The download only future.

PostRe: The download only future. by **Errkal** » Sun Apr 01, 2018 2:45 pm

No resale etc could actually improve games as gooseberry fool games and bugged out gooseberry fool will cause people to not just buy as they can't sell it off later.

PostRe: The download only future. by **OrangeRKN** » Sun Apr 01, 2018 3:03 pm

Gemini73 wrote:Physical games buying has, comparatively, declined much, much quicker and digital buying rapidly increased in just a few years. You say physical games arent going anywhere? I don't agree. The physical PC market is all but dead. It'll be the same for consoles

I certainly see digital sales dwarfing physical sales very soon, but even 90-10 is a long way from physical being dead. There will always be a collector's market and as such there will always be physical games - anything else is leaving money on the table.

OrangeRakoon wrote:
Gemini73 wrote:Physical games buying has, comparatively, declined much, much quicker and digital buying rapidly increased in just a few years. You say physical games arent going anywhere? I don't agree. The physical PC market is all but dead. It'll be the same for consoles

I certainly see digital sales dwarfing physical sales very soon, but even 90-10 is a long way from physical being dead. There will always be a collector's market and as such there will always be physical games - anything else is leaving money on the table.

Difficult to disagree with this particularly when you think that aside from CDs, vinyl is still around (and arguably has made a kind of come back). I suspect though that physical material will become more expensive, to steer people away from it.

PostRe: The download only future. by **Rik_** » Sun Apr 01, 2018 6:21 pm

Peter Crisp wrote:The main problem in the UK is rural areas are quite often left in the dust and suffer with slow connections.
Even some large towns and cities have areas without fibre connections and the UK is a relatively rich and tiny country so I can well imagine vast areas of the US having the same problem purely because it's so large.

This. It's fine when I'm at uni, but back home on the farm we can't even get regular broadband (used to, but there was a whole saga with BT doing something to the line and it stopped working) so we have to make do with using a mobile broadband dongle. Speed is usually fine but it's the data allowance that's the problem, only get 20gb a month so given the size of games nowadays it would be nowhere near enough for download-only gaming (not to mention that I can't download most patches at home for the same reason).

PostRe: The download only future. by **Knoyleo** » Sun Apr 01, 2018 6:32 pm

I already am download only, but being on ADSL isn't ideal. I still have to queue downloads overnight, and if anything is trying to upload, it kills my Internet speed completely, meaning uploading recordings of footage is out of the question.

I'll be upgrading to fibre optic when we move house, but as downloads and streaming constantly demand more bandwidth, it's probably always going to be a game of keeping up.

PostRe: The download only future. by **Ironhide** » Sun Apr 01, 2018 7:37 pm

I don't mind digital only games if the shift away from physical media comes with a reduction in price,, unfortunately the minute that you have a closed platform like Amazon or PSN, greedy publishers can (and do) charge ridiculous prices for their games.

Gemini73

Death's Head wrote:
OrangeRakoon wrote:
Gemini73 wrote:Physical games buying has, comparatively, declined much, much quicker and digital buying rapidly increased in just a few years. You say physical games arent going anywhere? I don't agree. The physical PC market is all but dead. It'll be the same for consoles

I certainly see digital sales dwarfing physical sales very soon, but even 90-10 is a long way from physical being dead. There will always be a collector's market and as such there will always be physical games - anything else is leaving money on the table.

Difficult to disagree with this particularly when you think that aside from CDs, vinyl is still around (and arguably has made a kind of come back). I suspect though that physical material will become more expensive, to steer people away from it.

Vinyl isn't cheap though and is predominantly very much the home of serious collectors, (not to mention that vinyl on a good player sounds better so there's definitely a market for it, whereas with games this won't ever be the case. We're certainly not going to be loading our games up from floppy discs any time soon 'just like in the good old days' ). I imagine if any kind of physical games media is to still be around, how ever many years from now, then I guess it'll be for special collector editions, GOTY and the like. It'll be unlikely by this time that any standard editions will be released on a disc in a box.

PostRe: The download only future. by **Errkal** » Sun Apr 01, 2018 8:51 pm

Also they will get too big for disk media so unless stuff starts coming on usb drives physical will die.

Gemini73 · PostRe: The download only future. by **Gemini73** » Sun Apr 01, 2018 8:57 pm

Errkal wrote:Also they will get too big for disk media so unless stuff starts coming on usb drives physical will die.

A return to the Amiga days of constantly swapping between several discs just to play Simon the Sorcerer. :lol:

PostRe: The download only future. by **Vermilion** » Sun Apr 01, 2018 8:59 pm

I don't want a download only console, it would take me forever to download a game like Far Cry 5.

Not only that, but prices in the PS Store can often be higher than physical copies.

They can't be higher if there's nothing to be higher than.

PostRe: The download only future. by **Rightey** » Sun Apr 01, 2018 9:17 pm

Another issue I have with a download only future is it takes away what is basically the only positive thing about a console (at least in my view) which is the ability to just take a game to a friends house, pop it in and then just play it there.

I remember when the Xbone was first announced they said the discs would install the game, but basically just be like CD keys where you couldn't share a game with a friend. When people first started to complain about it they went on to say it was an integral part of the system and they couldn't change it. Within a week when it was clear the PS4 wouldn't implement such a feature they back tracked and said oh actually we will totally just change that.

I'll never buy an Xbone because of that BS, you can be sure that if and when download only becomes the only way to get games publishers will take as much advantage as possible.

For another example of this look at digital text books. In theory they are supposed to be much better, they don't get damaged over time, there's no expensive print and distribution costs. In reality they're nearly the same price as physical books and schools need to re-buy them every single year meaning they're massively more expensive. Not to mention you can't even make a photocopy.

Games might be a bit cheaper in some cases, but you'll probably have less control over what you pay for.

PostRe: The download only future. by **Trelliz** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 6:50 am

Errkal wrote:No resale etc could actually improve games as gooseberry fool games and bugged out gooseberry fool will cause people to not just buy as they can't sell it off later.

Steam's constant open sewer pipe of new releases disagrees. Hundreds of at best bad but at worst outright broken games come out every week because valve don't give a gooseberry fool anymore.

PostRe: The download only future. by **Buffalo** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 10:46 am

There will never be an ‘only’ future to any of these sorts of media types mentioned. Never.

Gemini73 · PostRe: The download only future. by **Gemini73** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 10:56 am

Buffalo wrote:There will never be an ‘only’ future to any of these sorts of media types mentioned. Never.

Never, in the entire history of the human race, however long that may be? Are you sure about that?

Buffalo wrote:There will never be an ‘only’ future to any of these sorts of media types mentioned. Never.

I disagree, it is coming, just unclear when. Most PC games are DL only, consoles allow pretty much all games to be downloaded if need be and mobile devices will follow phones where all apps are download only. DL only will give masses of savings to the publishers.

PostRe: The download only future. by **Meep** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 11:19 am

PC is almost entirely download now. After going a while without consoles I find it weird that the console industry is still even debating the future of physical media. There is none. Honestly I am surprised it still exists now, let alone in the future. I was expecting it to be pretty much eliminated by now.

I think the explanation must be the level of control sellers have on console compared with PC. Generally on console the online download offers tend to be the same price or even more expensive and there is not alternative way to download the game from another seller so you are either stuck with that or going out and buying a physical copy. Compare that with PC were you might have two different prices on Steam, GOG or the directly from the developer. Which sort of begs the question why bother offering a digital distro at all when it's worse value? The answer might be to artificially inflate physical sales, but that seems really dumb considering the efficiency savings to be gained from moving to download.

I definitely prefer a physical copy to digital. I enjoy amassing a nice collection.

Retail all the way, as with download copies of games you're often paying higher prices, have to wait for the thing to download and update, and if you don't like it, you're stuck with it as you can't trade in.

NickSCFC · Last edited by NickSCFC on Tue Apr 03, 2018 3:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Rapidly-Greying wrote:I definitely prefer a physical copy to digital. I enjoy amassing a nice collection.

I love my physical collection that goes back to the mid 90s, I'd hate for that to stop.

The download only future.

Is your connection good enough for a download only console?

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