yes, AFAIK it is linked to your gamertag just as is every piece of DL material and (history is stored on LIVE servers) so you can recover your purchased data by re-downloading it.
RUMOR: Xbox 360 20GB SKU to be replaced by 60GB SKU
- Thread starter AzBat
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yes, AFAIK it is linked to your gamertag just as is every piece of DL material and (history is stored on LIVE servers) so you can recover your purchased data by re-downloading it.
IMO more data will be available in the future as procedurally-generated offline contents and data obtained from the real world such as Google earth data or other sensory inputs. I think there will also be a technology breakthrough, enabled by increasing computing performance, about automatically adding metadata and indexes to such realworld data and using them for a game. Also real assets sharing with feature films may be possible. 200GB is still small
Rational thought would warn us against making such absolute claims. After all, 128K ought to be enough RAM for anyone, right? And 50GB games would have seemed like a fever dream back when games came on 5 1/4" floppies.
The game delivery kiosk idea eliminates online games purchase, which are quite important for some people, not just for price but also convenience. Download games is not gonna happen any time soon on 50+ GB games. Only half the next-gen consoles appear to be online and downloading things.Who needs a physical distribution format at all?
This is going to be interesting in 10 years.
Are you still able to download you movies on the next XBOX and the one after that.
Will it ever require something that you pay for "on the side".
Will it ever be possible to make a backup.
What if Microsoft folds, where does the movies go (i know this is far out).
Having a movie library on your XBOX account will force you to always own a XBOX in order to be able to actually see it.
In many respects these questions are exactly the same for all Digital Distribution models.
I think there are so many unsolved questions when it comes to digital distribution that i must confess i find it hard to believe that people would actually support it.
Again, this is about purchases not renting movies.
What happens when your disc gets wrecked or lost or stolen? You pretty much have to buy another one, assuming its still available for purchase.
While there is potential downsides to DD, there are upsides also.
How many people still prize their VHS/Beta collection that they've spent thousands on over the years? A purchase of anything isn't generally a purchase for life. Those shoes you buy, that car, that console, all get replaced after a while. How many people are still running the software they bought 10 years ago? As a product, getting replaced after a while isn't any different from the norm. It will be a bizzaro shock that people will be up in arms about if one day they can download movies they've bought and the next they can't, but relative to everything else regards short-lived purchases in life that they happily accept, it's no different.
Of course, and that is fair enough. With 700 DVD´s that would be alot of bad luck if all 700 went bad. And it´s pretty much up to myself to take care of. My online account can get hacked as well (stolen).
Shoes, software, cars? ehmm lets stick to movies?
VHS was "replaced" by DVD, it wasn´t closed down, you can still watch them, they didn´t go away because the Players were killed. Actually a prime example of why it´s good to own the movies
Physical media is the only way to be sure.
Of course, and that is fair enough. With 700 DVD´s that would be alot of bad luck if all 700 went bad. And it´s pretty much up to myself to take care of. My online account can get hacked as well (stolen).
Shoes, software, cars? ehmm lets stick to movies?
VHS was "replaced" by DVD, it wasn´t closed down, you can still watch them, they didn´t go away because the Players were killed. Actually a prime example of why it´s good to own the movies
Physical media is the only way to be sure.
Over time, though, would most people be willing to keep legacy equipment around to play obsoleted media? And what happens when the players break and you can't buy a new one?
Just playing Devil's Advocate there, as I actually agree to the extent that I would at least like the option to have a physical copy of some media.
I would actually like to see a hybrid approach. My ideal digital distribution service would allow me to pay a flat (monthly, yearly?) fee to access a comprehensive library of movies/TV shows/music/games on demand. For the things I want to own I would still have the option of having a physical copy mailed to me. The best of both worlds.
I think something like that is likely, too, though the flat subscription fee is probably a pipe dream as I'd expect most vendors to push a "pay-per-view" model
.Meh, generating stupid amounts of assets is easy. 200gb of quality assets will not happend unless games start getting movie budgets.
When the media is obsolete, sure who cares then. But with physical media it´s still a choice i can make. I can still buy a VHS player today, most likely better and cheaper than the machine i owned 8 years ago.
With DVD it´s the same, hardware will be around for a long time (just as the media).
With a Digital Distribution everything is being decided for me. Not to mention i will lock myself into one supplier, unless i want to build a small tower of "topset" boxes.
If Hollywood is smart (wait.... lol!) they would seize the chance now and create a standard for Digital Distribution. And by Standard i mean a way for consumers to be certain that a DD purchase at X would be transferable to Y. They should setup some standards on what and how you transfer the ownership of course. And make sure the distributors (MS, Apple, Sony etc) was required to accept transfers. And write up rules on how long they support a purchase, for example minimum 30 years.
For example, i buy a 720p movie from Live, i then decided to ditch my 360 and purchase a Apple TV instead. My movies from Live should be transfered to Apple TV.
Or if my Distributor, for example Pwnage-Movies.TV went broke i could transfer my purchases to another distributor.
But they are not smart and they will kill this market and leave the control to someone else.. yawn
a Windows Live account has to be factored into this equation somewhere as well I would think. I know for the most part your Xbox Live account can be (is?) linked to your Windows account so IF an Xbox no longer existed would you be able to DL the media to another source such as a Windows PC?
perhaps
perhaps
Absolutely, Apple, Microsoft and Sony all have different ways to reach their audience if their given hardware platform should fold.
That's the problem. I DON'T want to buy a PS3. I already have an investment in the 360. I would have thought Microsoft would want to keep as many 360 owners as it can from going to the PS3. That was the whole point of offering the HD-DVD player was it not? I can't fathom why Microsoft isn't concerned with loosing support to the PS3 now that Blu-ray has won the war. Rental downloads are not a replacement for physical media purchases.
I wasn't talking about supporting Blu-ray from the beginning. I completely understood now and then why neither format was selected. When I talking about Microsoft's lack of foresight with regard to Blu-ray, I was talking about not having a plan to support once Blu-ray once the HD-DVD format died. Supposedly it was all about customer choice in the beginning, but now we're not getting that choice. We're forced to buy from another company to get something that our 360's should already be able to handle. Are you saying that the 360 isn't technically capable of handling Blu-ray? That can only be the reason why you're not doing it.
If you think download rentals are more interesting than providing your customers with the choice you so adamantly beat your chest about earlier, then you sorely underestimated your customers.
Tommy McClain
I don't think that's practical even if these companies had a desire to co-operate in this way. That's why I put forward a subscription-based model as the most attractive. You pay a flat fee to access all the content available. Should the company go out of business you just move to another service. The content you want is always going to be available somewhere. I believe that if they were to create a service like the one I described above and charged the right price for it it would do a lot to mitigate their piracy problems, too.
This, of course, only happens if the media companies can contain their greed and not demand the relatively unattractive pay-per-play model. Yeah, right...
Conspiracy theorists (myself included!) think not. It was just to add some artillery the otherwise feeble forces of the HD DVD camp and try and impact the BRD victory to affect that market, for both impact on PS3 sales and on BRD adoption versus MS backed formats/platforms. According to Toshiba's figures on bowing out, out of 700k HD DVD players sold, 300k were to XB360 owners. The fight would have been over much sooner with the HD DVD addon. MS are perhaps a little disappointed they couldn't string out the FUD for longer and really mess BRD about.
The fact that you are expressing this with such certainty makes it look like you came to your conclusion first and then went about finding a way for the facts to back it up rather than looking at the facts and seeing what conclusions could be drawn.
1. We don't really know what was going on behind the scenes. To imply that the only reason that the HD DVD add-on existed was to sabotage BluRay seems pretty narrow-minded to me. I would expect that the issue was a lot more complicated than that. I mean are you willing to endorse the idea that MS knew that HD DVD was doomed to failure and they were able to convince poor naive Toshiba that they had a chance so they'd commit to spending $1B dollars of their money just so MS could sabotage BluRay. Really?
2. I think you are looking at BluRay's victory as some sort of coronation which was unfortunately delayed by some terrorist uprising which had to be put down first. What it was was two competing products with different resources and strategies available to them and one product had the right combination to make the market choose it over the other. And the result to the consumer is cheaper players, sooner. That's no bad thing.
And for those speculating that there will be no BluRay add-on becuase MS is anti-BR, let's apply Occam's Razor:
- The HD DVD add-on was undesirable to >97% of your user base (3% attach rate minus the people who bought it to use as a PC drive). Is a BluRay add-on going to be significantly more attractive? Could they reasonably anticipate the kind of sales it would take for it to make sense for them to commit to developing, testing, supporting (software upgrades, warranty and repair, infrastructure to build, warehouse, ship) and selling (promotion, getting stores to dedicate shelf space to yet another 360 accessory) a new product that offers the exact same functionality as a prior product that consumers clearly and emphatically rejected?
And then you have Microsoft hastening to add BluRay support to Windows, which would seem to me to be more significant of a commitment of support than another 360 add-on that almost nobody wants. Maybe that's yet another part of their plot and I just can't see it?
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Microsofts next machine is about 3.5 years away, I imagine they will be going blu-ray with that one. In the meantime, as much of a blu-ray whore as I am, I'll admit that most people I know just don't seem to care all that much about it. So, while Microsoft will lose some people to PS3 from not having it (like you perhaps), I'm guessing they feel they won't lose enough to make selling a blu-ray add on worth while.
Plus, remember the side benefits of not going blu right away. Microsoft can sit back and let Sony spend billions on it to make it a viable product, market it, etc. In 2011 Microsoft can then introduce their Xbox 720 with blu-ray standard at low cost, and thank Sony for saving them billions in losses now that Sony has absorbed all that for them.
Finally, if they did offer a blu-ray add on, every blu-ray disc sale is potentially a loss of a downloadable content sale. They make money from the latter, not the former. So there isn't a huge hurry for them to compete with themselves. Sure they had the hd-dvd ad on, but that existed only to counter Sony. If the PS3 didn't have blu-ray standard, the 360 hd-dvd add on would have never existed.
No, it wasn't doomed to failure. But it wasn't a guaranteed success and prior to the HD DVD launch, there was plenty of reason to think BRD would win out. Toshiba invested their money because they thought they had a chance, they weren't pushed into it by MS. MS backed the HD DVD camp as a 'best of both worlds' manoeuvre. If HD DVD won, they got some royalties. If it didn't, it didn't, but as long as the format was out there it'd slow BRD down which is better for an MS distribution network. If the format war had been dragged out for two more years and people didn't know which platform to buy into, wouldn't cheap downloaded movies that run on your MS PC or Console be all the more appealing?
Did I say it was? But on the flip side for those who bought HD DVD, it was a bad thing...
Did I say that my conspiracy theories were about MS not releasing a BRD drive now, or was I only talking about why the HD DVD drive was launched in response to AzBat's comment -
The whole point of offering the HD DVD drive was not to keep as many XB360 owners as it can from going PS3. Well, actually I suppose it was, if you count PS3 as a BRD player, then wanting to keep people from buying into a format they didn't have a significant share of was their intention!