No Difference Between Digital and Physical Copies of Call of Duty: Ghosts

MarlaDesat

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No Difference Between Digital and Physical Copies of Call of Duty: Ghosts



The preorder bonus Free Fall map is available to both digital and physical customers, and console download sizes range between 9 GB to 13.5 GB.

Curious about the difference between what comes on the disc and through the tubes of the internet? Activision Community Manager Dan Amrich stated today that the only difference between physical copies of Call of Duty: Ghosts and digital ones is the delivery method. "The data on the disc is exactly the same data that you'll find in the digital download," says Amrich. The trailer for the multiplayer map [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125565-Call-of-Duty-Ghosts-Reveals-Preorder-Bonus-Map] was released yesterday. Amrich also revealed that the size of the digital download for consoles will range from 9 to 13.5 GB, a much more comfortable number than the 40 GB needed for the PC version. The range in download size is largely due to localization for the game.

There is a small difference in exactly how to get the bonus map on consoles. Digital preorders for the PlayStation 3 will automatically have the Free Fall map bundled with the game. To receive the bonus map on Xbox 360, you must be enrolled in the Xbox Live Rewards program and purchase the digital edition of Call of Duty: Ghosts before November 18. After November 18, the Free Fall map download will be distributed by email as a download token. Xbox Live Rewards is a free rewards program [http://rewards.xbox.com/] from Microsoft. The Xbox 360 Free Fall offer is available to those in the US, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

Call of Duty: Ghosts comes out on November 5 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, and as a launch title for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

Source: One of Swords [http://oneofswords.com/2013/11/the-difference-between-digital-physical-cod-ghosts-is/]

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Sight Unseen

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How does a game go from the 13.5 GB on consoles to 40GB on PC because of localization? I don't get it. Is the PC version actually just 6 copies of the game all in different languages? EDIT: Misread the sentence, but still, why is the PC version 40GB? Is that just indicative of how much nicer looking it'll be?(Let's face it, COD games have never been the pinnacle of graphics technology...) That's 27GB more for the PC version...

Also- am I the only one who thinks the idea of a pre-order bonus MAP is a terrible idea? You're already segregating the community before the game is out...
 

razer17

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40GB for the PC? Man, they must have used a really shite compression, because there's no way this game should have a 40GB install. It's only based on a modified version of the Black Ops 2 engine.
 

sneakypenguin

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HD textures take up a ton of space. Hence the 40gb.

Max payne was 15 on xbawks and my install is now over 30 gb on pc so a 13 to 40 (doubt its actually 40) doesn't seem too far off the mark.
 

razer17

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Sight Unseen said:
Also- am I the only one who thinks the idea of a pre-order bonus MAP is a terrible idea? You're already segregating the community before the game is out...
If it's anything like the pre-order map for Black Ops 2 it won't even show up in map rotation. It will just have it's own dedicated thing.

sneakypenguin said:
HD textures take up a ton of space. Hence the 40gb.

Max payne was 15 on xbawks and my install is now over 30 gb on pc so a 13 to 40 (doubt its actually 40) doesn't seem too far off the mark.
I would say that's just Rockstars poor PC porting. Other than Rockstar games I can't think of anything that is so large. Including games like Crysis 3 which has a lot of HD textures, and pretty large maps.
 

MysticSlayer

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MCerberus said:
And yet they try to sell them at the same price.
This reason why this happens should be obvious at this point:

1. Retailers will complain if they charge less for digital than they do for physical due to it being supposedly "unfair".
2. It isn't like all the fees associated with making the physical copy, packaging, and transportation suddenly go away because you decided to switch to digital distribution. They just go to other places, but, unfortunately, we don't have numbers comparing the two.
3. Assuming that there is a price difference, it makes absolutely no sense from a business standpoint to not keep the prices the same. If it costs less to make the product available but people are still willing to buy it at the same price, then you keep it at the same price without discounting it. That's more money for you and the consumer has lost absolutely nothing in this compared to what they would have paid anyways.

Anyways, man, how in the world is the game pushing 40 GB? I know it is semi-old news, but still...I just can't believe that the PC version really requires that much, or at least it shouldn't require that much.
 

idarkphoenixi

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Call me a conspiracy nut if you will but I'm wondering if the PC version was made to be 40GB on purpose to deter potential pirates.

"But that punishes legitimate gamers as well!" I hear you cry. Well, it's not like that's a brand new concept is it?

I want to say that's just how the game turned out, but Call of Duty is not a massive game and the graphics are far from mind-blowing. I just can't see where all that memory is going.
 

MCerberus

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MysticSlayer said:
MCerberus said:
And yet they try to sell them at the same price.
This reason why this happens should be obvious at this point:

1. Retailers will complain if they charge less for digital than they do for physical due to it being supposedly "unfair".
2. It isn't like all the fees associated with making the physical copy, packaging, and transportation suddenly go away because you decided to switch to digital distribution. They just go to other places, but, unfortunately, we don't have numbers comparing the two.
3. Assuming that there is a price difference, it makes absolutely no sense from a business standpoint to not keep the prices the same. If it costs less to make the product available but people are still willing to buy it at the same price, then you keep it at the same price without discounting it. That's more money for you and the consumer has lost absolutely nothing in this compared to what they would have paid anyways.

Anyways, man, how in the world is the game pushing 40 GB? I know it is semi-old news, but still...I just can't believe that the PC version really requires that much, or at least it shouldn't require that much.
Printing disks, shipping, and physical items are direct costs attributable to each unit. The digital copies eat the same amount of indirect costs as physical prints, however, distribution of digital costs a whole lot less. This is, of course, assuming Activision uses best practices. If not, well eventually the shareholders would lynch management.

Furthermore, if you look at current trends in digital distribution you'll find that demand is pretty elastic. This shouldn't be surprising for an entertainment good. People will buy more copies at the discounted price. Your number 3 is EA's old logic concerning Origin, while reality is closer to the Valve model.

Number one. Is the reason. It's pretty stupid.
 

Strazdas

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Sight Unseen said:
How does a game go from the 13.5 GB on consoles to 40GB on PC because of localization? I don't get it. Is the PC version actually just 6 copies of the game all in different languages? EDIT: Misread the sentence, but still, why is the PC version 40GB? Is that just indicative of how much nicer looking it'll be?(Let's face it, COD games have never been the pinnacle of graphics technology...) That's 27GB more for the PC version...

Also- am I the only one who thinks the idea of a pre-order bonus MAP is a terrible idea? You're already segregating the community before the game is out...
HIgh resolution textures.
I am seriuos.
Most console games nowadays suffer from "developed with high resolution textures, then downsampled to make the current consoles actualy work" problem.
On PCs you dont have to downsample them, but there is always the problem of people with older machines.
A large resoution textres takes HUGE amount of space. if you ever looked at things like high res mod for Skyrim and such you would know this. heck if you tried to mod textures you would have first hand exprience of exponential growth of file size.
Thing is, as graphics improve, we gain less and less with higher resolution of textures, because you can render a 3000x3000 texture on a tin can a mile away, but the player wont actually see that much due to the screen only dedicating 15x15 for the can itself (monitor resolution limit), and will only be able to see if they pick it up upclose. now of course im all for high res textures that allow the game to look good from every angle, but they do take A LOT of space, and this is what seems to be done here. However average gamer wont really notice it that much among the blured motions, anti aliasing messing things up and exposions from the combat, so they will think that there is a huge download for nothing, when in reality they would only notice it if it was missing.
Its a sort of no win situation. you make the game good, they complain about the size. you lower the size, they complain about cheap textures.

idarkphoenixi said:
Call me a conspiracy nut if you will but I'm wondering if the PC version was made to be 40GB on purpose to deter potential pirates.

"But that punishes legitimate gamers as well!" I hear you cry. Well, it's not like that's a brand new concept is it?

I want to say that's just how the game turned out, but Call of Duty is not a massive game and the graphics are far from mind-blowing. I just can't see where all that memory is going.
People who pirate games dont really care about the file size. if anything, they mostly think "this game is large so it must be good/better". First hand experience o seeing comments like these on pirate portals[footnote]believe it or not, the forum community of pirates can be awesome[/footnote]
Menawhile all this does its punish legal costumers that gt to download it via steam.

razer17 said:
40GB for the PC? Man, they must have used a really shite compression, because there's no way this game should have a 40GB install. It's only based on a modified version of the Black Ops 2 engine.
The shittiedr the better.
Seriuosly, whats the point on using texture compression on PCs now? Does having worse graphics somehow make game better?
 

Matt Dellar

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According to Steam's download manager, Call of Doggy is actually 24 gigs for the multi-player and 7.5 gigs for the single-player; the real size is much closer to 30. Forty is just rounded up.
 

J Tyran

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Strazdas said:
all this does its punish legal costumers that gt to download it via steam.
I can appreciate that for a whole multitude of reasons why people that want to play the PC version might not have access to either the bandwidth to download 40GB or a connection speed to download it in a reasonable amount of time, thing is if its that much of a problem (like I said I can appreciate that it can be) why wouldn't they just get the retail copy? It has Steamworks anyway and there are always decent online stores around like Amazon and Greenman Gaming (or regional equivalent) if their local stores are crap for PC titles, which might even be a bit cheaper in some cases. The standard edition of Call of Duty: Ghosts costs £39.99 to pre-order on Steam, Amazon UK have it for £34.99 with free shipping for example. A fiver after all is a fiver, I would get it from Amazon instead of Steam myself if I wasn't getting the PS4 version instead.
 

Yopaz

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MCerberus said:
Printing disks, shipping, and physical items are direct costs attributable to each unit. The digital copies eat the same amount of indirect costs as physical prints, however, distribution of digital costs a whole lot less. This is, of course, assuming Activision uses best practices. If not, well eventually the shareholders would lynch management.

Furthermore, if you look at current trends in digital distribution you'll find that demand is pretty elastic. This shouldn't be surprising for an entertainment good. People will buy more copies at the discounted price. Your number 3 is EA's old logic concerning Origin, while reality is closer to the Valve model.

Number one. Is the reason. It's pretty stupid.
Lower the prices and you open yourself to lawsuits for breaking laws on competition and hostile pricing. This is what Intel did and they are currently the record holders of the world's biggest lawsuit. This actually adds to the cost of distributing digital copies at a lower price, but we whine about these things because we don't understand how it works.

Edit: Also because of greed of course. They can charge us as much as they want thus they will do just that.
 

razer17

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Mcoffey said:
razer17 said:
Sight Unseen said:
Also- am I the only one who thinks the idea of a pre-order bonus MAP is a terrible idea? You're already segregating the community before the game is out...
If it's anything like the pre-order map for Black Ops 2 it won't even show up in map rotation. It will just have it's own dedicated thing.

sneakypenguin said:
HD textures take up a ton of space. Hence the 40gb.

Max payne was 15 on xbawks and my install is now over 30 gb on pc so a 13 to 40 (doubt its actually 40) doesn't seem too far off the mark.
I would say that's just Rockstars poor PC porting. Other than Rockstar games I can't think of anything that is so large. Including games like Crysis 3 which has a lot of HD textures, and pretty large maps.
Rage was a 25gb install because of IDs stupid megatexture thing. Not quite as big, but pretty close and just as frustrating to download with 3mb bandwidth.
That's still a 15GB difference. And Rage was an open world game which generally speaking are bigger anyway. And I think part of the reason the install was so big is because they compressed the textures less to help speed up loading, which CoD doesn't need with it's linear corridors.
 

Strazdas

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J Tyran said:
Strazdas said:
all this does its punish legal costumers that gt to download it via steam.
I can appreciate that for a whole multitude of reasons why people that want to play the PC version might not have access to either the bandwidth to download 40GB or a connection speed to download it in a reasonable amount of time, thing is if its that much of a problem (like I said I can appreciate that it can be) why wouldn't they just get the retail copy? It has Steamworks anyway and there are always decent online stores around like Amazon and Greenman Gaming (or regional equivalent) if their local stores are crap for PC titles, which might even be a bit cheaper in some cases. The standard edition of Call of Duty: Ghosts costs £39.99 to pre-order on Steam, Amazon UK have it for £34.99 with free shipping for example. A fiver after all is a fiver, I would get it from Amazon instead of Steam myself if I wasn't getting the PS4 version instead.
Because steam is the only option?
im not sure how would you like to drive for at least a couple hours to another country to find a physical copy of the game, that is, if you actually can find it. While granted COD is big and loud enough that there would probably be a copy in my city, thats not true for most games.
As far as greenman gaming eqivalents - none exist here. we have no dedicated stores. best we get is a small section near movies in supermarkets and some of the electronic appliance have a few (as in, less than 20) games around.
As far as amazon goes, id like to see them provide free shipping to anoter country. Actually i checked, the free delivery is only within UK, or at least the page says so.
Also a fiver is not really a fiver. This is concerning 5 British pounds. that is over 20 LTL. almost enough to keep me fed for a week. You have to realized, that new games cost a third of your monthly wage here, so everything counts.

Now i am lucky to live in country with fastest internet in the world and could download that in less than 3 hours, however the neighboaring countries are not so lucky. for them a increased size "against pirates" would only mean they got screwed out of a game.
 

james.sponge

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sneakypenguin said:
HD textures take up a ton of space. Hence the 40gb.

Max payne was 15 on xbawks and my install is now over 30 gb on pc so a 13 to 40 (doubt its actually 40) doesn't seem too far off the mark.
I find it hard to believe Acti/Blizz would devote any resources to developing hi-res texture pack exclusively for pc - those guys are real capitalists they invest in gaming to earn money not to please their fans ;).

The game isn't even that impressive in the visual department to begin with. Companies tend to use the best available version in their promotional materials and in CoD:G case those looked pretty mediocre.
 

MysticSlayer

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CriticKitten said:
MysticSlayer said:
1. Retailers will complain if they charge less for digital than they do for physical due to it being supposedly "unfair".
Tough.

It costs more to produce a physical copy than a digital one, so the price being higher is only natural. Retailers would really have no leg to stand on in this debate, and it would force them to start operating in more modern distribution methods instead of sitting comfortably on the brick-and-mortar method as the only "valid" way of getting games.
While I certainly think isn't entirely unfair, I do sort of semi-sympathize with them. In the current model, it would be very hard for companies like GameStop and Best Buy to actually get into the digital distribution market, in large part because, for the most part, they'd only act as a middle-man between the customer and whatever other distribution system is actually in control of the product. It isn't impossible by any means, and we even have systems in place now to help the two work together (ex. Steam Cards at GameStop, which still leaves GameStop as a mostly unnecessary middleman, but oh well...), but it is something to consider.

Again, though, I think that, on the whole, it is a weak argument from retailers, as they would do better to find a way to fit in with the system rather than simply declare it unfair and without even trying.

Actually they totally do "go away". You don't have to pay a fee for the creation of a box, box art, transportation, etc if the box doesn't exist.

If this is your attempt to argue that the money spent on boxes would instead go towards the creation of distribution servers and networks, I have news for you: the server costs are a hell of a lot smaller in the long run, which is why so many companies are able to self-distribute their own games now. Used to be that Valve's Steam was pretty much the only guy on the block because it wasn't all that affordable to make your own digital distribution center, but nowadays it's actually not all that high of a cost, and many companies are starting to take those costs onto themselves so that they don't have to pay Valve to do it for them.
My comment was based around the fact that, even though you have gotten rid of one set of fees it doesn't mean that that is now money you no longer have to spend. What may have gone to fee for the physical copies may go to fees associated with having your game on system. Unfortunately, no one actually releases this data. I mean, it makes sense that digital distribution would cost less, but at the same time, I think gamers look at the lower costs and automatically assume that all of them go away when you go digital. They don't, the funds are just transferred elsewhere. Still, it would be nice if companies were to actually release some data to indicate the real difference between the two.

Actually, customers are far more likely to wait and buy a game on discount after several months. There are a few exceptions, certainly (usually the biggest named games will be Day One buys regardless), but most of the time, your largest customer base is not Day One buyers. It's people who buy the game at a later date, and they're more likely to do so under a discounted price.

For example: Black Ops 2 sold 7.5 million copies on Day One, which is amazing. But now that you look at their sales figures, they're up to over 24 million. Meaning that most of their purchasers were folks who bought the game after Day One, not before. And the odds are pretty good that most of them did it under some manner of sale somewhere (for example, some copies on Amazon sell for under 40 bucks now). It's exceedingly common for this to happen even to the biggest of games these days.
That's a pretty bad example. For starters, Black Ops 2 still costs $60 at a lot of places, Steam included. Second, you are comparing day one sales to the number of sales that occurred over the next 300+ days. Of course BO2 is going to sell a lot more during that time period. Price cuts and sales have nothing to do with that.

But, speaking in a more universal sense, it is a common (and smart) business practice to start your sales off at a higher price point and lower it as time goes on. That way you will get the people willing to purchase the product at the full price (i.e. $60) while still eventually getting purchases from people not willing to pay $60 right away. This is not just in the video game market, though. We see it pretty much everywhere from electronics to appliances to furniture. It's just one way businesses maximize their profits. Are they aware that price cut or sale could help increase revenue through an increase of purchases for a time? Yes, but they'd also be foolish to not take advantage of the fact that some people are still willing to pay the extra money on a day one purchase.

In other words, look at it this way: You have 100 people willing to pay for a product at $10, but 25 of those people are willing to pay $15 and ten of those people are willing to go all the way up to $20. You know that, eventually, you're going to get all 100 people or nearly all 100 people, but you also want to maximize the amount of money you make. In that case, you'd start at $20 and wait for sales from the 10 people that will pay at that price, then lower it to $15 for the 15 extra people, and then lower it to $10 for the remaining 75 (I'm horribly oversimplifying this, by the way). In the end, you get $1175 instead of just $1000, allowing you to earn almost $200 more from that method than just selling it at $10 so you quickly get all 100 sales.

In other words, you are basically guaranteed the sales in time, but different people are willing to pay at a different price. You would be foolish not to charge those willing to pay more extra, as you essentially lose sales in the long run. This method has been so successful in the past that businesses pretty much all accept it at this point, and economists aren't about to argue against it.

Now, translating that back to the lower costs of the digital distribution over physical copies, you are even further maximizing sales in this case. You still get the people willing to pay at $60, but it costs you, say, $5 less to make that copy available to them. That's an extra $5 for you that only gets compounded by the potentially thousands to millions of sales, and the consumer, again, hasn't been cheated, as they got the product at a price they were willing to pay for and which was no more expensive than what they would get from a physical copy anyways.

And since the costs on digital copies are much smaller, they'd be encouraging more purchases via their digital marketplace if they offered the game at a lower price range right from the start, which in turn would yield more profit.
Sorry, but consumers are hardly concerned about how much it cost the producer. They're only concerned about how much they have to pay, so this comment doesn't make much sense.

Also, nowadays there's a lot more attraction to the so-called "Valve" model, that of selling their games at discounts as often as possible under a limited time span. This encourages far more impulse purchases from potential customers and works much better than keeping a steady price, and is actually possible to do across the board in a digital model (whereas it's not possible to do with separate brick-and-mortar retailers, who can set their own prices). Guild Wars 2 has made a killing in this regard by offering sales on their digital copies on a semi-regular basis, which has no doubt sparked a lot of impulse purchases.
I'm not arguing against the Valve model of running plenty of sales. I'm saying that we shouldn't expect to see price decreases from digital distribution just because companies are saving money on reducing physical copy fees. The Valve model makes sense from a business standpoint and is backed up by plenty of data. Lowering your price just because it costs less when plenty of people are still willing to pay $60 doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

The only issue you really run into is if people aren't willing to pay $60 for your product. In the case of Ghosts, that isn't a concern Activision needs to have. Other companies would do well to start considering price cuts because not enough people will pay $60 for the game to justify starting at $60, but Activision, at least when dealing with Call of Duty, is the last company that needs to concern themselves with whether or not they can sell their game at $60.