Rainless, I told you so... buh-bye physical media

It's happening sooner than I expected, but here you go:

http://gizmodo.com/5274395/xbox-liv...demand-download-mass-effect-bioshock-and-more

Steam paved the way, then installing games to your hard drive, now downloadable games for the DSi, PSP-Go and 360(full 360 games).

I seriously see BluRay being short lived and in the next gen of consoles if there are physical drives in them then they'll be used only for installing games to the hard drive or as backup for those who don't have good internet service.

As much as I HATE it. Physical media is going the way of the dodo. Next-up pay2play. You'll not own movies any longer, you'll pay to watch them each time you want to. I guess by now I prob would've paid a couple of hundred dollars each for Clerks2, Chasing Amy and History of the World.

These consoles are now pretty much computers lol.

And I still say it won't happen as soon as they want it to.

Nevermind the amount of idiots out there who still don't even know what the internet IS... you still have to factor in the idea that America still has, quite possibly, the slowest internet in the entire world... then you have to factor in the amount of people in the states who are still technology illiterate. THEN of course you have to remember that... for all those people who are signed up to PSN and Xbox Live there are just as many people who have these systems but don't have them connected online. (Do a search for total list of Xbox 360s sold vs total Xbox Live! clients to confirm.)

It would happen in Europe or Asia loooooong before it happened here. And I'm not talking months either... I'm talking YEARS from now.

Until there is a genuine infrastructure in this country to support all that traffic then, whether the OPTION exists or not... downloadable sales will NOT beat out physical media.

I'm thinking there's another ten years before that changes. (Depending on legislation and presidents of course...)

Downloading 4+ GB worth of data isn't practical just yet. Hard drives on consoles also aren't big enough just yet. It's a nice thought, but Rainless is right on this one. So long as the internet isn't very well developed, there's no way a company would fail to put an optical drive in their console.

I would bet big on cable providers resisting it. It's an increased load on their end and the pessemist in me says á la carte bandwidth would just be pushed harder and faster if something like this happened.

But hell i still listen to vinyl (drm that sony!)

whooping_a_panda said:

I would bet big on cable providers resisting it. It's an increased load on their end and the pessemist in me says á la carte bandwidth would just be pushed harder and faster if something like this happened.

But hell i still listen to vinyl (drm that sony!)

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I agree the most with Panda...I see internet providers in the US being the biggest hurdle. With all of them wanting to cap monthly bandwidth they would not be happy about this. Yes a lot of people are not tech savy but you make an easy interface problem solved....I know quite a few people who are not computer literate at all...but they sure know the in's and outs of their ipods and itunes....if it's something they want to use they'll learn how to do it. With Netflix streaming and Hulu taking off..and with Netflix being built into electronics..I also know quite a few people in BFE that can get broadband now..yeah this will happen and it'll happen faster than you think.

I don't think the next round of consoles will be HDD based only...but I bet you'll see a big portion of games that are download only for that Gen. I wouldn't be surprised if one SKU has a drive and one doesn't.

Games now often are breaking 10gb, on a standard US connection that is a long download and console hard drives are small.

whooping_a_panda said:

I would bet big on cable providers resisting it. It's an increased load on their end and the pessemist in me says á la carte bandwidth would just be pushed harder and faster if something like this happened.

But hell i still listen to vinyl (drm that sony!)

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Actually the cable companies can easily be swayed. They already have pay-on-demand programming which is essentially pay 2 play movies. They'd happily up bandwidth speeds for gamers if it meant eliminating Blockbuster in the process so that everybody gets their movies on demand.

I think you may also be selling things short a bit as far as internet access goes. I download gigs worth of data daily on my 17 megabit connection which is modest in terms of what is out there. So, I have to wait an hour for a 4.7GB file, big deal it would take me that long to hop in my car and wade through traffic to my nearest retailer or Blockbuster.

rainless said:

And I still say it won't happen as soon as they want it to.

Nevermind the amount of idiots out there who still don't even know what the internet IS... you still have to factor in the idea that America still has, quite possibly, the slowest internet in the entire world... then you have to factor in the amount of people in the states who are still technology illiterate. THEN of course you have to remember that... for all those people who are signed up to PSN and Xbox Live there are just as many people who have these systems but don't have them connected online. (Do a search for total list of Xbox 360s sold vs total Xbox Live! clients to confirm.)

It would happen in Europe or Asia loooooong before it happened here. And I'm not talking months either... I'm talking YEARS from now.

Until there is a genuine infrastructure in this country to support all that traffic then, whether the OPTION exists or not... downloadable sales will NOT beat out physical media.

I'm thinking there's another ten years before that changes. (Depending on legislation and presidents of course...)

Click to expand...

Ten years sounds about right. I agree with Rainless on this one, digital distribution is going to co-exist with physical media for a very long time because of the reasons he stated in his post.

I still hold the contention that Sony and Microsoft are trying to offer it as much as possible whether it's practical or not as a means to attempt to harm the used games market more than anything else.

-maddog- said:

Games now often are breaking 10gb, on a standard US connection that is a long download and console hard drives are small.

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I had forgotten all about that...

It'll be the biggest problem for Microsoft and all their proprietary BS. If they did start making games downloadable only... unless they started letting you use any drive you wanted like Sony... they'd go down pretty damned fast in the next generation.

Nobody in their right minds is going to pay $200 for a 120GB hard drive.

On the other hand... Sony should start using full sized drives on their next system. If only because they happen to be cheaper than laptop drives. And... hell... they let you use full sized drives in the damned PS2... so why not?

Good riddance to physical media.

No one misses CD's for music and no one's going to miss DVD's / Blurays for games and movies.


I don't understand why you guys keep mentioning things like 10GB files that have to be downloaded in full before you can play them. Think in 21st century terms. Games will be computed somewhere else and streamed to you in an on demand fashion. Your place in the game will be automatically saved in the cloud environment to be resumed whenever.

A latentcy sensitive game would easily be able to be handled by a super computer. Anyone connected to it, playing against someone else that is connected to it would have their ping and graphics adjusted in real time so that every single player in that world saw things in the same relavatistic time frame. If everyone was brought to a 500 ping lag, then everything would seem in real time and flawless. Depending on your bandwidth, graphics would adjust themselves in resolution and detail to cope with your bandwidth.

Shiggity said:

Good riddance to physical media.

No one misses CD's for music and no one's going to miss DVD's / Blurays for games and movies.


I don't understand why you guys keep mentioning things like 10GB files that have to be downloaded in full before you can play them. Think in 21st century terms. Games will be computed somewhere else and streamed to you in an on demand fashion. Your place in the game will be automatically saved in the cloud environment to be resumed whenever.

A latentcy sensitive game would easily be able to be handled by a super computer. Anyone connected to it, playing against someone else that is connected to it would have their ping and graphics adjusted in real time so that every single player in that world saw things in the same relavatistic time frame. If everyone was brought to a 500 ping lag, then everything would seem in real time and flawless. Depending on your bandwidth, graphics would adjust themselves in resolution and detail to cope with your bandwidth.

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All I can think of is trying to play CS:Source with a 500 ping. No thanks... When ISP's can provide internet access to the average consumer that floods a gigabit ethernet connection and there is a global backbone to support the massive data flow that it would require, this idea will stand a chance.

As someone above has stated, Asia will have this implemented YEARS before the US will. Texting is just becoming a main stream thing for cellphones in the US, but when my gf was still in highschool, 1998, people in her Hong Kong highscoool couldn't "live" without being able to text...it was unheard of to have a cellphone without a huge texting plan included. I won't even get started with their present transportation setup (transport quickscan debit cards for trains, buses, cabs, etc)....I can't see the US implementing anything like they have for at least another 20 years.

FudgeNuggets said:

Actually the cable companies can easily be swayed. They already have pay-on-demand programming which is essentially pay 2 play movies. They'd happily up bandwidth speeds for gamers if it meant eliminating Blockbuster in the process so that everybody gets their movies on demand.

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Yea they have that here down in phoenix. It runs about as well as a 1970 Gremlin 90% of the time. I don't know if its bandwidth related or not or if Cox is just completly retarded but between the service freezing, not being able to load (subsequently cutting out the rest of the digital cable for 5-10 minutes at a time just for trying to access the channel), or freezing half way through videos its got a long way to go to replace blockbuster. This is just my experience with it from what i've dealt with at my parents and grandparents. I personally don't have cable television and rent the majority of my movies off of itunes.

I'm more concerned with the cable companies eliminating Netflix streaming and Hulu like services which threaten them much more than the video store does, but thats just my opinion.

I think you may also be selling things short a bit as far as internet access goes. I download gigs worth of data daily on my 17 megabit connection which is modest in terms of what is out there. So, I have to wait an hour for a 4.7GB file, big deal it would take me that long to hop in my car and wade through traffic to my nearest retailer or Blockbuster.

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I can't specifically recall ever having any sort of slow down on the ISP end of the internets. Cutoffs, outages, et al do happen but thats really not the issue. So as it stands connection speeds are really a non issue at this point in time, but for a few years now the cable companies have been crying over the bandwidth consumption of p2p users, and i dont mean to run too far off topic here but the world on the internet is continuously getting bigger, better, and streamed in higher definitions than ever before, they may be crying wolf over the impact p2p has they might not but if there is any shred of truth to their argument and torrenting games and movies hurts them what happens when everyone who owns a console system has to get their games through the same series of tubes as jimmy bit torrent? As rainless pointed out the US does have some of the worlds worst broadband infastructure (partly due to the geographic size and the way a good chunk of the population is spread across rural areas).

maybe just something to think about in end though.

corruption said:

All I can think of is trying to play CS:Source with a 500 ping. No thanks... When ISP's can provide internet access to the average consumer that floods a gigabit ethernet connection and there is a global backbone to support the massive data flow that it would require, this idea will stand a chance.

Click to expand...

All I can say is that you gravely underestimate how fast technology and media are going to start moving.

whooping_a_panda said:

I can't specifically recall ever having any sort of slow down on the ISP end of the internets. Cutoffs, outages, et al do happen but thats really not the issue. So as it stands connection speeds are really a non issue at this point in time, but for a few years now the cable companies have been crying over the bandwidth consumption of p2p users, and i dont mean to run too far off topic here but the world on the internet is continuously getting bigger, better, and streamed in higher definitions than ever before, they may be crying wolf over the impact p2p has they might not but if there is any shred of truth to their argument and torrenting games and movies hurts them what happens when everyone who owns a console system has to get their games through the same series of tubes as jimmy bit torrent? As rainless pointed out the US does have some of the worlds worst broadband infastructure (partly due to the geographic size and the way a good chunk of the population is spread across rural areas).

maybe just something to think about in end though.

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I don't think landline telecoms will be able to make it in the near future. Verizon will be able to deliver 4G wireless speeds (25-50Mbps, which is the best land line speeds anyways for home users) to huge populations in 4-5 years. I mention Verizon in this example because they are now the #1 telecom in the US, surpassing AT&T.

They are already giving PC's away with bundled internet packages. How long is it before people just cut all the coords at home? The majority of people my age (mid 20's) don't even have land phone lines anymore. I see this trend continuing until it consumes internet and TV. All you'll need is a simple wireless internet connection to get phone, internet, and TV.

Wireless is the way to go in a country like ours that is so spread out.

^^^ i really hope thats the way things end up

FudgeNuggets said:

Actually the cable companies can easily be swayed.

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Hahahahahahahhahahahahahahaha!

They already have pay-on-demand programming which is essentially pay 2 play movies. They'd happily up bandwidth speeds for gamers if it meant eliminating Blockbuster in the process so that everybody gets their movies on demand.

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Silly Nugget...

What they WOULDN'T do is happily surrender all the ratings they would've gotten from shows to people watching (sometimes playing) Metal Gear 8 instead.

Blockbuster's doomed anyway. We don't even HAVE a video rental store in all of Hyde Park anymore (think that's why Obama doesn't hang out much here anymore...) More bandwith won't save the cable companies from Redbox and Netflix. Which is reason 13 why this whole gambit won't work: The homogenization would breed fewer choices. The beautiful thing about netflix is that you can fill your queue up with movies you've never even heard of... (or ones that are ridiculously hard to find.)

Video "on demand" is more like "video that we want you to watch." You don't REALLY have a choice. You just get to pick among *their* choices. It's like me letting you pick whatever you wanted to listen to... out of anything in my My Music folder.

Shiggity said:

Good riddance to physical media.

No one misses CD's for music and no one's going to miss DVD's / Blurays for games and movies.

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How short-sighted... The only reason people don't miss CD's for music is because they have the power to make any song they can imagine appear at will.

But then there's me: I once owned an Xbox 360 (twice even...)

I had Texas Hold'em, Uno, Street Fighter II Turbo, Carcassone, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, a couple of Episodes of South Park, and ten or twenty other things totaling a little over a hundred bucks.

Well I sold my 360 over a year ago. Got 300 bucks for it.

Guess how much I got for those games?

And do you know WHY I got nothing for those games? Because... even though I paid for them, I didn't really own them.

Resale goes STRAIGHT out the window with digital distribution. HELL... actually, physically owning anything goes out the window.

Thats not so bad when everything you're getting is free.. but not so good when it all costs 60 bucks.

Shiggity said:

I don't think landline telecoms will be able to make it in the near future. Verizon will be able to deliver 4G wireless speeds (25-50Mbps, which is the best land line speeds anyways for home users) to huge populations in 4-5 years. I mention Verizon in this example because they are now the #1 telecom in the US, surpassing AT&T.

They are already giving PC's away with bundled internet packages. How long is it before people just cut all the coords at home? The majority of people my age (mid 20's) don't even have land phone lines anymore. I see this trend continuing until it consumes internet and TV. All you'll need is a simple wireless internet connection to get phone, internet, and TV.

Wireless is the way to go in a country like ours that is so spread out.

Click to expand...

They have been giving away computers with internet service signup for many years now. (Them being large companies)

I bought a PC And 17"CRT combo in 2000 for a hundred dollars thanks to MSN.

-maddog- said:

Games now often are breaking 10gb, on a standard US connection that is a long download and console hard drives are small.

Click to expand...

not only that...
i'm sure America's internet providers are much better than providers here in Australia.
the average high speed internet is 1mb/s here.
mine's meant to get to 3mb/s but due to the distance between the ADSL exchange and my house, it gets slowed down to 500kb/s

say if i was to download GTAIV, it'd take (opening Microsoft Calculator) it'd take 5.5 hours if the file was 10gb and i was downloading at full speed. i have friends who are still using a 26kb/s connection.
AND we have monthly bandwidth caps. i have a 25gb download limit. tha'ts not much, considering i watch heaps of youtube and other online bandwidth-consuming things. it means i can only download a few games a month and nothing else.

so unless EVERYBODY gets faster non-capped internet, this won't work IMO

I'm BETTING next gen systems will have large hardrives prob around 1TB and will have the option of either installing from disc or direct download. I mean you can still go to a store and buy a DVD of a PC game from their absurdly tiny shelf or you can get it from Steam. Will prob be a very similar situation for the Xbox3 and PS4.