Game consoles, physical game and movie media really dying? |
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| BY Chris King Mar. 31st, 2008 | More on: |
Lately there has been a lot of talk in the media about disc formats for movies (i.e. Blu-ray) dying out soon in favor of downloadable/streaming content through the internet. There are even some claiming the same fates for our beloved game consoles and game software as well. With all this talk of such a convenient and magnificent near future, it’s hard not to think back as late as the 70’s and 80’s when a lot of visionary people used to say that by the year 2000 we would all be driving fully automated or flying cars. Sure, “flying” and fully automated cars sort of exist, as super expensive prototypes that we might see in popular science, but here we are in 2008 and not a single one sits in anyone’s driveway, not even for the rich.
It seems that all the recent press releases and interviews from industry representatives keep echoing a 5-10 year time frame before the various media formats start to really “die out.” A good amount of the public seems to think that these claims are just the wishful thinking of businessmen or even media propaganda to promote their own products while downplaying what is currently popular. Another portion of public opinion, what seems to be the minority, seems to agree with the idea of a “die out” coming soon.
It is no secret that in 10 years or less, when the next wave of game consoles are released, that there will likely be no difference between them and traditional PC’s. There are very few differences as it is right now between current gen consoles and PC’s. The main difference that will always remain is the fact that consoles will continue to be a unified hardware standard, which is exactly what game developers need in order to make the highest quality games and take full advantage of the current technology standard.
As it stands these days, buying a new $600 video card in an effort to run a single game like Crysis is a luxury many can’t afford, while most other games on the market will still run well on many video cards even two generations old. This is likely a big underlying reason why there also seems to be a rising number of reports of PC gamers jumping ship in favor of console versions of games. The technological leap between popular console games and the majority of popular PC games has shrunken tremendously, which must inevitably make a lot of gamers feel it is a waste of money to be forced to continuously upgrade their computers just so they can enjoy any game they want to play. On the side go ahead and throw in the whole economy issue affecting the world at this point and you now have a large number of gamers with even less willingness to toss money at computer upgrades.
Will problems such as the lack of widespread, worldwide high-speed internet infrastructure put a big dent in all these “die out” predictions? Will disc media formats, consoles, and any other sort of physical media we hold dear really die out in 5-10 years? Will the next consoles be victim to this die out, or will they in fact be the instruments of the die out for physical game and movie media? Do you buy any of this or is it all just industry propaganda?
March 31st, 2008
at 1:13 pm
The fact that there is still a burgoning trade-in market (gamestation sells itself on its unbeatable trade-ins) that there are still massive insentives for both gamers and retailers to stick with the physical format.
March 31st, 2008
at 4:22 pm
I think that high-speed internet, large hdd, and hardware reliability have not penetrated the world consumer market sufficiently to support virtual media. Perhaps in 15-20 years when the $99 PC has populated the earth with internet capabilities but as for now, I’ll take my dual-layer DVD or, eventually, a Blu-Ray disc.
March 31st, 2008
at 4:37 pm
One of my buddies bought Warhawk from the PS store. We were over at his house playing it and had plans to head over to another friends house and the only way he could bring it with was to bring his PS3. Not being “easily” able to bring my games to friends alone would make me not want digital distribution to become dominate.
Now on the other hand, setting a pre-order of a game much like you would program a Tivo to download a tv show, and waking up the morning of the games launch and having the new game waiting for you would be awesome.
March 31st, 2008
at 8:00 pm
I personally believe that downloadable games will dominate the future, but as you said; fast connections and storage will be the bottleneck. Once we get to a stage where we don’t have to manage our space, and can store our content without a care (like on an iPod), that’s when the future will have arrived.
Physical media in general is dying in many industries, there is no reason to think gaming will be immune to this. Gamers who stick to physical games will become much like audiophiles who still advocate vinyls/cds.
April 1st, 2008
at 12:00 pm
This idea of downloadable content amuses me, not everybody either has high speed internet or is comfortable with downloadinf huge amounts of data. People still like the idea of having the physical copy to hand because it feels more secure. Films, dont even get me started, when is it that people will understand that what others want is the simplicity of popping in a disc and the system works, no mucking about, no interupted download, no slow down when everbody else wants to download the same film. Yes we do live in a new technological age but i can tell you that there is a huge percentage of the population who are not comfortable with this new fangled equipment they just want something that does what it says on the tin and is easy to work (why do you think that hard drive tv recorders have taken of so well its not that they are so much better at play back its mainly because they are so easy to set up to record what you want). Yes i am a first adoptor of many new technologies (as well as being an engineer and teacher of technology) and i own a mp3 player for the convinience of music on the move but when at home i will still pop in a cd to listen at higher quality and i tend to buy the cd to rip to my mp3 due to the fact i can use the cd at home the mp3 on the move and a copy of the cdin my car. I seem to be ramblingbut i will end with the point that although hard drive storage is becoming cheaper every day i still believe that the amount of storage required to hold all of my dvd and bluray collection as well as games would grow to such an extent that i would end up with multiple terebytes of storage required and still have to either upgrade again or deleate files to download the new release out soon (you only have to look at the way that pcs have to be constantly upgraded to play the latest games to know what a costly pain that can be). Accept it, most people want a simple system that they can rely on and that will be physical media of some description for a very long time to come.
July 26th, 2008
at 11:09 am
I think this whole “physical media is dying” hogwash is just that - hogwash. My five arguments are as follows:
1. Sony and Microsoft both have vested interests in the whole downloadable media market and its in their interest to see that the use of physical media dies out. Furthermore, a lot of companies would love for retailers to be cut out of the chain, for the costs of physical media, label printing, DVD/Bluray boxes etc. to be eliminated.
2. Those that think that downloadable content will be cheaper are sadly deluding themselves. Look on PSN - most of the content also available on physical media is just the same price (point in question: Pursuit Force for the PSP, 17.99€ in the shops, 19.99€ on PSN). If physical media ever die out, expect this to get worse.
3. Music, the first major legal media download industry, has failed to truly make a dent so far in the entire music industry. Five years on from offering the first downloads, downloadables still only form 15% of legal sales (for whatever reason, music execs claim that this is due to illegal downloads, but bear in mind that this means that 85% are still buying CDs)
4. People place a lot of value in “collectables”. They place more value in something that they can order and hold in their hands. People do not like the concept of “renting” their games, music and films - no matter how often they may like to rent their games and films, there are always at least a small number that they prefer to keep for repeated viewing. With downloadables, you can never keep your media or, at best, you can burn it to a CD or DVD (which makes it about as much worth as a pirated DVD or game)
5. Kryder’s law - internet bandwidth speeds are indeed increasing, but they have been for the past thirty years, significantly so for the past ten. However, these naysayers tend to forget that storage requirements also tend to exponentially increase. I remember ten years ago that the 1.8GB of space that Final Fantasy VII took on the PS1 was considered astronomical. 1.8GB is about half a Sims 2 install these days. Games nowadays have anything between 7 and 40GB of content. Moves are underway to produce media with 4TBs of space. Can you imagine shoving 4000GBs down a 30MB/sec connection. As a point of reference, a reasonably fast average consumer connection would take around 35 days, I can guess in five years it’ll take around 5-6 days.