Assassin's Creed Creator Says Nobody Cares About Discs Anymore

[Pink Apocalypse]

If you want to go all digital, announce a price cut on your games at the same time. Do you really expect people to pay the same 60 dollars for content that only exists in the ether versus a physical copy in their hands?

This.

It's a large part of the reason why everyone in this house never buys digital versions of anything. You want to charge me the *same price* for something that doesn't give me the sense of security a physical copy does (barring stupid former attempts like the 180 to thwart that)?

Uhh no. Just no.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Yeah, I definitely care about discs, and will continue to care about them until I have the security that any digital game, ANY DIGITAL GAME is never, ever going to be unattainable. Give me the security I crave, and have in discs, and you might be on to something.

Do what sony does at times. Bundle digital downloads with other stuff like day one, and another game. I got Quantum Conundrum, 3 outfits, and some other stuff with Tomb Raider downloaded from PSN, and it was a tax free average game cost.

Sweeten digital, and give us instant gratification, or it's no deal. Especially if the companies are going to reel in the leash game companies want to keep gamers on.

I've got hundreds of Disc based games from my life gaming, and even a few cartridges keeping my ability to play those games safe.

Oh, and make hard drives cheaper, or make it way faster to download full games, too. Preferrably both. Do this across the globe. Hard drive space is finite, especially in consoles. Not everyone's going to have a 500 gig hard drive.

I have over 900 individual downloads on my PSN account, and it grows by the week. I had to reformat not too long ago. Guess what I had to do soon after reformatting?

I'm not going to pretend that there's no benefits what so ever to being digital, but the cons outweight it too much right now. Especially on consoles.

/rant

 

[Hazy]

The future will be determined when the majority agree in favor of one way or another, and as the tally shows, the people are not ready to "go digital."

So you can cram it, Desilets.

 

[LetalisK]

I think the outrage was less about digitizing the industry and more about the bullshit DRM that came along with it.

 

[Nazulu]

This is definitely what talking out of your ass sounds like, because you have to be truly fucking thick to tell the consumers how it works.

I am sick to death of morons like Patrice telling me "dis is da futre and der is nottthing u cn do abut it". WRONG! If you have any decency you would aim to give as many options as possible so no one misses out! Convenience should be the way of the future, not forced prick decisions that only work for greedy pricks.

 

[CyberMachinist]

He's definitely not gonna be reading the forums so I doubt he'll ever change his obstinate views on what makes this industry work.

But it would be kind of funny, if it actually did happen and they still kept losing profits and ended up blaming it on pirates or hackers or some other petty and pathetic excuse they can come up with.

It would be "fun" to heckle them about their short-sightedness about this whole miracle solution that they didn't bother to think was possible to be comprised because all they saw was "Profits! Ripping consumers off! Monopoly!" before thinking of anything else, like for the fact this will at best give a variable profit boost then possibly kill off most of their consumer's interests.

 

[Grabehn]

As a PC Gamer, I really don't care about discs.

Notably, as a PC Gamer, I really don't care about Ubisoft either considering how much they don't care about me.

It's a bit of mutual apathy. It's hard to appeal to the population that doesn't mind digital while simultaneously alienating them.

Mostly thi. While I do like game cases, having basically a mural wof those has always been really awesome imo, but as it is now, when game discs are basically an "already downloaded" Steam backup, there's not much to it.

Even less so when you think that over here PC game are always 60 bucks, no matter how old they are.

 

[jibjab963]

Well then call me "Nobody" for the rest of my life. Not having a disk can be a major turn off for me.

 

[2HF]

I care, so that statement is false and his opinions on the matter become irrelevant to me.

Now, that being sad, I'm not all opposed to the digital model. I just bought Portal 2 digitally on my PS3. Know why? Because I got it for right about $10 whereas the physical copy would have cost me over $30 at Gamestop. I also purchased Flower, Final Fantasy 7 and 8, Jak & Daxter, Psychonauts, and a variety of others. I also recently purchased the Thief trilogy from GOG. All at tremendous deals.

Purchasing digital for the same price as physical on consoles is a stupid decision. I don't care if you never sell your games because of this or that illogical reason. The upsides are far outweighed by the downsides of digital purchases at the same price as physical.

I can buy a brand new game at Gamestop for $60, if it's a game in high demand I can easily get $30 back for it at that same retailer. For a little bit of effort I can easily get $40 on craigslist or ebay. That means I got the full experience for anywhere from $20-$30.

I can buy the same game used from Gamestop with absolutely no loss of quality for $50 and get the same return I mentioned above meaning I can have the full experience for $10-$20.

I can go buy a shitty game for $20, play it for 2 days before I realize I hate it, and return it for the full price within 7 days at Gamestop. Try that shit with digital.

So to recap, I'm not opposed to digital if you make it worth my money. I'm willing to give up my right to sell my property if I can get that property at a price that makes sense. And yes, when I buy a game it becomes my property. Not the IP of course, but the physical disc itself which contains IP. If I buy a postcard with The Mona Lisa on it I own that card and do whatever I want with it. I don't own The Mona Lisa but I can still sell that card. Same logic applies to games.

 

[GAunderrated]

I think he got it backwards. I care about discs and I don't give two shits about how profitable the AAA market is.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I buy games and music digitally but movies on DVD. Why? Because I can rip and convert them.

 

[Strazdas]

i dont buy discs anymore, havent bought a disc in i dont know 4 years. however i do backup almost all my digital buys on discs. yes im paranoid and a bad example.

He is right that digital is the future, however as with all antequated traditions, peoplel iek to clinge on them, myself included, and it will take a change of a few generations to completely root it out.

I buy games and music digitally but movies on DVD. Why? Because I can rip and convert them.

you can rip digital movies too.

 

[sturryz]

It's like 2/3rds of the industry are trying to piss us off. The hits just keeping coming from these idiots.

 

[Sarge034]

"Yeah, games come on disc, and I get it guys, you were really pissed off," he said. "But, deep down, nobody cares about not having CDs any more...

Well, it's official guys... I'm nobody. And, wait a sec. If people are mad, doesn't that mean they care enough to GET mad?

...The future is digital, and there's nothing you can do about it."

So he is firmly in the "consumers have no rights" camp? Well, fuck you too Patrice Desilets. I guess the Xbone getting it's ass handed to it with 10-1 preorder figures and MS doing a 180 to please the dirty, dirty peasants know as consumers is us not doing anything about it...

 

[Callate]

"Nothing you can do about it?"

...Has he been paying any attention at all the last few weeks?

I also think the voices behind the "but we could make it work if you'd all just go digital" cry need to back that nonsense up with something other that petulance and ill-founded conjecture.

You're going to make AAA profitable again? By selling games with more restrictions, more microtransactions, more DLC, but sans boxes, disks, manuals, and the assurance that they can be played without the oversight of a server that requires frequent and costly maintenance, and at the same damn price you were charging for the version we could actually sell back on an open market?

Pretend I believe you. Pretend that everyone bowing down to whatever crap the publishers want to inflict on their long-suffering customer base is inevitable.

How is that going to stop the cost of developing for ever-more powerful hardware from spiraling out of control? How is that not only going to stop piracy, but turn all those pirates into the customers your attorneys have been implying were just a reach away with the ever-loving fiction of "lost sales"? How is that going to slow down the continued fragmentation of your market? How is it going to bring in new customers as the face of your industry grows ever more demanding and unfriendly to skeptics?

And if digital isn't the panacea of AAA, but merely a stopgap measure propping up the tottering giant- why should we be expected to accept the fiction that all the disadvantages the marketers are trying to shove down our throats in this version are acceptable, when the losses may be written into EULAs and TOSs for decades after the oh-so-precious AAA games industry has crumbled into dust?

The future may be digital- but it's even more likely that the future of games lies in teams of under twenty people who make tight experiences that can be downloaded in under an hour and sell their games for a price that makes people willing to take a risk.

That is not the AAA industry we see today. You can grow wings and turn into birds, ye dinosaurs, or you can sink into the tar pits. Just don't expect us to hold you up while you fumble.

 

[Chairman Miaow]

The future will be determined when the majority agree in favor of one way or another, and as the tally shows, the people are not ready to "go digital."

So you can cram it, Desilets.

Tell that to steam's upwards of 50 million users and gigantic revenue.

But who cares about facts huh? Something that was 5 times bigger than WOW in its hayday doesn't matter huh? Or anything roughly the size of XBL and PSN?

Before you say things like that, watch the Jimquisition video on why Steam and the Xbone are incomparable.

 

[rob_simple]

Tell you what, shitbrick, when you can make digital gaming as efficient and reliable as downloading songs to my iPod, then maybe I'll believe discs are surplus to our needs.

As it stands, next gen games are going to be about 50GB in size, there is no way on gods Earth most peoples' current internet set-up is going to be able to handle that in a swift manner, and if PS3 installs are anything to go by, I'm not crazy about the idea of waiting half an hour while my game installs and updates to it's digital throne.

Digital is the future, but it's certainly not the present.

 

[lunam-kardas]

I see he's going with the "If I say it enough times, it will have to come true" gambit.

Personally, I like having real physical disks so I don't have to store everything on my console or computer.