Ok, allow me to explain to Ubisoft two factors that they have no control over. The internet and HDD sizes.
As one example, Uncharted 3 was 40GBs. At least the free version I got as a ps+ member was 40GB and required that I have over 15GB available beyond that. Moving on, that's the size of a particularly large current gen game and the next generation of games could/should be significantly larger than that depending on if they're willing to start shipping multiple disks per game or combining a serious download portion that is required to play the game. It is rumored that the ps4 will not be able to read the 4x layer bluray disks. That likely means the maximum game per disk will be around 50GB. Perhaps they'll start making the online multiplayer sections require downloading. If we're wrong and it can read the 100GB BDs then we could begin to see HUGE game files crop up. We may also begin looking at the introduction of BD disks that hold a lot more than 25GB per layer. Heck, didn't Sony invent something in 2010 that could hold 1TB in two layers? That'd be interesting.
Now, with a 500GB, this isn't an initial problem for a game here and there to be 20GB+. But when you're talking about a system you're going to use for years and if you're talking about removing a physical library then basically the library is VERY limited at this point and you may quickly having to decide which games you want to delete in order to play a new game. Depending on how you use your library, you may find this particularly infuriating.
Now, you may think that's not such a big problem. That you can just re-add the game if you ever want to play it again. But, this brings us into the discussion of downloading versus popping in a disk. For a 40GB game on a normal internet connection you're talking well over 12 hours of download time. Now, unless Ubisoft is going to offer me an FTP transfer of my game then that's not going to change until comcast or century link or sprint start actually competing along the lines of quality of product. Of if Google Fiber ever allows me the honor of giving them money. Uncharted was around 16-18 hours for me and I still have a 16mbps connection.
So the difference is in popping in a disk and waiting maybe 20 minutes vs. waiting for a day to play the game. And darn it if we aren't willing to pay for that convenience.
It takes a trivial amount of money to make these games and once a retail store has purchased the game, you've already sold it. You aren't taking a hit with it. How can you possibly attribute the existence of physical media as a detriment to your industry?
If the internet was fast enough to pull a game over in 20 minutes, then we wouldn't care. If HDD's were several TBs then we would care even less. Yeah, the almighty physical disk would be dead, maybe. There's still a lot of emotion behind owning a physical copy of the game that can still be plopped in whenever you desire. But largely, that's when we'll stop caring as much. It's still putting all our eggs into one basket (for example, if Sony or Microsoft ever drop their console business, why would we continue to expect to be able to access our games in 15 years?). How about you guys at Ubisoft do this. Have a game party in which one of you buys a physical disk of a large AAA game and the other one downloads. Let me know what sort of thoughts you have towards the experience.
As one example, Uncharted 3 was 40GBs. At least the free version I got as a ps+ member was 40GB and required that I have over 15GB available beyond that. Moving on, that's the size of a particularly large current gen game and the next generation of games could/should be significantly larger than that depending on if they're willing to start shipping multiple disks per game or combining a serious download portion that is required to play the game. It is rumored that the ps4 will not be able to read the 4x layer bluray disks. That likely means the maximum game per disk will be around 50GB. Perhaps they'll start making the online multiplayer sections require downloading. If we're wrong and it can read the 100GB BDs then we could begin to see HUGE game files crop up. We may also begin looking at the introduction of BD disks that hold a lot more than 25GB per layer. Heck, didn't Sony invent something in 2010 that could hold 1TB in two layers? That'd be interesting.
Now, with a 500GB, this isn't an initial problem for a game here and there to be 20GB+. But when you're talking about a system you're going to use for years and if you're talking about removing a physical library then basically the library is VERY limited at this point and you may quickly having to decide which games you want to delete in order to play a new game. Depending on how you use your library, you may find this particularly infuriating.
Now, you may think that's not such a big problem. That you can just re-add the game if you ever want to play it again. But, this brings us into the discussion of downloading versus popping in a disk. For a 40GB game on a normal internet connection you're talking well over 12 hours of download time. Now, unless Ubisoft is going to offer me an FTP transfer of my game then that's not going to change until comcast or century link or sprint start actually competing along the lines of quality of product. Of if Google Fiber ever allows me the honor of giving them money. Uncharted was around 16-18 hours for me and I still have a 16mbps connection.
So the difference is in popping in a disk and waiting maybe 20 minutes vs. waiting for a day to play the game. And darn it if we aren't willing to pay for that convenience.
It takes a trivial amount of money to make these games and once a retail store has purchased the game, you've already sold it. You aren't taking a hit with it. How can you possibly attribute the existence of physical media as a detriment to your industry?
If the internet was fast enough to pull a game over in 20 minutes, then we wouldn't care. If HDD's were several TBs then we would care even less. Yeah, the almighty physical disk would be dead, maybe. There's still a lot of emotion behind owning a physical copy of the game that can still be plopped in whenever you desire. But largely, that's when we'll stop caring as much. It's still putting all our eggs into one basket (for example, if Sony or Microsoft ever drop their console business, why would we continue to expect to be able to access our games in 15 years?). How about you guys at Ubisoft do this. Have a game party in which one of you buys a physical disk of a large AAA game and the other one downloads. Let me know what sort of thoughts you have towards the experience.
