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

[Nimbus]

Speaking about digital distribution, I was wondering whether steam getting a monopoly would be good or bad. On the one hand, monopolies are tradtionally terrible for the consumer, however Valve has been faithful to it's audience in the past, and more than one platform could lead to a format wars similar to the consoles. What do you guys think?

 

[Cousin_IT]

The only game im looking for atm comes in a pizza box.

I think theres alot to be said to shifting towards digital distribution. It of course hits the snag of limited bandwidth broadband, since games are getting increasingly huge filesizes. I dont really see it happening in a major way unless both retailers & ISP providers change their tunes. As for Atari. For all I care they could sell their games on mountains of marshmallow & icecream. Would just be trying to plug holes in the sieve their sailing in.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Time for market-babble translation!

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].

"There's a generation of kids who don't know better we can fleece"

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.

"We can make short crap and they'll eat it up! And then PAY for download content that should've been in the game to begin with!"

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.

Permalink

'Not bloody likly, Phil'

 

[Jeronus]

Wasn't there a console introduced at a past E3 that tried the digital download only deal? Seeing as I can't remember the name they probably didn't do to well but I would like to see digital downloading become a reality, but the employees of Gamestop and EB Games would be fired because no one would be going to stores to buy anything any more.

 

[super_smash_jesus]

this is an idea that might catch on, if every console came with a terabyte of memory considering the size of games these days, your hard-drive will fill up pretty fast. Digital distribution is all fine and good, but I also do like getting the instruction manual, so i can jot down 3 small pages of notes. Maybe a six disc changer is a better idea for a console rather than digital distribution.

 

[Pigeon_Grenade]

i think he is on drugs

 

[Reaperman Wompa]

Am I the only person that actually likes boxes?

Anyways that will piss off a lot of companies like EB etc. Admittedly they deserve it but still sad face.

 

[Royas]

Digital distribution is, I think, going to remain as a supplement to the hard copy game, not a replacement. Broadband would have to become a LOT more widespread and bandwidth prices would have to go down a lot more for DD to become the only sales outlet for the publishing world. Even Valve, who has the most successful digital distribution system out there in the form of Steam, still puts their games in boxes to sell at Wal-Mart. I don't think this guy really has any idea what he's talking about, or he's engaging in wishful thinking.

Of course, if Atari's games are going to go in the direction he's describing, I won't be buying many of them in any form. It almost sounds like he's taking Atari in the direction of being a casual game only developer, in which case digital sales may work. The games tend to be smaller and less expensive, so there's a lot less margin on retail sales. The online model works for those. I'm just not one to buy that kind of game.

 

[Turkishchocolate]

Am I the only person that actually likes boxes?

Anyways that will piss off a lot of companies like EB etc. Admittedly they deserve it but still sad face.

I love the boxes too, but just so that I can sniff the manual. I never buy anything off of Steam, I buy it in a box then register it on Steam.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

I like boxes. I have bought things off of Steam, yes, when I was too impatient or it was an impulse buy. Thats what digital distribution is. It's the "White Castle" of Videogame Sales, nothing more.

People still want a product.

 

[Brett Alex]

Am I the only person that actually likes boxes?

Anyways that will piss off a lot of companies like EB etc. Admittedly they deserve it but still sad face.

Steam all you want, but leave boxes for people like us. Its the same with CD's and DVD's. Sure its basically the same product, but I do like to actually have the manual, the box, the box art, the disc and all the rest on a shelf somewhere.

Its probably just so I can brag to my kids about how cool I was back in the day.

 

[SimuLord]

Am I the only person that actually likes boxes?

Anyways that will piss off a lot of companies like EB etc. Admittedly they deserve it but still sad face.

Steam all you want, but leave boxes for people like us. Its the same with CD's and DVD's. Sure its basically the same product, but I do like to actually have the manual, the box, the box art, the disc and all the rest on a shelf somewhere.

Its probably just so I can brag to my kids about how cool I was back in the day.

The same way my stepfather brags to me about how cool he was back in the Seventies by showing me eight-tracks of the Steve Miller Band and Bachman Turner Overdrive? I like classic rock as much as the next guy, but it's hard to look cool when you're showing off ancient technology. His CDs of those same bands are much cooler, and those aren't as cool as a Zune with MP3s of "Jungle Love" and "Roll On Down the Highway" would be.

 

[Brett Alex]

The same way my stepfather brags to me about how cool he was back in the Seventies by showing me eight-tracks of the Steve Miller Band and Bachman Turner Overdrive? I like classic rock as much as the next guy, but it's hard to look cool when you're showing off ancient technology. His CDs of those same bands are much cooler, and those aren't as cool as a Zune with MP3s of "Jungle Love" and "Roll On Down the Highway" would be.

Yeah, no doubt my grandkids will be thinking "What a loser, I can't believe they used those shiny donughts, thankfully we all download videogames into our brain implants these days" but at least I'll feel cool.

 

[Jamash]

I don't think physical copies of games\DVD's\music will disappear too soon.

For one thing, a disc is physically a lot easier to put into your pocket & take round to your mates house than an entire computer or console.

I know technically not suppose to share these products with anybody or let a large group of people watch your film, but people do that as part of socialising & I don't think they'll give that up too soon.

 

[Nalesnik]

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.

not trying to be smug or anything, but won't the move to digital downloading greatly reduce waste? no more discs, plastics wrappers, plastic cases etc.. ? Sounds like a good thing to me.

My entire movie collection is already neatly, and conveniently packaged in one little external hard drive, so I can't wait until that happens to games. xbox live already offers original xbox games for download, I don't see any reason why they won't soon start offering 360 games too. I, personally, welcome this inevitable change.

 

[thiosk]

im really digging steam.

i bought hl2 on release. played it beat it, hated steam.

recently reinstalled steam so i could play l4d, long after losing hl2. and wouldn;t you know it? hl2, the expansion, counterstrike, portal, and all sorts of other goodies were on there, ready for me to download and play again.


digital is great for the pc

 

[Evil Scotsman]

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.

well, PS3 already does give digital games to download... so just the 360 and Wii have to do it now