212: The Downside of Direct Downloads

jasonkill

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Jul 29, 2009
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Michael raises some valid points, but his article fails to mention one of the greatest benefits of digital distribution?the reduction of environmental waste. If the infamous E.T. game for Atari had been download-only, there'd be one less landfill in the world. In my mind, that's a worthy enough reason in and of itself to pursue a digital-delivery future.
 

Smokescreen

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Dec 6, 2007
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This article at Lifehacker has some interesting points about the potential downside of things like this.
http://lifehacker.com/5325169/the-hidden-risks-of-cloud-computing?skyline=true&s=x

Maybe it's relevant to consider privacy issues too.
 

sgrif

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Oct 19, 2008
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Michael Comeau said:
sgrif said:
This argument is completely ridiculous. Games aren't priced what they are because of some knight in shining armor company making it that way. It's priced this way because that is what consumers are willing to pay for it! If Microsoft were to hypothetically get a monopoly on the system (which in America at least would be prevented by anti-trust laws) and were to hypothetically jack up the prices to unreasonable levels (which they already have the power to do, since developers pay licensing fees regardless of the media), another platform would inevitably enter the ring and sport affordable prices.
Another platform? Who's going to get into the console business? If you look at the actual financials of Microsoft and Sony, you'll see that console gaming isn't a very good business!

Good point on the anti-trust - I didn't consider that.
I'm not saying someone is planning on entering the console war. I'm saying that if hypothetically, someone were to have a monopoly on the industry and were charging unreasonable prices, someone else would fill that niche of affordable pricing for the product, simply because it would be a lucrative position to be in. That's just the way capitalism works.
 

Macguffin

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Apr 25, 2009
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Interesting article, Michael. Thanks for doing it.

One upside to digital distribution that you didn't address is that it helps lower the barrier to indies getting their games to an audience - the odds of your average (or even spectacular) indie getting on the shelves at GameStop or WalMart are near zilch. Natch, this applies more to the PC than to the closed platforms.
 

ZTiger

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Jul 30, 2009
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Michael Comeau,

You raise some interesting points but you seem to ignore market forces. Today it may be XBox360, tomorrow it may be PS4 or Wii2 depending on first to market for the next generation. Given that the first to market will have an advantage but will also have to worry about what their competition is doing. If BrandX is selling as good or better item then BrandY, BrandY needs to find a way to make their price point more appealing or drop their price point.

Just because Microsoft could cut out the distributors doesn't mean they can keep selling at the same price. For one that profit margin could be seen an opportunity to grab more market by hitting a lower price point. Just because Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo/EA could cut out the middle man doesn't mean they are not beholding to the law of supply and demand.

If anything it gives the competition the option to undercut the price because they know they can grab more market share.

Frankly I'm still made that Steam doesn't charge less for their games but I know why they do that. It is because many of the games they sale are also located in brick and mortar shops. And because of the agreements they have with them they cannot sale the games at a lower price. But if you look at the games that are only sold online you often see them at lower price points.
 

felixader

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Feb 24, 2008
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Another problem, aside the main thing that copanys will rip customers of there rigths, REAlLY is the Space or other stuff you need to play the games.

I mean when i look for a terrabyte of space for my PC i can get it for 80 Euros, but MS charges 120 Euros for a damn 120 Gb Harddrive, cause THEY CAN AND YOU HAVE NO CHOICE than to get theirs.

And this applies to the whole ting with only download. I want my games physicall and at my hand so that i have controllover what i payed for.
There is no warranty (is that rigth?) that when you buy the game and store it on your Harddrive, that the next time when you go "LIve" (or PSN or watever) that they will remove the game themselves, for what reason ever.

Even if there are some idealistic people to the "get the customer the best"-reasoing there always will be stockholders, those who do nothing to the entire thing then having bougth some paper, and wich will crave for more money and will put pressure on whatever point they think will increase there profits.
 

Hiroshi Mishima

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Sep 25, 2008
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Taking a moment to ignore the majority of people's commments (though I did read most of them)...

I still, to this day, personally see the increased cost of making games (ie: development process) as something of a joke. Think about it, it's apparently costing more and more to make games, but the quality of the games isn't exactly going up. To me, that says people aren't using the tools they already have to the best of their ability and are instead wasting more money on fancier graphics, flashier character models, and bigger explosions/more gore.

Compound that with the feeling I've had for some time that developers just didn't push the previous consoles to their full potential the way that developers did with the NES and SNES (which had easilly doubled or tripled in quality by the end of their reign, and for either the same or aruably less cost to produce). In previous generations, we'd have seen games on consoles that were on their way out rivaling the quality of games on consoles that just came out. A good example is Final Fantasy 7 being on 3 discs when it was released, but would have easilly been on 1 disc in a few years time. Where-as today, we're seeing games on NEW generation consoles looking much like games on the previous generation but with "more realistic graphics" during the cinematics.

It sometimes feels to me that the developers are putting too much effort in the wrong places. Instead of spending millions of dollars making a woman's breasts look as believeable as possible, or trying to get just that perfect brain splatter effect, or looking to pass the uncanny valley mark... they should be putting more thought into making the game itself look/present better. There's no point in spending tons on making the graphics awesome if the game itself is short, lacking in content, and with little replay value. Of course, one reasons today the reason being is that they can charge you for a normally full game made just like that, and then tack on DLC for even more money to give you the content they didn't have time to finish or couldn't be assed to include originally.

I do, however, agree that the prices are not going to go down. It's not any better in stores, either. GameStop MAY let you trade in 5-6 games to get a 50-60 dollar game, but then they're going to go and force us consumers to pay 30-40 dollars for that used game you just traded in for like 5-10 dollars. I understand a need to earn something outta that, but it really hits people like me (who have little money these days due to the economy) hard that New and Used games in stores like GameStop are almost the same price regardless of how poor quality the used copy is in. I once saw them charging 40 bucks for a used/no manual copy of Disgaea, and considering how insane that game is without the manual, it was a rip-off.

I do not like digital distribution. I like having the solid artifact in my hands. The smell of a new game, a clean manual... on the other hand, I don't like how easy it is to accidentally damage discs (one of the reasons I loved cartridges, albeit they had less room). But the problem is, I don't like the pricing. I can hardly buy new games (or any games) anymore because the prices are outlandish and the quality of the game itself is rarely worth the 40-50 dollars I spent on it. A good example of that was Metroid Prime 2. I was so excited to get the game brand new the day it came out for like 50 bucks, and by the time I'd finished it, I couldn't believe I paid so much for a game just didn't deliver near what I'd expected after previous installments had been so much more worth the money I paid for them.


..and don't even get me started on the whole "3 versions of the same game with slightly different content" bullshit. I've never agreed with it being applied to anything but Pokemon, and even that has gotten ridiculous.
 

thevegetarianzombie

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Dec 11, 2008
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I can see a very expensive peripheral that increases your hard drive space to let you own more games, or take them with you to a friend's house.

I can also see the unsolvable dilemma that is unskilled technical support bringing a lot of frustration into my leisure time.

But on the other hand, I can see some benefits. For example, if the hardware manufacturer merely demanded a percentage or flat rate on whatever price the vendor wanted to set, it could reintroduce competitive game pricing.

Also, you know Google will eventually come up with something to challenge Microsoft's console sales, and they tend to do things right. In a comptetitive market, sometimes it only takes one guy offering people the service they really want to force everyone else to get in line.
 

SenseOfTumour

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Jul 11, 2008
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I think if MS, Sony, etc want DD to take off on consoles, next generation they've really got to look at the prices of storage.

Most people with any clue know 1000GB PC HDDs are selling for about £50, the 120GB 360 drive is £90.

so I install a 12GB game, that's an extra £9 it's cost me, and therefore the game should be at least £9 cheaper than buying a boxed one.

I just think PC gamers (in general, wild generalisation ahead) have more technical knowhow and more patience when it comes to installations etc, and I don't think the majority of console gamers are ready for it when it comes to huge games that can't be downloaded in 5 minutes like the average Arcade or PSN title.

I do however think Sony and MS have the sense to push the prices up next gen, partly to counter rising dev costs, which I think are their own fault for concentrating too much on shiny graphics and not enough on the game, but that's for another thread, and partly because they can, I think there's an unwritten agreement going on there, as if PS3 had released all their new games for £60 and MS has a pricepoint of £40, that's gonna swing a lot of customers to the 360, especially considering they're gonna be able to get the same game on either in 95% of cases. After all, it went from £40 a game on PS2/Xbox to £50 on PS3 / 360.
 

WhiteTiger225

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Aug 6, 2009
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Another issue with direct download... It leaves no history. Meaning, If I wanted to, let's say, play "Mercenaries 2" 10 years from now and it was digitally obtained, I am shit out of luck unless I happen to have 800 hard drives laying around to collect the different games out there (We collectors do that) Direct Download becomes the same abomination as DRM, in the end, the product isn't actually yours, and you are one memory wipe from being shit outta luck.
 

Augg

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Mar 4, 2009
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Well, if they do put a stranglehold on the gaming world and charge massive amounts of money, maybe natural selection will kick in and everyone stuck in their living rooms playing games for the rest of their lives will be put on a lower section of the evolutionary chain then the people that said "fuck that" and WENT OUT to do things will reproduce to make a smarter human race...
 

CrysisMcGee

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Sep 2, 2009
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2 words come to mind. hello, Piracy. People will be more tempted to get something for free simply because they are spending more money. The same goes with game trade ins. If you can't trade it in, and you want to get rid of it for something else but you can't, then piracy may prevail.

I did read an article on here where an online company will allow trading of downloaded games, so that may offset the cost.

Also, I never trade my games in anymore. I used to, but I found the urge to play a game comes back after a while. Such as Half-Life. Beat it, traded it for Thief:The Dark Shadows, got the urge to play it after a few months. Bought the game of the year edition for 20 bucks.

The only time I get rid of a game now is if it's bad, which almost never happens thanks to reviews, or if I know there's no way that I'm playing it again.
 

tzimize

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Mar 1, 2010
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Steam is a load of garbage. Lately I've bought for example Warhammer Chaos rising (18£) and Alien vs Predator (18£) from play.com. They mailed it halfway through europe to me for that price. Steam takes 50? for both of those games.

After the switch from $ to ? in steam/europe their prices have been awful. I dont buy anything there anymore unless its a weekend offer or something in that alley.

I bought a LOT of games from them before the change, because they were cheap.
I think its business-for-dummies that its easier to sell a game for 10 bucks to 10 people than sell a game for 100 bucks to one person. Seems Valve is forgetting this.

There are a lot of upsides to direct downloads (or could be), but in the end the publishers/developers are just interested in taking the money themselves, game prices will most likely stay the same (or maybe even more expensive because of the potential monopoly) and we will get less value for our cash.
 

Altherix

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Jul 3, 2008
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ratix2 said:
does this article come across as more of a stab at capatilism than anything else?
Yeah, that's the vibe I got as well.

That said, the avalanche has already started, digital download is coming. It's been a proven market in other industries and more are catching onto it.

Is it in the best interest of the consumer, the majority of consumers seem to think so, or it wouldn't be growing then.
 

VondeVon

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Dec 30, 2009
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My concern is the finite space on any hard drive - sure it gets bigger and better every year but I don't want to have to keep on upgrading and transferring files as my game collection grows (possibly more rapidly than normal due to potentially lower costs).

Plus, I live in Australia where internet is slow and expensive. It's just plain faster to stroll down to the store and buy a hardcopy.
 

jklinders

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Sep 21, 2010
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Vast majority of the downsides to direct downloads apply directly to the closed system consoles. For the PC, direct downloads are a good thing with very little drawback. I agree that for the consoles however that some really nasty shenanigans will occur.

Game publishers are in complete control of the production costs on their games. If they cannot make money on a model where it takes 60 million to make a game then don't spend that much. I will laugh at any one of these companies that breaks themselves in next gen production if they insist on dooming themselves in such a way.

I game in PC only so there will be 0 impact to me.
 

Strazdas

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May 28, 2011
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i read the article twice and i still cant really understand what downside are you claiming it is?
i mean sure there are donwsides, but your article didnt lead me to believe there is.