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

[iaacp]

Physical media isn't going anywhere any time soon, and Microsoft's announcement has no bearing on that. If they were releasing brand new titles and had NO retail copies, that would be different. But they're doing the same thing the PSN has been doing for a while now, with different games.

I would estimate we'll see the end of physical media *possibly* in two generations from now, meaning the PS5, Xbox 9000, etc.

 

[Kenshiro]

I'm sure physical media will go away some day.... yes, some day... not today, not anytime soon.

Have fun downloading Metal Gear Solid 4, which almost caps at 50Gb.

 

[shadin]

Honestly, I wouldn't mind physical media going away, but I think we're going to see OPTICAL media go away first to be replaced with flash based media, THEN all digital media. The progressions being made in the SSD market will inevitably begin to filter down to normal flash technologies. Couple that with a good DRM scheme, and I think we'll see discs die out and be replaced before we see a day where we can't buy physical media at all. However, I even think that's quite a few years away, and in the meantime Blu-Ray is going to be it for awhile.

However like I said before, we're going to see digital distribution alongside physical media through the entire trip.

 

[Neuromancer]

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

Think you missede the Bytes/Bits part of the formula there.

At 3Mbs that 10GB File you would be looking at Just over 7 hours and with the drop to 500Kb speeds, 55.5 Hours.

So REALLY not a good choise with your internet speeds.


Will not work here, because of traffic metering (incorrectly termed Bandwidth caps). 250GB a month might sound like a lot, but with cheap cameras generating 1MB photos, digital video cameras, web cams, VOIP, online advertising, spam/email in general, "social networking" sites (not into myspeace but I am pretty sure you could knock out a GB of traffic in an hour or two on myspace, online video etc etc. The modern connected individual will soon be pushing those limits without downloading/uploading large files (legal or otherwise).

Once those are removed, and bandwidth also increases, moving entirely virtually will not be too uncommon, and direct2drive/steam style game media will be the rule over the exception on consoles.

 

[LufbraDan23]

I just moved back from France (after 5 years). I had 40megs for 30 bucks a month.

And even in your small, rural, back of the woods town you've got 2mb and I only have 1mb... and I live in Chicago.

My apologies and condolences to you. You live in the city or the suburbs? Either way, thats terrible. I genuinely thought that the U.S was streets ahead of us here...

Does that mean...we got something right?! Wooo, go UK ISPS!

 

[MattNo5ss]

20Mb connection in college, but only dial-up available at home. Still a lot of rural areas in the U.S.

I agree with shadin, I think everything will move to flash first.

 

[Niku-Sama]

ds games downloadable, big woop, would be like downloading super nintendo games.

no its not happening, yea you can download full games but how long its going to take is unreal, games are just going to get bigger any way, we now have a 20 gig single layer single sided optical media, games are going to get that big and bigger.

alot of people who have consoles dont always have acess to the internet, if they do its ****ernet like clearwire or huges net on top of how delapidated americas broad band network is its not going to work for a very long time, some cities and stuff are ok, seattle has decent 25meg service that doesent cost a ton but of the major cities in the US how many have that, let alone the rest of the population that lives in every town USA that probally just now got cable internet

 

[FudgeNuggets]

ds games downloadable, big woop, would be like downloading super nintendo games.

no its not happening, yea you can download full games but how long its going to take is unreal, games are just going to get bigger any way, we now have a 20 gig single layer single sided optical media, games are going to get that big and bigger.

alot of people who have consoles dont always have acess to the internet, if they do its ****ernet like clearwire or huges net on top of how delapidated americas broad band network is its not going to work for a very long time, some cities and stuff are ok, seattle has decent 25meg service that doesent cost a ton but of the major cities in the US how many have that, let alone the rest of the population that lives in every town USA that probally just now got cable internet

I haven't played PC games in years but I imagine it would be no more difficult or unreasonable than Steam.

 

[Niku-Sama]

some people i am sure wait a ton of time on a game to download on steam, i think thats partly why there are "episodes" of games on steam or theres a bunch of simple little games.

i mean take portal, decent (according to the pop.) but its not all that huge in disk size.
think about tons of people out there on PS3s or 360's or Wii 2's or what ever trying to download 20+gig games over the internet...triffic issues much?

untill the bandwith problem in america is addressed and internet service costs come down ($50 for 5 meg is nuts) and fiber is moer redily available tothe majority of the population then mabe it'll happen.

in all honesty i think we may see the revival of cartridges with the advances in SSD's before it goes to downloadable only

 

[rainless]

My apologies and condolences to you. You live in the city or the suburbs? Either way, thats terrible. I genuinely thought that the U.S was streets ahead of us here...

Does that mean...we got something right?! Wooo, go UK ISPS!

Only serial killers grow up in the suburbs here (some pretty good ones at that...)

I live in the city. Five minutes from downtown. I can see the entire skyline (and Sarah Palin's home) from the Lake.

 

[LufbraDan23]

Only serial killers grow up in the suburbs here (some pretty good ones at that...)

I live in the city. Five minutes from downtown. I can see the entire skyline (and Sarah Palin's home) from the Lake.

Sarah Palin, i kinda feel sorry for how much of a comedy figure she became during the elections. Over here she was ripped on ALOT, mostly for being Alaskan. Then again, we rip our prime minister for being Scottish.

What are speeds like in New York or Los Angeles does anyone know? There has to be the same sort of big city bias we have here with speeds in London. Hang on...i just looked Chicago up on wikipedia, it's at least as big as Birmingham UK if not bigger.

 

[Kenshiro]

I can see Russia from my house - Sarah Palin

 

[torin3]

I can see Russia from my house - Sarah Palin Tina Fey

Fixed that for you.

 

[iaacp]

untill the bandwith problem in america is addressed and internet service costs come down ($50 for 5 meg is nuts) and fiber is moer redily available tothe majority of the population then mabe it'll happen.

How come we have a problem to begin with, while supposedly other countries have insane speeds for cheap? Is it because our population is so much larger, and our country physically bigger?

in all honesty i think we may see the revival of cartridges with the advances in SSD's before it goes to downloadable only

I think so too. Which is odd, because we'd go from cartridge > disc > cartridge in recent years. I always imagine the next format (for games) will be SD cards, which scared me because the little things could get lost so easily.

 

[Hardin]

Sarah Palin, i kinda feel sorry for how much of a comedy figure she became during the elections. Over here she was ripped on ALOT, mostly for being Alaskan. Then again, we rip our prime minister for being Scottish.

What are speeds like in New York or Los Angeles does anyone know? There has to be the same sort of big city bias we have here with speeds in London. Hang on...i just looked Chicago up on wikipedia, it's at least as big as Birmingham UK if not bigger.

Everyone was just jealous of her glasses.

 

[iaacp]

Oh, and Lufbra - Living in LA, in fios my house gets about 20 megs. Before that, on DSL, I think we got like 10 or so, I don't remember exactly.

It varies though, from each ISP. I'll check my schools speed in a few days and let you know what that gets, too.

 

[FudgeNuggets]

Fixed that for you.

No, sadly she actually DID say that.

That was what was so brilliant about Tina Fey's portrayal of her. She didn't adlib anything. She straight up quoted Palin but overemphasized everything. What a loon (Palin, not Fey).

 

[TommyHolly]

No, sadly she actually DID say that.

That was what was so brilliant about Tina Fey's portrayal of her. She didn't adlib anything. She straight up quoted Palin but overemphasized everything. What a loon (Palin, not Fey).

Your statement is completely untrue and is lacking in actual facts.

You guys realize that Sarah Palin's comments were misquoted and then other reporters quoted the mistake right? The actual words she spoke when talking to ABC's liberally biased reporter Charlie Gibson about Russia... "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."

I'm not slamming you for repeating this garbage, after all many of the news organizations and TV shows were shamefully misqouting her on purpose. But it does reflect on your credibility when you repeat things like this without checking the facts.

Also for the record, you can see Russia from Alaska. Sarah Palin was right. Here is a link to a webcam so you can see for yourself. >>>

http://www.webcamsk.com/index.php?option=com_bookmarks&task=detail&id=201

 

[FudgeNuggets]

Your statement is completely untrue and is lacking in actual facts.

You guys realize that Sarah Palin's comments were misquoted and then other reporters quoted the mistake right? The actual words she spoke when talking to ABC's liberally biased reporter Charlie Gibson about Russia... "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska."

I'm not slamming you for repeating this garbage, after all many of the news organizations and TV shows were shamefully misqouting her on purpose. But it does reflect on your credibility when you repeat things like this without checking the facts.

Also for the record, you can see Russia from Alaska. Sarah Palin was right. Here is a link to a webcam so you can see for yourself. >>>

http://www.webcamsk.com/index.php?option=com_bookmarks&task=detail&id=201

So it wasn't a word for word quote, the paraphrasing was still pretty accurate and damn funny nonetheless.

 

[I.M.O.G.]

Back on topic please - this is not a Palin discussion.