Assassin's Creed Creator Says Nobody Cares About Discs Anymore

[evenest]

A great deal has been made about physical media versus digital media. Certainly,
I side with those who choose a dvd over digital. What is being glossed over is the
assertion that AAA games will be more profitable once physical media is removed from
the equation. Printing dvds can't be that expensive. As a corollary, I've heard
print publishers say that the physical printing and shipping of books is a small
percentage of the cost for creating the book; I can only imagine that it is similar
for video game development (the physical printing of the software onto a disc is a
small percentage of the cost). [Sorry about my weird paragraphing, the "roll-over ad
is blocking a quarter of my post area, and I can't seem to close it].

Is the assertion that AAA games will be profitable when digital becomes the only way
to purchase games because publishers will be able to keep the cost of the game
artificially inflated? This occurs on the Xbox and Sony marketplaces--games that are
old tend to stay at $60 (or near it) even as retailers have begun to cut the price
of the discs. And this isn't about used games. A year after Demons Souls came out, I
bought a NEW copy at Target for $19.

I wish that those who say digital distribution is the only way to stay profitable would
explain in more detail why{/i] they make this claim. Perhaps that would enable
those of us who cling to our discs to be able to come to their way of thinking. Of course
it may also have the effect of showing us just how terrible such a development would be
for consumers.

 

[Da Orky Man]

I'm nobody
who are you?
Are you nobody to?

Hey Nobody! Fancy seeing you here!
It's me, Nobody.

OT: Guess I can add him to the box of people I'm not going to listen to in the future.

I think Polyphemus wants a word with you two.

OP: Almost all my games bar the older ones are digital now. Sure, its a bugger to have to download them rather than install off-disk, but I live far away enough from a GAME store to make it worthwhile.

 

[FoolKiller]

I care.

I have a lot of games and I like collecting them. There is no fun in having a digital collection. Also, if he thinks it will be profitable going all digital then he forgets that the price has to drop significantly to make people want to go all digital.

Also, the issue was never the fact that it was digital vs. disc based on the X180 so I don't know why he brings that up.

Oh... and for all you research people out there, I have over 100 games on Steam and 50 on GOG. I have never paid over $9.99 for any game on either service. And I won't. I won't gamble more than a rental price on a game I don't know about.

 

[Fox12]

But the industry also needs to expand its scope beyond the usual fare, he said, noting that he's been to four E3 events and they've been dominated by the same things every time. "We all like space marines and shooters, but come on, we need to talk about something else."

Says the guy who only makes assassins creed games.

 

[hornedcow]

Yeah, duh, nobody cares about physical stuff anymore. That's why movies, books, comics, and music are all only available digitally now and nobody buys... oh wait, DVD's, Books, Comics, and Music CD's are still around? And they're still profitable? Potentially because the people who make those media have realistic views on how much money they can expect to make from a product and put money into projects accordingly instead of pumping too much money in and then blaming the consumer when 3.5 million sales is "disappointing?"

Huh. How about that.

Exactly what I was thinking. The industry's been taking the piss for the few years, lessening the rights of the consumer, making horrible business decisions and then blaming us when things don't go well for them. The sooner they crash the better for all of us.

 

[lee1287]

I Think most people prefer hard copies to be fair. My internet is terrible so DL a game can take days!

 

[rednose1]

Personally, I like this guy. I want all my assholes to be walking around, displaying their asshole-ness for everyone to see, that way I can tell from a mile away what I'm gonna get myself into if I try to have any dealings with said asshole. Those secret, in the closet assholes are the ones I can't stand.

So thank you Mr. Desilets, I know exactly what to expect from you whenever you open your mouth.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

The more I hear about the game industry, the more I'm beginning to get worried about them.

Apparently, most of the higher executives seem to think the "average gamer" is some pampered kid or adult with an awesome Internet connection in some sprawling metropolis that can afford to buy all of the big titles at launch date and can afford all of the perks along with the usual online Internet fee AND the additional fee most consoles require for online play.

Sure, that does amount for a lot of gamers. Probably, like, maybe 10% of them. I know a lot of overseas gamers that do not have connections comparable to us US citizens, and rural gamers have it even tougher. There are even a lot more gamers that buy the console for the sole purpose of the single-player experience (see: Fallout, Skyrim, Dishonored, etc.) and are switching to computers or simply are just fading off the radar as a result of this vehement and violent backlash to their specific kind of gaming.

The industry is booming, but they're cutting their market size with each "advancement." Triple A gaming alone can't sustain itself on frat boys and spoiled brats who keep buying CoD. Either the entire industry goes "CoD" in an attempt to milk the cash cow for what it's worth, or the entire Triple A business cuts its market size to a point where it can't sustain itself, and it all comes crashing down.

 

[unstabLized]

I'm a PC Gamer so I rarely use discs and I put a lot of trust and faith in Steam, but... seriously, fuck this guy. Fuck him and his fucking vision of the future. Going all digital is a step that a lot of people are not ready to take yet. Seriously, I can't think of any other distributors besides Steam and GOG that actually did Digital right. So yeah, screw this guy for telling people what they like or don't like. "There's nothing you can do about it". And that's exactly why Microsoft backtracked and pulled the DRM right? Yeah. Fuck you. Asshole.

 

[Avalanche91]

While I am fairly indiffrent towards the digital/physical debate, IF they are going all-digital, there are two things they must guarantee. Which they won't cause they view us as all-consuming mouths who will eat whatever we're fed and spit out money.

1) Lower the prices of digital sales. Not that difficult, they don't have to share with the retailer, have discs/cases made, they can even skip out on instruction booklets, because hey; all digital. But they won't do that, because the oppertunity to make MORE makes their mouths water.

2) For goodness sake, don't force us to always be online and guarantee the game will be playable after the developper stopped caring. But I really doubt they shall, because they seem to love to control every aspect of our 'experience' too much.

 

[Spacemonkey430]

So if digital is the future doesn't that mean that companies should start making quality products and services in order for them to be widely accepted, purchased and used by the consumer? It would seem that would produce more proffits in the long run. And isn't that what the big names of the industry are all about these days? Saying that they desperately need to make a buck because they are all poor and starving because of the evil consumer not blindly pandering to their poor busniness practices? This seems to be the approach instead. Say something that gives you domination is "the future of gaming" and then ram it down anybody who may have wanted something that comes along with your systems throat (like an exclusive) and tell them its nice and for their own good and they are a benevolent god for giving it to you.

 

[Kinitawowi]

The problem is that digital data is just digital data, but a disc is not just a disc.

I have, in my big racks still full of CDs, the two-disc special edition version of the best of James, my favourite band. The pro-digital argument wants to see those two discs as two folders on my hard drive containing 18 and 7 music files respectively that could have been downloaded from iTunes or Spotify or some torrent or whatever else, for all they care. I don't see them as that. I see them as the final result of four years trawling every record shop I went into, the length and breadth of the country, from Plymouth to Dundee and Manchester to Kings Lynn. I see them as a memento of a Christmas spent with a couple of mates in Nottingham. I see them as the joy and relief on my face when they had to get their trains back home and I had half an hour to kill so I thought I'd pop into a nearby MVC I spotted, where I finally found them.

I can tell similar stories about much of my CD collection. And my DVD collection; my Skins Series 3 box set isn't just ten video files, it's a twenty-three mile hike around Stoke-on-Trent. Digital data is disposable, something designed to be so intangible that it has no meaningful value. The majority of my discs have value to me far beyond their content. That's not something I'm willing to just throw away.

 

[Durgiun]

With the move to all-digital the companies will have an even easier time spying on the criminal scu-CUSTOMERS, making sure they're loyal every second of the day. And god forbid they want to play the game alone offline, in which case it'll delete all their saved games and render the game itself useless.