Why not make a whole full-size game downloadable on XBL?

[Shifty Geezer]

Personally, i don't know why people don't just go Unlimited... After seeing how fast it is, and after finding places to download things from, they WILL start big downloads sooner or later...

I'm on F2S, £16 ish pm for 2 Mb, 2 GB limit. Speed wise you shouldn't need to pay any more for 8 Mb as if your line is enabled for that, you can't really run slower as it were. 2 GB is just about right for me. I do have a BW monitor and don't get to watch large HD trailers or listen to online radio etc. but mostly I'm referencing text and forums, and a lot of these other features just aren't a quality I care for. Online radio tends to sound robotic due to compression!

I'm eyeing up a TalkTalk deal that is phones and Broadband for £20 pm (excluding line rental). For a flat fee, unlimited national and international (to 28 destination) phone calls, and 40 GB limit, is very reasonable for this corner of the globe.

And that really shows the problem with online distribution. Ultimately it would have to be a localised service, and concurrent with conventional distribution for those parts of the world where distribution isn't up to snuff and won't be for years, possibly decades for more substanital content. As an option for cheaper games for those with the broadband capacity to accomodate it's a good idea, but a total switch to online distribution will be kept to smaller games for a long time. We have to look to Korea to see what the future of online might be like for us more backward nations!

 

[Phil]

I'm on F2S, £16 ish pm for 2 Mb, 2 GB limit.

WHAT? 2 GB limit? That's what I usually download on average in half a day if not less...

 

[AlNom]

The higher the quality of porn, the higher the overall bandwidth offered.

 

[McHuj]

I think central to this delivery scheme will be Vista (or whatever Media Center edition there is)

Allowing XBox to download full games is great and I would love the idea, and I bet there will be some sort of system in the future, but not until when Vista hits.

Even though Xbox360 (currently) has only a 20GB hard drive, a Vista PC could have (almost) unlimited storage. So downloading games to a Vista PC, then caching them on your Xbox HD would be a solution that would not surprise me in the least. This way MS gets to sell you new Xbox360s as well as another reason to push their new OS.

Couple Vista, Xbox, and the rumored Alexandria media service, and MS has a full distribution system for all media content and games.

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

He got the first two numbers wrong, but his calculations following the 8Mb figure are right as far as i can see... with 8Mb, it takes 2 secs to dload 1MB (assuming top speed the whole time), and after that all the rest seems right...

Oh yeah. It was the switching from 4MB/s to 8Mb/2s that threw me.

 

[London Geezer]

WHAT? 2 GB limit? That's what I usually download on average in half a day if not less...

Downloading HD National Geographics videos i suppose.........

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Couple Vista, Xbox, and the rumored Alexandria media service, and MS has a full distribution system for all media content and games.

Sounds expensive though. Needing an expensive new OS (and PC to run it) to get at downloadable content is far from ideal. XB360 is already online. All it really needs is a larger HDD and background downloading.

 

[function]

Just a couple of points, really.

- Street Fighter 2 is a "full sized game", as are games like Tetris, Ikaruga etc ...

- Half Life 2 is fully downloadable online, and hasn't suffered from being cut back in any way.

MS, Sony, EA, Valve etc know the days of full online distribution are rapidly approaching. Some of them are already ready, and just waiting for public acceptance to catch on.

 

[Phil]

Downloading HD National Geographics videos i suppose.........

Yeah, err.. ahem.. exactly! I tell you, they can be sooo addicting...

 

[scooby_dooby]

Sounds expensive though. Needing an expensive new OS (and PC to run it) to get at downloadable content is far from ideal. XB360 is already online. All it really needs is a larger HDD and background downloading.

He makes a good point though, if you're already running Vista, and already using the MEdia Centre extender services that come with it, i.e. PVR, Online Radio, My Videos, My Pictures etc, it makes sense to store your downloaded games on there as well.

This solves the problem of limited storage, expecially when you look towards the 2008/2009 timeframe when 300-500gb HDD's should be pretty common, Vista widespread, and xbox 360's priced @ $99.

The games(as well as all other media downloads including full length movies and TV shows) could be stored on the PC, and transferred on request to the X360. Should be able to transfer aproxx 8GB in 15-20 minutes on a wired network.

Also, I don't know why it would have to be an either/or situation, they could allow you to download from the service and store on HDD, or use Media Centre Extender for more functionality.

 

[McHuj]

Also, I don't know why it would have to be an either/or situation, they could allow you to download from the service and store on HDD, or use Media Centre Extender for more functionality.

They could, but it will come down to what maximizes revenue for MS, and indirectly what Sony is doing with their online services.

There really is no hardware/technical limitation why can't I stream video to my Xbox from my WindowsXP pc? However, I need a MCE edition. There's really no difference between XP and MCE other then some extra software, but I would have to upgrade to a whole new PC since you just can't buy a MCE update.

If Sony fails to deliver a compeling alternative to Live for games and media, there's really no incentive for MS to offer full online service at one low price.

My bet is that they'll choose a tiered approach:

just Xbox360: Demo dowloads, limited media downloads/streaming from Live
Xbox360 + PC: Demo downloads, limited media downloads and streaming Live or PC
Xbox360 + Vista PC: Full Game downloads, full media (HD movies) downloads and streaming from Live and PC

It maybe expensive, but honestly, MS needs to offer a compeling reason for the mass consumer to upgrade to Vista and this would be just one of the,

 

[AlNom]

Firingsquad did an interview with the Ritual, and the guy said that they were talking to MS about bringing the Episodes to XBL... so that might just be a start if it follows through.

FiringSquad: Are there any plans to bring SiN Episodes to next generation consoles?

Steve Hessel: - We’re in talks with Microsoft about getting SiN Episodes on Xbox Live Marketplace, which is a really great outlet for the game. We’ll have more on that at a later time.

Steve Nix: - There are a lot of gamers who prefer to play on the consoles and we need to make sure we are not ignoring those customers. We are extremely focused on a successful launch of the first episode for the PC and working on our PC based partnerships with Microsoft under the Games for Windows program and Logitech on the G15 keyboard side. The PC is a large and viable market and we are first and foremost concerned about a super high quality experience for those customers on day one. Once we’ve nailed that with Emergence, we will be devoting more time to our specific plans for the next gen consoles.

Link

 

[scooby_dooby]

They could, but it will come down to what maximizes revenue for MS, and indirectly what Sony is doing with their online services.

There really is no hardware/technical limitation why can't I stream video to my Xbox from my WindowsXP pc? However, I need a MCE edition. There's really no difference between XP and MCE other then some extra software, but I would have to upgrade to a whole new PC since you just can't buy a MCE update.

If Sony fails to deliver a compeling alternative to Live for games and media, there's really no incentive for MS to offer full online service at one low price.

My bet is that they'll choose a tiered approach:

just Xbox360: Demo dowloads, limited media downloads/streaming from Live
Xbox360 + PC: Demo downloads, limited media downloads and streaming Live or PC
Xbox360 + Vista PC: Full Game downloads, full media (HD movies) downloads and streaming from Live and PC

It maybe expensive, but honestly, MS needs to offer a compeling reason for the mass consumer to upgrade to Vista and this would be just one of the,

Well if you listen to the software guys who designed the 360 dash, the reason XP does not support streaming is because it was simply too low on a long priority list. He ridiculed the idea that it was an attempt to push Vista. Now, I don't exactly believe that but that's the official word.

The incentive for MS as I see it is 3 fold, 1) gain console marketshare by offering more services 2) increase revenue streams from movie/tv downloads 3) push vista and the entire media centre concept

It's not about offering anything for one low price, but about pushing the idea of the windows PC being your digital CD changer for the entire house, whether that's streaming video to 2 or 3 tv sets in the house, or storing dozens of games that can fed out to the various 360's in the house on request.

With that said, I think the games thing is probably a little ahead of it's time, mainly because of rights management, and possible pirating issues. But hopefully they really push the media centre idea to the next level, and that will set up the inevitable move to mass storage of games on the PC as well so it could act as your all in one, digital streaming device for an entire home, feeding & sharing everything from music to videos to games to multiple displays.

 

[NavNucST3]

MS should at least ink a deal with someone like Gamestop or any other national (whatever country you are in) retailers to let me buy games from the 360, while browsing marketplace. I mean they already have my CC on file, they already have my address, it should be a simple matter of me playing a demo, deciding I like it, and then being able to select from within the game or within marketplace in a section entitled "Coming Soon": Buy Now!

This way you have a pseudo-online distribution method that still keeps the retailers in the mix...that is until the inevitable digi-distro model roles out. However, even when that happens it will probably take another generation or two before retailers REALLY have to worry.


I would like to see the numbers on how many people downloaded the PGR3 demo (or are still downloading the demo) that should gives us at least a tiny indication of how people are willing to spend their time and hard drive size. For those that don't know the PGR3 demo is 1.2GBs

 

[Rockster]

THEY CAN'T. It's not about cost, bandwidth, or technology. It's about the relationships and eco system that has been built and established with retailers who sell the merchandise. If Microsoft adopts an online model, (which is ultimately inevitable BTW), it directly effects the profits of retailers everywhere. In retaliation, Microsoft would get poor/less shelf space, ad locations, inventory, word of mouth, etc.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Also worth thinking about the target market for Xbox Live when it was new... They were counting on the college students who would be expected to spend some time playing games and would all have broadband connections. Unfortunately, it's also common for a lot of universities to limit bandwidth within dorms and apartment complexes and not in, say, labs and offices. Hell, when I was going to school, the limit on all the dorms was 500 MB of transferred data per month. This is exclusively external -- internal bandwidth was unlimited, so you can at least play network games over LAN, but not internet. Some other schools give you unlimited internal bandwidth and unlimited bandwidth to any .edu domains (to download research material), but anything else is limited.

 

[scooby_dooby]

THEY CAN'T. It's not about cost, bandwidth, or technology. It's about the relationships and eco system that has been built and established with retailers who sell the merchandise. If Microsoft adopts an online model, (which is ultimately inevitable BTW), it directly effects the profits of retailers everywhere. In retaliation, Microsoft would get poor/less shelf space, ad locations, inventory, word of mouth, etc.

It would be a gradual shift that starts out very slowly, so I don't really see the problem. Any full game you can buy online, you would be able to buy in-store, and only a relatively small portion of users would have the means and desire to use the online option. I don't think this will happen for a long time at least 5+ years away IMO.

 

[superguy]

THEY CAN'T. It's not about cost, bandwidth, or technology. It's about the relationships and eco system that has been built and established with retailers who sell the merchandise

.

I see that. Moreover, the hardware gains retailers almost no profit I believe. They are basically asked to carry hardware, and make money on the games.

On the other hand say there were NO game sales. Why would a retailer shun MS/Sony/Nintendo? Even on no profit items, stores use these often to get people in the store. It's well known that once in a store for one item people tend to buy other stuff. Not only that but accesories are likely very high profit as well. And why would a retailer not carry lets say, Xbox360? It's one of the most in demand items right now and customers would expect you to carry it.

So even with NO games I think retailers would carry videogame hardware. They have to, their competitor would.

Like I said I work in distribution, and people are telling me that soon when you go to the store and but a DVD, there will be a machine and they will burn it for you on the spot from a master disc. There will be no more DVD distribution. I can see problems with this model but also huge advantages. I assume they will print a nice DVD cover for you. You have NO physical inventory except blank DVD's to deal with. You never have an overstock of one movie and not enough of another. Moreover, you can carry an endless back catalogue.

They can do this on games too. It's a total tangent from the downloading topic, but it doesn't cut the retailer out.

Streetfighter 2 on XBLA is a good point. It IS a full game. Instead of charging you 29.95 for streetfighter compilation #XXX on DVD disc, you are just downloading it. So we're already there in a sense I suppose. Of course, SF2 is NOT a full fledged game like what I mean in the topic, because it is only 50MB or something like that. In the topic I meant a full size release of Gigabytes, like Tomb Raider Legend, Gears of War, etc.

 

[LunchBox]

Downloading games would get rid of the problem for people running around looking for a game that's sold out or out of print...

But might cause more problems like if the server crashed while in mid-download or service issues regarding more people downloading = less bandwidth to go around...

 

[randycat99]

Downloading games would get rid of the problem for people running around looking for a game that's sold out...

Running around is a problem? Sometimes it is a bonus to step into a videogame shop every now and then just to see what's up. Are sold-out games really a common problem? Though, I'm a late buyer, it's never happened to me once (game sold-out). Usually, I'm out scanning for a cheapy used game. The hunt is part of the fun of being out of the house for me.

I'll agree with you in a second that on-demand videos would make a killing on the rental store scene (where very frequently I'm left empty-handed), but videogames on the retail scene? I'm just not seeing that as a great problem demanding a solution.

...or out of print...

If you are looking for a game that old, you'll be ordering online, anyway. It just goes w/o saying that the online disc purchase opens a wider net for a successful find.