Moggy wrote:I am not sure what is meant by poorer countries, but I don’t think Microsoft and Sony are taking into account the broadband structure in the Central African Republic (Pointless) when they are thinking about what consoles they might release in 10 years time.
I don’t expect the next gen to be download only, but it is not a ridiculous idea to think that the next next gen will be download only. Things move very quickly, in 1997 the vast majority of people didn’t have the internet at all and those that did were on 56k connections. By 2007 broadband was mainstream. Things have moved slower in the following 10 years, but with the advent of 5G mobile internet, fibre rollout etc, it is not a crazy idea to think superfast connections are coming over the next 10 years.
I think part of the problem is that game sizes seem to be continuing to grow at a faster rate than average internet speeds are. AAA games today are anything from 30GB to 100GB, up from 5-10GB ten years ago. Who knows how big they'll be in another ten years? If the next gen sees games regularly hitting 200GB I'll be looking at a week just to download a game, so much for plug and play!
Also where broadband speeds are concerned there is an increasing gap being introduced - yes lots more people now have access to 50+Mbps services, but there are still many stuck on speeds that are in single figures. I know people in major towns and cities in the UK who are lucky to get 1Mbps and when they look into it there are no plans to offer them anything better. This isn't a small problem - millions of people, potential customers for future consoles, are stuck on shite internet with no hope of change. In the last ten years I have lived in 4 different homes - two in Cardiff and two in Cheltenham, none of those places have given me access to internet with a speed greater than 8Mbps - this wasn't that I chose not to pay for a faster service, there simply wasn't one available. The speed I get now is actually slower than it was when I moved in to my house 7 years ago!
The only way I can see consoles managing to go digital only is if someone sits down and properly sorts out a new mechanism for how data is distributed and required by games - don't hold players back from starting a game just because the content for the last level hasn't been downloaded yet!