Music has been digital for much longer than videogames and CD's are still being sold and vinyl LP's even made a comeback, so don't expect that anytime soon.
Except that games have always been digital. Before music was digital (i.e. CDs) games were already digital. You could argue that the distribution for games lagged behind music and there's something to be said for that. But a fair amount of that has to do with the size of the files more than anything else.
Also unlike music the argument for the physical media for games has never been about maintaining quality. Mostly because there is no quality advantage. In terms of the end user experience you could easily argue that games on a disk are worse than games on a HDD. If that wasn't the case then why would installing games be a thing? Lets face it, the only major argument against digital distribution for games is the used market.
The major argument against digital distribution is the lack of ownership and control over your purchase. If Nintendo closes an online store on a particular console eventually you won't be able to redownload your purchased games. And digital games with licenses are often only sold for a limited amount of time before the contract runs out and you won't even be able to get them anymore. You're also stuck to 1 market for getting your digital games, so prices for new games are often a lot higher than retail.
That will only happen if they stick to the same type of store that consoles currently have, which if going digital in any serious way they would need to create something comparable to Steam and other digital only stores. The problem with talking about digital only consoles is that people look at what is currently in the console space and say that isn't acceptable, and that is true, but we are looking at what the future has for us and if digital distribution is going to be taken seriously, things need to change. However things cannot change if consoles continue to have physical merchandise to sell. The two different store fronts (physical and digital) need to match to create easier marketing and a straight forward message to the consumer.
People keep saying the Xbox One doesn't have Backwards Compatibility.
I don't think they know what Backwards Compatibility means...
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The major argument against digital distribution is the lack of ownership and control over your purchase. If Nintendo closes an online store on a particular console eventually you won't be able to redownload your purchased games.
That's my biggest gripe with digital distribution and it's already happening with the Sony. I have some PlayStation Mobile games on my Vita that I can't redownload.
It sounds bad and that ps mobile is crap, but in reality, this is not a disadvantage of digital media. As long you actually downloaded the game, it's the same as physical media. If you lose your physical media, you can't re-buy it either for free. So not sure what it has to do with digital media. The only time it was actually controversial was when Amazon penetrated your actual kindle and deleted a book. As long as companies do not do that, then it's fine.
It sounds bad and that ps mobile is crap, but in reality, this is not a disadvantage of digital media. As long you actually downloaded the game, it's the same as physical media. If you lose your physical media, you can't re-buy it either for free. So not sure what it has to do with digital media. The only time it was actually controversial was when Amazon penetrated your actual kindle and deleted a book. As long as companies do not do that, then it's fine.
If you lose your physical games that's your fault, like losing the password to your eShop account, but if Nintendo takes away the store where you can redownload your games there is nothing you can do. A harddrive isn't big enough to store all your digital games if you have a substantial collection, so that online store is your library and access isn't controlled by you. But you decide where and how you store your library of physical games. It's not like your furniture will disallow access to your games in a few years.
With game sizes, well lets go over to steam and chart some of the most popular AAA games for each year. Works out to be ~4GB in 2006, ~10GB in 2010, ~30GB now for the "average" AAA game. Then at the same time I'll write down what capacity HDD was included in the 360/PS3/XBOne/PS4. Interpolate the numbers, try and work out what the in-between years would have been for console HDDs. How many games would a typical console hold? Well here's the graph:
And it's worth noting that flash is getting cheaper faster than HDDs are. In about five years time SSDs will be cheaper per GB than a typical HDD of the same capacity. So again, being completely honest with the numbers here. Storage is not an issue even when you take into account the increase in game sizes.
Some playlists: Top All Time Songs, Top Last Year
"Don't stir the pot" is a nice way of saying "they're too dumb to reason with"
With game sizes, well lets go over to steam and chart some of the most popular AAA games for each year. Works out to be ~4GB in 2006, ~10GB in 2010, ~30GB now for the "average" AAA game. Then at the same time I'll write down what capacity HDD was included in the 360/PS3/XBOne/PS4. Interpolate the numbers, try and work out what the in-between years would have been for console HDDs. How many games would a typical console hold? Well here's the graph:
And it's worth noting that flash is getting cheaper faster than HDDs are. In about five years time SSDs will be cheaper per GB than a typical HDD of the same capacity. So again, being completely honest with the numbers here. Storage is not an issue even when you take into account the increase in game sizes.
Sure, now include DLC, savefiles, patches, demo's, possibly movies, music, etc. and you're left with about 20+ games. For example, I own about a hundred games for PS3...
Sure, now include DLC, savefiles, patches, demo's, possibly movies, music, etc. and you're left with about 20+ games. For example, I own about a hundred games for PS3...
Saves are insignificant. Movies and music are increasingly streamed rather than stored on the console. I'd also argue that most people don't have a music collection much larger than around 20GB even if they did want to store it on their console. In any case they're increasingly insignificant compared to HDD capacity and game sizes.
And you're right to point out DLC, patches and demos. They are getting bigger. But they are getting bigger at the same rate as the games themselves are. Which means storage is becoming less and less of an issue for them just as it is for the games themselves. So it's a moot point. In 10 years time the amount of games you can fit on your console will be as much of a joke as the "problem" of how photos you can fit on an SD card. We'll wonder how it could have ever been a problem, of course it just holds all of them.
Also, even if we take your rather conservative guestimate of 20+ games at face value. Assume that it's 100% correct and storage won't continue to gain ground as it has. Which is one hell of an assumption but still. 20+ games. This is a very enthusiast level problem. The tie ratios for all of the consoles of last generation sat at around 10-12 games per system. I'd argue that's probably the reason why the PS4 and XBOne went for 500GB as their standard SKU. Purely because they know the numbers, that only a small minority actually will ever need enough storage for 20-30 games.
I still think that the best alternative to flash memory is to put the games directly on hard disks (having the drive/reader/writer built into the system). Hard disks are down to roughly 20 cents per GB.
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Topic: Do you think NX will accept physical media?
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