Digital Distribution; 5-8 Years away.

[Boneasse]

If you're walking around with high expectations to the digital distribution shoving the hardcopies completely out of the market, you might be in for a disappointment.

At a public panel-discussion, Warner Brothers could share their knowledge, saying that only a fraction of their earnings are from the digital distribution. The physical hard-back copies and disks of the media world is still the majority of their earnings. Bruce Rosenblum even goes as far as to state that digital distribution will not have a "releveant" economical market until perhaps 5-8 years from now.

Digital revenue is truly pennies and not even pennies when compared to the rest of our business. Digital is five, six, seven or eight years down the road. Our most immediate concern is looking at creating the next big hit show and monetizing it through traditional distribution. We can't lose sight of our core business.
Bruce Rosenblum, Warner Brothers

The film and tv-companies do acknowledge that sites like Hulu.com lessens peoples desires to pirate, but that the earnings and possibilities are too low.

Can this really be? 5-8 years from now? I know a lot of people like to have a physical copy of something they've bought, whereas I myself just go for the cheapest solution. That just seems like a longshot, when we consider the nearly 2 billion users of the internet.

And how does this apply to gaming? Do you think hardcopies of games will cease to exist a decade from now? Downloading next-next-gen games that are 50GB is going to be a hassle. Better go upgrade those net-speeds soon!

Via; http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6707724.html

EDIT: I actually meant for this to be in the off-topic section. I have no idea how it ended up in games. Would love it, if a mod would move it Thanks.

 

[Boneasse]

I don't see how Warner directs the whole entertainment market, but that's beside the point I want to make. That point is that our internet infrastructure, (bandwidth and price), is still not ready for full digital distribution. Especially here in Canada where it costs 50$/month for 7mbps down and 640kbps up with a 20Gb download cap... with the 70$ plan though, you get 100Gb cap... Fucking assholes.

Holy hell. In Denmark I think we're ready for it. A 60/60mbps connection costs about 80$ a month, but with no cap whatsoever. Furthermore it's all fiber, not copper anymore. But according to what you're saying, it would be a long ways away still.

 

[oliveira8]

I don't see how Warner directs the whole entertainment market, but that's beside the point I want to make. That point is that our internet infrastructure, (bandwidth and price), is still not ready for full digital distribution. Especially here in Canada where it costs 50$/month for 7mbps down and 640kbps up with a 20Gb download cap... with the 70$ plan though, you get 100Gb cap... Fucking assholes.

Well WB is one of the biggest entertainment companies out there. Movies, comic books, children programming, they been around since ever and own half of entertainment business.

 

[Pingieking]

5~8 years sounds quite realistic on a global scale.
Some larger countries (US, Canada, Australia) have some very big infrastructural problems that will take investment of billions to bring up to speed. This is a problem that smaller countries have as well, but their problems aren't as bad due to the concentrated populations. Upgrading the internet up to speeds and volumes that can handle masses DD methods will take a lot of money and some time. Plus, the companies are likely still waiting for a real consumer shift before they're going to fully commit large resources to developing infrastructure for supporting DD.

 

[Over_Krill]

Downloading next-next-gen games that are 50GB. Most games are not going to be 50GB the size of most of the large games size comes from the video files dragon age origins a very large game that is only about 20GB most games now are about 6-7GB(PC-360 do not know about the PS3) games are smaller than you would think.
Digital distribution is already big on PC and getting bigger and that link was about TV-movies which is most likely 5-8 Years away.

50$/month for 7mbps down and 640kbps up with a 20Gb download cap. About the same speed and download cap in Australia from my ISP is $84.9525 for 8mbps down and 384kbps up(if you are lucky and live close to the ADSL exchange)with a 25 GB download cap you can get it a bit cheaper that that if you look around. My internet connection is only 1500kbps down 256kbps up for $69.95 with a 40 GB download cap it took me about 16 hours to download a 12 GB game from steam yesterday.

 

[Souplex]

So I have 5-8 years until gaming is ruined. I will just hug my hard copies and store clerks until then.

 

[Boneasse]

So I have 5-8 years until gaming is ruined. I will just hug my hard copies and store clerks until then.

Some heavy hugging and comfort might be in order, yes.

 

[dodo1331]

So I have 5-8 years until gaming is ruined. I will just hug my hard copies and store clerks until then.

How will digital distribution ruin gaming?

 

[Nmil-ek]

So I have 5-8 years until gaming is ruined. I will just hug my hard copies and store clerks until then.

How will digital distribution ruin gaming?

Not all of us want digital distribution simple as that, I like the option and frankly steam can go fuck itself with a steel pipe for all I care. I like my collection and I like having the assurance that I actually own something.

 

[Hiphophippo]

So I have 5-8 years until gaming is ruined. I will just hug my hard copies and store clerks until then.

How will digital distribution ruin gaming?

Not all of us want digital distribution simple as that, I like the option and frankly steam can go fuck itself with a steel pipe for all I care. I like my collection and I like having the assurance that I actually own something.

While I more or less agree, I wouldn't get bent out of shape over it. As long as I get to play the game I'd be happy.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

The timeline seems reasonable to me. There still stands a huge portion of the market who is not comfortable with the concept of digitial distribution, but many if not most will be converted in time. Until that date, publishers of any sort must still treat brick and mortar retailers with respect as they still hold a great deal of power. If an entire chain (say gamestop) refuses to carry a game because of a hostile approach by a publisher, sales would surely be dimished as a result.

 

[dududf]

Ugh shit death of gaming is coming soon then...

Just think, what if you download these games and as a DRM you need to have a service, like say STEAM. Now if the company that runs those servers that let you start your game (Thanks to that DRM) goes under, do you think they will crack the games for you? God no. So you won't actually "Own" the game, and you won't be able to play it any more.

Money wasted, atleast with a Hardcopy game, it's easier to crack and thus actually "Own" your game.

Hell, I think spore is a shining example of how royally fucked the future will be. You could only install the game 3 times, that's not owning that's fucking RENTING.

If it goes all digital, we won't "own" anything per se. =[

 

[Boneasse]

Ugh shit death of gaming is coming soon then...

Just think, what if you download these games and as a DRM you need to have a service, like say STEAM. Now if the company that runs those servers that let you start your game (Thanks to that DRM) goes under, do you think they will crack the games for you? God no. So you won't actually "Own" the game, and you won't be able to play it any more.

Money wasted, atleast with a Hardcopy game, it's easier to crack and thus actually "Own" your game.

Hell, I think spore is a shining example of how royally fucked the future will be. You could only install the game 3 times, that's not owning that's fucking RENTING.

If it goes all digital, we won't "own" anything per se. =[

What about battle.net then? At the moment I have StarCraft + BW, War3 + TFT on "Digital copy" at battle.net. Steam is a bit different because you HAVE to use the client for all the games, unless you change the *cfg files, mostly, but on battle.net you're assigned a cd-key and then you can download the game from their server. Does that work then?

 

[Souplex]

So I have 5-8 years until gaming is ruined. I will just hug my hard copies and store clerks until then.

How will digital distribution ruin gaming?

It will make it so the human side of game purchasing is gone, computers are finicky and without hard copies you could lose your stuff instantly. All you have to go on is faith.

 

[Boneasse]

So I have 5-8 years until gaming is ruined. I will just hug my hard copies and store clerks until then.

How will digital distribution ruin gaming?

It will make it so the human side of game purchasing is gone, computers are finicky and without hard copies you could lose your stuff instantly. All you have to go on is faith.

Oh yea. My OS disk went boom the other day. Lost all progress in Dragon Age, Penumbra, MW 2 and Dead Space. That pissed me off. Especially since 2 of them were digital. (D.A and Dead Space). That's a lot of GB's to DL.

 

[Rathy]

Personally, I look forward to digital distribution, as long as it does away with all the crappy DRM. You can make hard copies of whatever you want with the smallest bit of effort, so I see no point in needing to pay for the hard copies. And while right now there are some valid concerns on price setting with so few companies, this would change if more get into the digital distribution content.

 

[Boneasse]

Personally, I look forward to digital distribution, as long as it does away with all the crappy DRM. You can make hard copies of whatever you want with the smallest bit of effort, so I see no point in needing to pay for the hard copies. And while right now there are some valid concerns on price setting with so few companies, this would change if more get into the digital distribution content.

But if the consoles went DD, should people be allowed to burn the games to DVDs/Bluerays? That's a big risk isn't it? Makes it easier to crack 'n all. I can see one huge advantage in DD though; no loading times if you've got a fast harddisk.

 

[Weaver]

In other news Valve continues to pull in record profits off their current digital distribution platform. 5-8 years is a LONG TIME for something that is very real right now. I bought 50 games on Steam this year alone.

 

[Boneasse]

In other news Valve continues to pull in record profits off their current digital distribution platform. 5-8 years is a LONG TIME for something that is very real right now. I bought 50 games on Steam this year alone.

Damn dude. Bought some big packs?

I suppose one can always backup on a storage drive. Just in case.

 

[Weaver]

In other news Valve continues to pull in record profits off their current digital distribution platform. 5-8 years is a LONG TIME for something that is very real right now. I bought 50 games on Steam this year alone.

Damn dude. Bought some big packs?

I suppose one can always backup on a storage drive. Just in case.

Yes indeed! THQ had an amazing deal that had a pack with like 30 games in it I think. Some were older games (like the X-com series that runs in dos) but i LOVE X-com so I jumped on the deal immediately