Why digital only consoles won't happen

[Technician]

Jaxxoon R said:

I'd have to agree about geekmarine about digital copies. Wasn't there some SEGA game compilation made sometime during the PS2 era that contained ROMs taken from the internet?

That was out of pure convenience on their part.

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?

I'm wondering how one will play games with essential day-one patches in the future if/when their hard drive breaks and the networks are all shutdown. Maybe they'll provide something on the web.

[Jaxxoon R]

Those were actually two unrelated thoughts, I simply forgot to separate them. Essentially it was supposed to be "I agree with geekmarine -- and oh hey also isn't there some thing that happened also?".

[Jodwin]

The only way we might see digital only systems is if retail stores go out of business. As long as they're still a big enough source of revenue physical copies will stay.

[Technician]

Jodwin said:

The only way we might see digital only systems is if retail stores go out of business. As long as they're still a big enough source of revenue physical copies will stay.

Well, places like Blockbuster closed...

[Maes]

Jaxxoon R said:

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?

There are already "steamrips", including server emulation and all, for that matter. And, as with "traditional" pirated/cracked games, they often make for a much more convenient and crap-free archival/distribution form than the legal product.

The only thing that (for now) is really a hindrance to reliably archiving any modern game for the long term, is the (relatively) small size of consumer-grade archival media, and the shitty reliability of multi-TB hard disks. A single 50 GB blu-ray is often not enough to completely store one of those modern elephantine monstrosities, and the modern HD has an average lifespan of 1.5-2 years, while systems like LTO tape are not priced competitively for consumer land. You will have a much better chance at recovering data from a C64-recorded cassette tape 30 years from now, than finding a working multi-TB HD from this era and recovering data from it without the use of a forensic lab.

[Jodwin]

Technician said:

Well, places like Blockbuster closed...

Blockbuster didn't have Black Friday and holiday season sales on its side, though.

[fraggle]

Jonathan said:

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

I'm sure physical discs (ie. Blu-rays) will hang around a bit longer for this exact reason, at least until Internet bandwidth increases enough that it can support downloading/streaming 4K video. But although it might still be a few years yet, the writing is on the wall for physical purchases.

Jodwin said:

The only way we might see digital only systems is if retail stores go out of business. As long as they're still a big enough source of revenue physical copies will stay.

Have you really not been paying attention over the past few years? This is exactly what has been happening. Blockbuster is the obvious example but there are others. In the UK at least, Zavvi (formerly Virgin Megastores) died several years ago, and HMV went into administration last year. Those were the two biggest music store chains and HMV seems to have only stayed alive by switching its focus more towards DVD sales instead. I don't expect it to last much longer.

Realistically, any company whose business model is "selling information in a physical shop" is pretty much doomed at this stage. I expect video game shops to hang around a few more years until Steam finishes eating their lunch. Book shops have managed to stave off their fate by selling coffee as well as books, plus e-book readers still don't have quite enough critical mass yet. But other than specialist book shops I doubt they'll be around much longer either.

[FireFish]

fraggle said:

I'm sure physical discs (ie. Blu-rays) will hang around a bit longer for this exact reason, at least until Internet bandwidth increases enough that it can support downloading/streaming 4K video. But although it might still be a few years yet, the writing is on the wall for physical purchases.

The biggest problem i see with massive digital content are the internet service providers lagging behind on modern usage quota. Downloading 20 gigabyte games, watching 20 gigabyte videos, playing big java, flash, and unity games, adding all the giant 10 to 20 megabyte (compressed) HD images, and browsing the web on top of that to then meet mister throttle.

Or there needs to be a massive boom where as many users as possible make the shift, or individual spikes might suffer from prejudice against large usage quotas.

[Holering]

Because Nvidia is taking over and everyone here likes them.

[geekmarine]

fraggle said:

Realistically, any company whose business model is "selling information in a physical shop" is pretty much doomed at this stage. I expect video game shops to hang around a few more years until Steam finishes eating their lunch. Book shops have managed to stave off their fate by selling coffee as well as books, plus e-book readers still don't have quite enough critical mass yet. But other than specialist book shops I doubt they'll be around much longer either.

I think books have one advantage, besides the fact that some people aren't on-board with book readers yet - there are just so many books out there that there are always going to be books which haven't been converted into digital form. I've actually run into that problem already because I happen to be into books on niche topics that are relatively obscure. I actually think that, going into the future, these kinds of books will actually be more likely to exist in ebook-only form, because it's easier and cheaper to publish that way, but there are plenty of books out there which may never exist in digital form because they're obscure enough that no one will bother.

[Superluigieth1]

Holering said:

Because Nvidia is taking over and everyone here likes them.

Because John Carmack likes Nvidia.

[geo]

I always wondered if Day 1 patches were supposed to prevent piracy by making an awful game that needs to be patched. Or the more logical reason, it takes a month or two to manufacture millions of copies and ship them out to everywhere in the country for a mass release all at once. Perhaps now discs are manufactured quicker.

[geekmarine]

geo said:

I always wondered if Day 1 patches were supposed to prevent piracy by making an awful game that needs to be patched. Or the more logical reason, it takes a month or two to manufacture millions of copies and ship them out to everywhere in the country for a mass release all at once. Perhaps now discs are manufactured quicker.

I get the impression that Day 1 patches are more just a result of companies wanting to rush out games to meet deadlines - like, "Just go ahead and ship it out now, we can fix those game-breaking bugs in a patch." I mean, release dates have become so important nowadays, it's better to ship a broken game on the expected release date and fix it in patches than it is to take extra time to fix the game before releasing it.

[Technician]

Nothing worse than buying a broken product that I have to rely on a service to fix. It's just the worst. Simply the worst.

[MajorRawne]

hardcore_gamer said:

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.

Isn't that two reasons?

[Jodwin]

fraggle said:

Have you really not been paying attention over the past few years? This is exactly what has been happening. Blockbuster is the obvious example but there are others. In the UK at least, Zavvi (formerly Virgin Megastores) died several years ago, and HMV went into administration last year. Those were the two biggest music store chains and HMV seems to have only stayed alive by switching its focus more towards DVD sales instead. I don't expect it to last much longer.

Realistically, any company whose business model is "selling information in a physical shop" is pretty much doomed at this stage. I expect video game shops to hang around a few more years until Steam finishes eating their lunch. Book shops have managed to stave off their fate by selling coffee as well as books, plus e-book readers still don't have quite enough critical mass yet. But other than specialist book shops I doubt they'll be around much longer either.

Or unlike the delusional people here I understand how markets work. One store dying does not automatically mean that a market is no more financially profitable, rather, it only means that there was no more space for as many competitors as before. Not to mention I know better not to confuse game markets with unrelated businesses: Blockbuster was a rental service which is not comparable to retailers as they work to serve different user needs, and you can't compare music to console games as the consumer behaviour and expecations between them are very different.

Steam is never going to kill game retailers for a very simple reason: Game retailers make their money from console games, while Steam makes its money from PC games. These are two entirely separate markets. GameStop reported a net income in 2013, which they would have never done if they were struggling as you seem to believe. Those consumers who buy consoles are used to the idea of purchasing physical copies of video games even while we're just fine with renting ours from Steam, and that behaviour model isn't going to disappear overnight. Not to mention that to buy a console in the first place you need to get it from one kind of a retailer or an other - more often than not that same retailer is also going to be selling physical copies of video games for that same system.



@geekmarine: The reason for day 1 patches is exactly what geo mentioned: It takes literally months to get a console game from the programmer's hard drive into Gamestop for sale. During that time it needs to go through a couple of rounds of internal quality assurance for both Microsoft and Sony, it needs to be sent to production plants for printing on DVDs and finally shipped overseas from China to all over the world and piled on the shelves of your nearby game store. Rather than considering day 1 patches bad we should happy to have them, because at least nowadays developers can utilize all that dead time by working on the games.

[dew]

Jodwin said:

Or unlike the delusional people here I understand how markets work.

Pfffft... hahaha. Market for what, anime dollies? Sorry, I tl;dr'd everything after this awesome statement.

[FireFish]

dew said:

Pfffft... hahaha. Market for what, anime dollies? Sorry, I tl;dr'd everything after this awesome statement.

He made an overstatement, but bashing normal Japanese media and a part of their modern culture is a bit overboard to.

[Jonathan]

Jodwin said:

Or unlike the delusional people here I understand how markets work. One store dying does not automatically mean that a market is no more financially profitable, rather, it only means that there was no more space for as many competitors as before. Not to mention I know better not to confuse game markets with unrelated businesses: Blockbuster was a rental service which is not comparable to retailers as they work to serve different user needs, and you can't compare music to console games as the consumer behaviour and expecations between them are very different.

Steam is never going to kill game retailers for a very simple reason: Game retailers make their money from console games, while Steam makes its money from PC games. These are two entirely separate markets. GameStop reported a net income in 2013, which they would have never done if they were struggling as you seem to believe. Those consumers who buy consoles are used to the idea of purchasing physical copies of video games even while we're just fine with renting ours from Steam, and that behaviour model isn't going to disappear overnight. Not to mention that to buy a console in the first place you need to get it from one kind of a retailer or an other - more often than not that same retailer is also going to be selling physical copies of video games for that same system.

It seems like you are falling prey to special pleading here. When a shift towards away from physical delivery and towards digital is observed across so many entertainment markets, you need a more convincing argument than you've given that games are a rule to themselves.

Existing purchasing behaviour hasn't prevented similar shifts in other markets. Why should gamers be more resistant to digital delivery than people who buy and rent books, music and DVDs? Saying "behaviour and expectations ... are very different" isn't an argument. What are the specific differences that make games and/or gamers less amenable to this shift? Likewise, the need to buy a physical device hasn't served as a bar to digital delivery of music, video and books, so why should it in the case of games consoles?

As for GameStop, they are making money, but their revenues have been flat since 2009, even has the games market overall has grown. And the share of their profits earned from pre-owned games and non-games items is growing at the expense of new games sales. Where's the market growth going? Into digital sales. While GameStop aren't about to collapse anytime soon, as Fraggle said, the writing is on the wall for physical purchase. If and when bandwidth and data-caps become a non-issue, this trend will likely accelerate.