Nihilism_Is_Bliss said:
Don't be a sore loser on this one Microsoft, you wish you had bluray.
Or did your fans enjoy playing FF13 over 4 discs with crappy resolution?
BluRay is the current way to go, complete digital distribution is way off.
Until every household in the modern world has internet speeds capable of downloading 20GB games in 10 minutes, and every game console comes with an in-built 10TB harddrive I don't see that changing. It's impractical and currently impossible.
The only advantages of digital distribution is that it takes up less physical space, and is slightly cheaper (assuming that companies will lower their prices just because they don't have to burn it to a disc). Pretty weak reasons.
What if I want to take my game and play it on my friend's console? Yeah good luck, they'll be copy/fun protected.
And the amount of HD space required would be insane! Not to mention if your system crashes you lose every single one of your games with it....and i hope you have an extremely large monthly download limit.
Which console was the first to attempt distributing games solely through online download? The PSP GO, one of the stupidest creations of SONY ever, and it died for 2 reasons: 1. It was about as comfortable for gaming as a mobile phone, and 2. It didn't have a UMD tray.
I don't know why everyone is so hell-bent on digital distribution, in my eyes it sucks. And if one of the next gen consoles comes out with just digital distribution for its games, I will be staying as far from that console as possible.
Why everyone is hell bent on digital distribution is obvious. There is a lot of money in it for the game companies. Originally the idea was presented as a way of allowing them to develop games faster, and much cheaper for the consumers since there would be no need for packaging, distribution, and other things.
In reality the gaming industry has shown no sign of actually providing games much cheaper, and all that money saved on packaging, distribution, etc... is pocketed by them directly making things simply more profitable. What's more digital distribution gives them tighter control over the game playing populance, both in terms of piracy, but also in terms of control in letting them cut people off from the product they purchused if the industry so chooses (ie revoking a usage liscence as their EULA allows) for various reasons like modding a game, or being caught using files (art, sound, etc..) for personal project like Youtube videos or whatever. Not to mention that with control they can decide when to cut off access to a game, dealing with issues like "Abandonware sites" that make it difficult for them to profitably decide to re-release an old game to a new audience.
Some of that sounds paranoid and out of context, but understand that all of these things become possible once physical media and brick and mortar stores are gone. Digital distribution does nothing but remove power and control of something they paid for from the hands of consumers. Once that control is gone, it lets Kotick-like greed monsters run even more rampant, and the industry can smell the money.
Mostly it seems to be a case of the industry, and the associated game media, trying to convince people that they want everything to go purely digital, rather than any real demand from the population itself.
-
All of the above cynicism aside, I do agree that Microsoft is being a bad sport. Sony focused it's efforts on winning the format war, and this was a big part of why other areas of their business suffered (like the PS-3 which was released during this), now it is reaping the benefits, and it's competition is taking a big hit in the long term. Sony might have gotten a very slow start with this console generation, and heck might even lose this round of the console wars, but in the big picture it will be worth it when their competition becomes dependant on them... and that is what Microsoft is bellyaching about. They did well in the short term, but Sony's long term actions are paying off.
Truthfully, digital distribution alone isn't going to solve this problem (and is a long way off, perhaps never getting here due to the lack of customer benefits). On the other hand if Cloud Based gaming gets here in the near future that might have some effect on the whole thing.
