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

[ChocoCake]

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.

My main contributing factor towards a more waste-ridden planet is that the more people sit at home enjoying their movies and games that they didn't lift their ass to get, the more food they consume. And with that, the more waste they produce. This is because without daily exercise (includes going to your job, going to class, going to the store, etc.) people rely on more wasteful, junk food that produces more waste. People tend to migrate toward this new habit because junky food is a whole lot faster and easier to make, if at all, and it is tasty, to some people that is. This can be compared with people who do go out on a daily basis, because they will be more fit, healthier and will eat better then people who sit on a comfy chair all day. Sure, there are the people out there that are obese and still go to the store, but those people will look skinny compared to the "couch-potatoes." This is all merely a theorized philosophical idea, the future is as unpredictable as Atari releasing a good game. I am just trying to show you where I am coming from when I compare our future world (according to Atari) to Wall-E's future world.

 

[xitel]

I think this would be great, it would definetely lower prices, what with the fact that we wouldn't have to pay for labor and materials.

 

[Azhrarn-101]

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 boxed games tbh. And I dearly miss the days of the big boxes with full size manuals and all kinds of other inserts. These days only limited or special editions come in proper boxes. I frankly hate the pieces of paper waste they call manuals these days too, where are the nice beefy manuals, with all kinds of background story and other handy info. Again, moved to limited and special editions only.

In that regard EU law sucks, because that's what caused the rash of DVD-case only crap we have today on this side of the pond, supposedly it's better for the environment to have non-biodegradable cheap plastic things than to have bulky but completely recyclable cardboard boxes.

I think this would be great, it would definetely lower prices, what with the fact that we wouldn't have to pay for labor and materials.

If you believe, even for a millisecond, that they'll lower the cost of games if they do that then you're quite naive. They'll keep them at their current price, infact they'll probably increase the price (claiming server maintenance cost) because there's no way their shareholders will turn down an increase in profit margin.

 

[xitel]

I think this would be great, it would definetely lower prices, what with the fact that we wouldn't have to pay for labor and materials.

If you believe, even for a millisecond, that they'll lower the cost of games if they do that then you're quite naive. They'll keep them at their current price, infact they'll probably increase the price (claiming server maintenance cost) because there's no way their shareholders will turn down an increase in profit margin.

Oh, trust me, I know they won't lower the prices, but it does mean that they won't be able to raise the prices by claiming that Blu-Ray disks cost more to make than DVDs so they need to increase the price.

 

[Azhrarn-101]

As for the complete disappearance of boxed games, I somehow doubt that. Games grow very quickly in size as the quality of their graphics improves, their size will become an issue since not all people have very high-speed, unlimited bandwidth, uncapped internet connections.

12GB downloads for a game exist, and they won't get any smaller anytime soon. I'd much rather just go to a store and buy it in a box than cripple my connection for several hours. (or longer, if the online store features a slow download, which is more common than you'd think)

Also the physical format continues to evolve, more and more data can be crammed on them.
This 16-layer 400GB Blu-ray disc [http://pioneer.jp/press-e/2008/0707-1.html] is a good example. I wouldn't want to even consider downloading 400GB for anything, the 27GB Age of Conan beta-client was bad enough.