is irrelevant when compared to the market.

It's important for designers (both software and hardware) to remove their own personal bias from the design process. One way to do this is with "personas":

http://www.hceye.org/HCInsight-Nielsen.htm

As convenient as it may be for some, a download only console would only work in a few countries. I'm not sure how that fact can be so blindly ignored. I'm not even sure what percentage of the United States is ready for a download only console.

If we built a persona for the next generation worldwide console market, would 10% be ready for download only? 20%? In any case it would be incredibly limiting.

Who is the consumer? You have to do some serious market research to find out. Do some research and build some personas. A download only console is most likely the way of the future but would be a niche product right now based on high speed Internet access around the world.

We have two good examples of download only consoles in the iPhone and the PSPGo. One is successful and one wasn't. The successful one has convenient network access and the other doesn't. It's not the only factor in the success or failure of a device but it's probably a deciding factor and would be for a console. A good survey of users would probably solidify that fact.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Who is the consumer? You have to do some serious market research to find out. Do some research and build some personas.

Alternatively sample a wide range of real-live living people who provide actual honest viewpoints, instead of a load of imagined people who may be imagined wrongly for the same reasons an individual can't imagine what the rest-of-the-world is like.

A good survey of users would probably solidify that fact.

Hmmm, what could be good here is a place where people can express their ideas about what they personally would like. Then we could accumulate and review those opinions and formulate an overall idea of the state of the marketplace and receptibility to and plausibility of a DD system. We'd need some sort of...forum, if you like, where people could discuss ideas. It'd have to be a welcoming place where people aren't insulted for seeing things differently though, or you'd discourage certain elements and get very skewed perspectives. I wonder where we could find such a platform...?

 

[Toaddio]

Hmmm, what could be good here is a place where people can express their ideas about what they personally would like. Then we could accumulate and review those opinions and formulate an overall idea of the state of the marketplace and receptibility to and plausibility of a DD system. We'd need some sort of...forum, if you like, where people could discuss ideas. It'd have to be a welcoming place where people aren't insulted for seeing things differently though, or you'd discourage certain elements and get very skewed perspectives. I wonder where we could find such a platform...?

Holy $h#T! I have an idea!

Seriously though, it just seems like a dead end conversation. The iPhone has proved that with a consistent network a download only console could work we just know for a fact that the network infrastructure isn't in place.

As for personas, a very good one could be built from this thread.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Personally I wouldn't take the iPhone as a example for why DD only would work as games that only cost a few bucks and are only a couple of mb large isn't the same as a full price multi gb game. Steam would be a much better example.