Atari Pres: Soon Gamers "Will Never Buy a Game in a Box"

[Logan Frederick]

Atari Pres: Soon Gamers "Will Never Buy a Game in a Box"

Phil Harrison is standing firm in his belief that digitally distributed titles are the wave of game consumers' future.

"There's a generation of kids being born today and probably already alive who I'm pretty confident will never buy a physical media product. They will never buy a DVD, they will never buy a CD, and they will never buy a game in a box," commented former Sony president [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/81730-Phil-Harrison-Leaves-Sony] Phil Harrison in an interview with Edge [http://www.edge-online.com/news/harrison-new-generation-will-never-buy-physical-media].

Harrison recently joined Atari to revive the dying brand and invigorate its online efforts [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/84081-Phil-Harrison-Were-Moving-Away-from-Huge-Budget-Single-Player-Games] to give the company direction.

"I don't see that we're going to be making huge-budget, single-player games in the future. Now, that doesn't mean that we won't have ambition to do really incredible games that have high quality, high execution, and high innovation, but they won't be one-player, narrative-driven, start-middle-end games," said Harrison earlier this year, shortly after his switch to Atari.

Will gaming go completely digital in the next 20 years? That is a long time in technology terms, yet the existence of retail products is heavily installed in society and could take just as much time to be removed.

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[SimuLord]

I don't think boxed games are completely dead, at least not on consoles, but I can certainly see PC gaming going digital download only within the next five or ten years...possibly sooner than that. Retailers already relegate PC games to the back corners of the store where you have to know where to look in order to find them, and it's clear that it's just not a priority to promote the PC platform.

With Steam, Impulse, GamersGate, Direct2Drive, and other digital download services growing more and more each year, and with Internet advertising and marketing maturing at the same rate, the entire transaction from contact to checkout can be initiated without using a single "traditional" media channel, in the process revitalizing the industry as targeted ads and no physical inventory overhead means greater profit margins (even when piracy is accounted for, DRM or no DRM), which in turn will entice developers and publishers back into the sphere.

As soon as EA and Ubisoft give up on the PC completely, the industry can finally start to take off again.

 

[Hevoo]

He brings up a good point, and I have to agree as far as PC, Downloading is the way to go. In time consoles will be doing the same, within the next generation.

 

[Brokkr]

He brings up a good point, and I have to agree as far as PC, Downloading is the way to go. In time consoles will be doing the same, within the next generation.

If that is true, then the used game market would eventually go away.

 

[Somethingfake]

We'll never buy a game in a box if it comes from Atari, that's for damn sure.

 

[Ronwue]

If it's a good game I really don't care on what it comes on. It could be written on used toilet paper, as long as it's great i will buy it.

 

[Avatar Roku]

We'll never buy a game in a box if it comes from Atari, that's for damn sure.

QFT

 

[fix-the-spade]

I haven't bought a game in a box since BF2142. Haha I can pre-empt analysts and industry moguls!

 

[Zapatero]

Is this the same Atari president that was so desperate to embrace the future that he signed up to publish EVE Online in a box - a game that's been doing just fine for the last 5 years as a digital download

 

[Blind0bserver]

As long as there are gamers that don't have the capability to buy and download a full game off of the internet, the boxed game will not die. Developers and publishers will continue to release physical copies just to get the stragglers of their target market that can't download the game. That aside, there are gamers out there that prefer to have a disc in a box when they purchase a game, if only so they have something tangible.

 

[ChocoCake]

If this is how we are actually going to turn out, we will end up like Wall-E. Our planet will be full of trash from our incessant eating, and we will soon forget the technique known as "walking", and be left to sit in hovering chairs eating away our lives. I hope people don't get so lazy and call walking to the store to pick up a game "incovenient", that this is how we turn up. I, for sure, am going to be dead by then.
This is all a hyperbole however.

 

[stompy]

For the PC, it's inevitable, hat with the boxed PC games becoming less and less pronounced in retail stores. With consoles however... I'm not going to make any guesses.

 

[data_not_found]

Boxed games will never die as long as nintendo is around to make sure that their consoles don't have ANY storage.

 

[Azhrarn-101]

Is this the same Atari president that was so desperate to embrace the future that he signed up to publish EVE Online in a box - a game that's been doing just fine for the last 5 years as a digital download

Good one, but they probably saw some appeal there and a way to make a nice bit of cash, so can't blame them. It's just good business sense.

 

[Tread184]

This will certainly hurt the stores that sell boxed games and the publishing companies, won't it?

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

"I don't see that we're going to be making huge-budget, single-player games in the future. Now, that doesn't mean that we won't have ambition to do really incredible games that have high quality, high execution, and high innovation, but they won't be one-player, narrative-driven, start-middle-end games," said Harrison earlier this year, shortly after his switch to Atari.

I guess you don't want my money, then, huh?

 

[MosDes]

There is something I'm afraid of though, with as large as some games are getting nowadays (upwards of several GB of data?), will it not take a long time to download for those people who could not otherwise afford high speed internet? I have high speed, but it still takes me a while to download certain releases from Steam.

How, also, would families who have a computer but have no access to internet (people who live out in the country, for example) get their "download only" titles? If they DRM the titles to death, then how would they even play them if they wanted to download the game from another location without hauling their whole system along?

Unless they make super-fast internet free, or relatively cheap, and available to everyone, I don't see boxed games going away completely.

As for CDs and stuff that is already trying to make this jump, I have always preferred buying a CD over downloading songs at a preset bit rate and covered with DRM inhibiting stuff. Not to mention, they put like a 90 day limit on the time you can download them, so half of the music I've tried downloading (legally, I gave up pirating music) is no longer available, and I've since lost it or changed computers.

If this is how we are actually going to turn out, we will end up like Wall-E. Our planet will be full of trash from our incessant eating, and we will soon forget the technique known as "walking", and be left to sit in hovering chairs eating away our lives. I hope people don't get so lazy and call walking to the store to pick up a game "incovenient", that this is how we turn up. I, for sure, am going to be dead by then.
This is all a hyperbole however.

I actually think this is already happening. How much do people actually walk when they are "running" to the store? If you simply walk out to your car, drive to the store, walk in, buy, walk out, drive home, there isn't much walking involved anyway. If you include global warming, the unnecessary number of new cars available on the market, etc, we are already working on it.