Why digital only consoles won't happen

[hardcore_gamer]

Some have been saying that the future of gaming is digital downloads only with no discs. I however think this is a load of bullshit for one simple reason: data packages and internet speed.

We are already seeing games on steam require over 50 GB of hard drive space. I have a large data package from my ISP, but it's still only 250 GB a month. If games keep getting bigger in the future, I can't download all my games. Not to mention how long it takes to download the damn things.

[scifista42]

hardcore_gamer said:

Some have been saying that the future of gaming is digital downloads only with no discs.

It's because these people also believe that once in the future, there will be a 100% reliable technology to distribute ultrafast internet connection to absolutely every particular place on this planet's surface and above and under it. Who knows, maybe there will be, ONCE...

[geo]

I'm never buying another disc. Especially after losing my software case.

Nothing will ever be non disc based. Until records, CDs and DVDs aren't sold anymore there will always be disc based sales. Even if iTunes supposedly has 30% of all music sales, 70% still want a physical disc.

Parents and gift givers want to give a gift, something to hold in your hands. People want to feel like they own something and don't just have it. If you get tired of something then sell it.

Manufacturers and distributors are big business and they'll fight to keep that system in place. They get plenty of money and a cut of sales. Another reason is hard drives are more expensive for the console company. My 250 MB PS3 was instantly full after only a few games that would be on disc.

50 GB? Sounds like Unreal. I laugh when Steam tells me the game will take up 8 GB of space, then the download file is 8 GB when ever other 8 GB game has far less download file size.

I've got 1 TB of drive space on my Steam Box. Only have 500 games installed and the drive is full.

[Blastfrog]

I prefer DRM-free digital material and think that physical medium belongs in museums to preserve what was unique about them and keep them in good condition.

[geo]

Don't forget there are people out there with no Internet. Heck there wasn't even telephone lines to every house in the US until maybe five or ten years ago.

[Maes]

The whole DLM/DRM thing caters to a very specific target group/demographic, and takes those assumptions (high internet speed, a dislike for physical media etc.) for granted. Since those assumptions seems to hold true in the biggest market by far (the USA), there's no deny it will eventually dominate by %/number of total users.

But the situation in localized markets may be entirely different, e.g. in some markets, physical media will remain dominant and demand for it will be high, even if it will be a tiny fraction of the grand total worldwide. And as we know, the customer is always right (at least in his own neck of the woods).

[Aliotroph?]

Discs appeared surprisingly popular when I was in Japan this week. Not sure where people put all those CDs they buy.

[Maes]

Aliotroph? said:

Not sure where people put all those CDs they buy.

Not many CDs here but you get the picture. Plus, the True Otaku (TM) always buys TWO of everything: a display/collection-only copy, and a daily use/beater copy (don't ask me how this extends to figurines, ask Jodwin as he's the expert here).

And while we're at it, I'm certain that the availability of manga and anime online in torrents etc. has not halted any collection compulsion/demand for the genuine article.

[Linkrulezall]

Optical media needs to either die or be made more resilient, I am sick to death of scratched disks and shattered hard drives. I'd own an SSD if I had the money, and while cartridges do seem to deteriorate with age at least you can put them through a pretty hefty bit of abuse before they stop working (unlike CDs and DVDs which get scratched way too easily and then never work again). Ralph Baer himself even said once that all you need to do to remove the oxidation which causes problems in cartridges is run an eraser over the pins, whereas if your disc is scratched then you're well and truly fucked unless the scratches are shallow enough that resurfacing the disk fixes them.

Oh, right, we were talking about digital downloads.

I recall this concept being tossed about as early as the early 2000's, with the Phantom:

Don't remember it? It was never released because all the potential sponsors thought purely digital content was a stupid idea.

[Linguica]

geo said:

I've got 1 TB of drive space on my Steam Box. Only have 500 games installed and the drive is full.

Your definition of "only" differs from mine

[geo]

Linguica said:

Your definition of "only" differs from mine

Yeah, but when I've got 1,100 Steam games. It only fits half. I see this or any sale and think nah I've got enough games I never play. I've played more games this past year than I have in 20 years. I really played Doom for 15 years with only a few diversions here and there.

I remember Phantom as well.

There's always OnLive. You don't even have to own the game, just get the subscription.

[hardcore_gamer]

geo said:

There's always OnLive. You don't even have to own the game, just get the subscription.

But don't you lose all your games if you end your service? Or is that some other service?

[Maes]

hardcore_gamer said:

But don't you lose all your games if you end your service? Or is that some other service?

Since all you get is a video terminal with a remote controller, you never own anything in the first place, and not a single bit of information/game content is sent your way. Not even an "authorized" encrypted copy locally cached to your PSX4/XboxOne/whatever. Nada. They simply cut the cable.

[Technician]

geo said:

Yeah, but when I've got 1,100 Steam games.

Have you even beat a fraction of those?

[geo]

hardcore_gamer said:

But don't you lose all your games if you end your service? Or is that some other service?

Someone might know more than I, but I think they save your data even if you're not a member. They want you back I would assume.

I tried it online with a week long free trial. I just couldn't get into it. You can play it online without a console.

From their website it looks more like they're doing cloud bullshit now. Yeah cloud. What we used to call servers. Now it just seems like a run of the mill net company oh that also has cloud gaming, but that's a side note now.

Looks like a lot of devices you wouldn't expect to run Onlive can run Online. You just need a controller.

It is a cheap way to play a lot of games, but you need to be close to a major city to play smoothly.

Looks like the founder stepped down as CEO 2 years ago. He's also noted as an entrepreneur. Never a good mix. Then the company was sold for almost $5 million. Whenever I hear entrepreneur, I think 'starts a company to sell a company.' Through programming, I've dealt with a lot of entrepreneurs. Get in on the ground floor!

[geo]

Technician said:

Have you even beat a fraction of those?

Beat? Heck no. I think according to my 'recently played' I've only played 250 of them. Looking through my history, maybe I've beaten 100 - 130 games. Not everything is even beatable. I'm really trying to complete them all. Seriously.

Some are 30 - 60 minutes. Seems like most of the games are 4 - 8 hours. When I go into a game, I usually look at how long it takes to complete and the file space it takes up.

When I was little playing Nintendo games, I kept a written list of everything I had completed.

[geekmarine]

I dunno man, I've more or less already converted to digital-only. I don't have a single disc for my PC, all my 360 games were digital purchases, and I've even converted my Wii to be a digital console (I mean, that was with unofficial modding and an external hard drive, but it was probably the best mod I ever installed on my Wii). I realize this won't work for everyone, so I'm guessing there will still be physical game discs into the foreseeable future, but it's easily feasible to switch to digital-only right now.

[Maes]

By imagining the title taken verbatim into the 70s, it could've been part of some debate on whether those newfangled "digital only" consoles with their devilish "CPUs", blocky movement and "programmable memories", would ever replace the purity of Pong's smooth, analog controls and motion ;-)

[Enjay]

Maes said:

The whole DLM/DRM thing caters to a very specific target group/demographic, and takes those assumptions (high internet speed, a dislike for physical media etc.) for granted. Since those assumptions seems to hold true in the biggest market by far (the USA), there's no deny it will eventually dominate by %/number of total users.

To add to that, I think it also holds true for the people making the decisions. People who work in these industries are far more likely to have high internet speed etc and, even with marketing information etc behind them, they will see their situation as normal and will also see those not in thier situation as moving towards it anyway.

[AkiraZXE]

I don't think digital-only is going to happen in my lifetime, but it's definitely taking its hold, especially with older games. I've got all the CDs for Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 not a meter from me at the moment, but it's hard to say they'll be there forever. I don't even know if they'll be there for the next decade. The already bulky CD case they're in is missing quite a few discs from other games over the years, games that seemingly vanished into nothing.

Just look at Strife. That just got its re-release, and it needed one. The already relatively limited number of copies are going to shrink as time goes on, and it wasn't a well-known game to begin with. There are people out there who probably just tossed their copies not knowing that anyone would ever give a damn. Then there's updates to the games so that they work on modern systems and so on. I don't think the market for these games will ever be wide enough to warrant printing physical copies again.

If all digital distribution does come, it'll be a long time from now. I'm less worried about physical copies of games in the future and more worried about already-existing physical copies that will degrade and disappear with no replacements being made.

[geekmarine]

Heh, I hadn't even really thought of that. Of course if you really wanna go back, you gotta wonder if software collections would even survive for systems like the Apple II and the Commodore 64, if not for digital copies of their software libraries existing on the Internet. Even with, say, DOS games, well, a lot of DOS games were released on floppy disks, which would make them unplayable without digital distribution, because most modern systems don't even have floppy drives.

[Waffenak]

Gaming loses something very important with the loss of physical copies. I prefer physical copies of games whenever possible, I only buy games from steam when I don't have any other choice. Game cartridges and cds with their boxes are so much fun fiddle around with. Organizing game library and building it is essential in game collecting. I really hope ps4 and other consoles are not the final console generation like many people say

[Dave The Daring]

According to the original series of Star Trek, most data in the 23rd century will be stored on painted wooden blocks. To access the data on said blocks, we'll simply insert them into the slot of a large console with lots of confusing flashing lights.



This process will probably be familiar to anyone who has used a cartridge-based video game console. There is, however, one major inconvenience that the 23rd century computer user will have to contend with..

Splinters.

[Jonathan]

I think talking about games misses a more important issue: 4K video. People are stating to buy 4K capable displays, and will want content to watch on them. However, the average 4K movie is 50GB. If people expect to be streaming 4K content from Netflix every night, then clearly current broadband capacity isn't going to cut it.

If ISPs and content providers can't reach an agreement on net neutrality and who foots the bill for network upgrades, then maybe we'll see a shift back towards physical media. But I suspect they will, and games will piggyback on those improvements.

[Dave The Daring]

Jonathan said:

I think talking about games misses a more important issue: 4K video.

4K video is a pointless extravagance. Then again, all the TVs I own are CRTs, so maybe I'm just a video miser.

[Quast]

Akira_98 said:

I don't think digital-only is going to happen in my lifetime

Are you 100 years old? Because we are pretty much 90% of the way there already.

If all digital distribution does come, it'll be a long time from now. I'm less worried about physical copies of games in the future and more worried about already-existing physical copies that will degrade and disappear with no replacements being made.

This all comes down to the volatility of any and all data regardless of how it's stored. You could put every bit of data you have on redundant tape drives but you still risk losing everything from the ravages of time.

[FireFish]

Digital only consoles might happen, but they might as well not. Even though it was a handheld, the psp go was not really popular because it was digital only.

And what if the companies close their stores for older consoles (ps3, wii, xbox360) ? Many people would feel ripped off even if the consoles are five years or older when they cant get the games they payed for. People would have to fall back to downloading them from unofficial locations. In a worst case doom scenario even steam on pc could go down together with your account.

Spoiler

B. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
....
C. NO GUARANTEES
NEITHER VALVE NOR ITS AFFILIATES GUARANTEE CONTINUOUS, ERROR-FREE, VIRUS-FREE OR SECURE OPERATION AND ACCESS TO STEAM, THE SOFTWARE, YOUR ACCOUNT AND/OR YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS(S) OR ANY INFORMATION AVAILABLE IN CONNECTION THEREWITH.

Also, with games reaching 20 and 30 gigabytes in size you need a trustworthy ISP, or buy a physical copy.

[geekmarine]

Is anyone else noticing the odd dichotomy here? On the one hand, we're worried and fearful about digital-only copies of games replacing physical copies in the future. On the other hand, we embrace digital copies as a form of insurance with older games because we realize that the physical copies will eventually wear down and degrade (and as the hardware required to read the physical disks themselves wears down and degrades).

I dunno, the way I look at it, even if one has to resort to piracy, if, say, Steam goes down one day or something, I take a certain comfort in knowing that digital copies of games will always be floating around on the Interwebs. Not to condone piracy, but in an odd way, it actually may end up doing some good, helping ensure that digital back-ups of games will always be out there.

[Jaxxoon R]

I'd have to agree about geekmarine about digital copies.

On an unrelated note, wasn't there some SEGA game compilation made sometime during the PS2 era that contained ROMs taken from the internet?

I'm deeply curious about how modern games are going to be dumped/preserved. How are people gonna include the patches/bugfixes/DLC into it all? Or will everyone 30 years from now be stuck emulating the games as they were on the release discs?

Also

Maes said:

-terrifying ugu shit-

If I walked into a room like that I swear to god I'd have a fucking panic attack. The worst part is that 'sumbitch has even got the things organized by hair/dress color... whatdefuck.

I'd say the only thing worse would be a room filled with just as many sleeping wasp nests. Good lord.

[GreyGhost]

geekmarine said:

Not to condone piracy, but in an odd way, it actually may end up doing some good, helping ensure that digital back-ups of games will always be out there.

Heh - sometimes even publishers have to resort to warez in order to re-publish old titles on new mediums. A certain CD-based compilation of Gremlin titles for the Amiga springs to mind. The trackdisk-based protection in most of the games made dumping to CD impractical and it was rumored that Gremlin had mislaid many of the disk images anyway, so the compilation relied heavily on hacks and cracks to produce a playable product, complete with profanity-laden scene intros. :D