The download only future.

I download everything.

Rightey wrote: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, wait an hour or so while it installs and then just play it there

FTFY

Rightey wrote: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.

imbusydoctorwho wrote:have to wait for the thing to download and update.

In today's market that's still applicable with disc copies. Can't remember the last time I bought a physical copy of a game on PS4 and X1 and not have to wait for it to download and install before playing.

Gemini73 wrote:

imbusydoctorwho wrote:have to wait for the thing to download and update.

In today's market that's still applicable with disc copies.

Yeah this, everything I have played on Xbox has a whole bunch of copying from the disk and downloading from the web so from a time perspective it makes no difference at all.

Gemini73 wrote:

imbusydoctorwho wrote:have to wait for the thing to download and update.

In today's market that's still applicable with disc copies.

In my experience, it doesn't take anywhere near as much time to do it with a disc.

Vermilion wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

imbusydoctorwho wrote:have to wait for the thing to download and update.

In today's market that's still applicable with disc copies.

In my experience, it doesn't take anywhere near as much time to do it with a disc.

Depends on your Internet connection.

Photek wrote:Depends on your Internet connection.

Which in most areas, including mine, isn't fast enough without having to take out a small mortgage to pay for fibre.

Vermilion wrote:

Gemini73 wrote:

imbusydoctorwho wrote:have to wait for the thing to download and update.

In today's market that's still applicable with disc copies.

In my experience, it doesn't take anywhere near as much time to do it with a disc.

Not with every game, quite right, but this idea that you can just pop in a disc and off you go hasn't been true for some time. EVERY game released today requires an install and updates, some much bigger than others, plus for many titles a stream of updates continue to appear long after the launch window. The disc is nothing more than an activation key.

Vermilion wrote:

Photek wrote:Depends on your Internet connection.

Which in most areas, including mine, isn't fast enough without having to take out a small mortgage to pay for fibre.

The poll above seems to indicate it's not most areas but anyway.

In other news why has nick posted a 5 year old gif twice?

To be honest on the PS4 and Xbone I'm download only, aside from a handful of games I got dirt cheap on disk. MS and Sony tend to be reasonable with sales on their store but I am never paying £49.99 for a new release. If that means waiting for sales or CD Keys codes then so be it. I'll get AC Origins once I can get a code for £14 or so and I'm happy to wait.

Nintendo is a bastard though. Crap sales and everything is £49.99 new. Luckily the Switch needs a case to be portable, and most cases have slots for the carts which take up no room at all.

Vermilion wrote:

Photek wrote:Depends on your Internet connection.

Which in most areas, including mine, isn't fast enough without having to take out a small mortgage to pay for fibre.

What country are you in?

I think part of the issue with this discussion is different countries have very very different internet services, the UK is pretty good and most people can get 20mb Broadband or fibre which makes downloading fine.

For me the disk install tends to have a slower transfer rate than the download portion of an install so physical media is the bottleneck.

The idea of a download only future is quite sad. For me it means:

> Issues with download speeds, which for a lot of people are still very slow/limiting. And as more and more games are being released in an unfinished state, and require massive patches before you can even play, the downloads are only going to increase and become more frequent.
> Issues around games being removed due to licence issues, end of agreements, etc, and no way to get them back/play them again.
> Restricted pricing (on consoles). This isn't an issue on PC because keys and downloads can come from different providers, but on consoles we already see ludicrous pricing and no competition. Greed aside, there's no reason that a downloadable title should cost more than a physical copy. It'll only get worse as time goes on.
> Inability to sell games after you've completed them/had enough of them.
> Inability to buy second-hand games, which for a lot of people is the only way they can afford to be involved (and this'll get worse when compounded by the restricted pricing mentioned above, as people will be priced out even further).
> Inability to lend/borrow games.
> The start of a decline in the retro market...where games get removed, games are no longer made available (for whatever reason), are no longer supported, won't work without online access, etc, etc.

Just a depressing prospect all around really. I guess the upsides are reduction of plastic needed for discs and cases, and the increased profits for publishers (and developers), but generally for gaming as a whole it has more negatives than positives.

Lotus wrote:The idea of a download only future is quite sad. For me it means:

> Issues with download speeds, which for a lot of people are still very slow/limiting. And as more and more games are being released in an unfinished state, and require massive patches before you can even play, the downloads are only going to increase and become more frequent.

If you are downloading you wont get day one patches as they will already have downloaded, the day one patch is a physical media issue as once on the disk it cant be updated, also in the UK it is over 80% of people have Fibre available to them, so it isn't really the case that slowness and stuff is locked away for most, although cost would be an issue and the sooner web is seen as a utility not a luxury the better.

Lotus wrote:> Issues around games being removed due to licence issues, end of agreements, etc, and no way to get them back/play them again.

it just stops people buying them, it doesn't stop people playing it if they already bought it.

Lotus wrote:> Restricted pricing (on consoles). This isn't an issue on PC because keys and downloads can come from different providers, but on consoles we already see ludicrous pricing and no competition. Greed aside, there's no reason that a downloadable title should cost more than a physical copy. It'll only get worse as time goes on.

I imagine in the EU at least this would be addressed by the monopoly police.

Lotus wrote:> Inability to sell games after you've completed them/had enough of them.

yeah this one is a bugger.

Lotus wrote:> Inability to buy second-hand games, which for a lot of people is the only way they can afford to be involved (and this'll get worse when compounded by the restricted pricing mentioned above, as people will be priced out even further).

yeah as above, although in theory if the monopoly thing is resolved competition should bring prices down a bit maybe

Lotus wrote:> Inability to lend/borrow games.

can't say I have ever done this, but if it was a big thing for people it wouldn't be out of the realms of possibility that it could be brought in, although I do believe it is in a grey area copyright wise as it is.

Lotus wrote:> The start of a decline in the retro market...where games get removed, games are no longer made available (for whatever reason), are no longer supported, won't work without online access, etc, etc.

gooseberry fool moves on sadly.

Lotus wrote:Just a depressing prospect all around really. I guess the upsides are reduction of plastic needed for discs and cases, and the increased profits for publishers (and developers), but generally for gaming as a whole it has more negatives than positives.

I guess, but the world moves on init.

Depends on what Retro market you're on about, more OG titles are coming to Xbox back compat. I'm very excited.

I'd throw the ability for publishers/developers to actually remove content from a game you've bought.

Pretty sure Rockstar/Take 2 did this with one of the GTA games on Steam. The licence they had for some of the audio tracks expired so they removed them from the game entirely via a patch.

EDIT: This didn't just affect people who bought it from that point on, but everyone who ever bought it from Steam. So just because you have it installed doesn't mean that's the copy you'll always have.

And as if by magic.....

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2018/04/09/some-of-gta-ivs-music-licenses-expire-later-this-month-and-songs-will-be-removed

If you have GTA IV installed on your PC you might want to turn off the automatic updates for it.

Photek wrote:Depends on what Retro market you're on about, more OG titles are coming to Xbox back compat. I'm very excited.

That sort of stuff would still happen as it can be done download only, would be like Nintendo and virtual console.

Lotus wrote:The idea of a download only future is quite sad. For me it means:

> Issues with download speeds, which for a lot of people are still very slow/limiting. And as more and more games are being released in an unfinished state, and require massive patches before you can even play, the downloads are only going to increase and become more frequent.
> Issues around games being removed due to licence issues, end of agreements, etc, and no way to get them back/play them again.
> Restricted pricing (on consoles). This isn't an issue on PC because keys and downloads can come from different providers, but on consoles we already see ludicrous pricing and no competition. Greed aside, there's no reason that a downloadable title should cost more than a physical copy. It'll only get worse as time goes on.
> Inability to sell games after you've completed them/had enough of them.
> Inability to buy second-hand games, which for a lot of people is the only way they can afford to be involved (and this'll get worse when compounded by the restricted pricing mentioned above, as people will be priced out even further).
> Inability to lend/borrow games.
> The start of a decline in the retro market...where games get removed, games are no longer made available (for whatever reason), are no longer supported, won't work without online access, etc, etc.

Just a depressing prospect all around really. I guess the upsides are reduction of plastic needed for discs and cases, and the increased profits for publishers (and developers), but generally for gaming as a whole it has more negatives than positives.

Most of those are issues for kids and while that is obviously a shame, I'm not sure the next generation will play games like we did so most of these will be non issues.

You talk about restrictive pricing but online sales have games dropping in price far quicker than retail did in it's prime. The inability to lend or borrow games will be a bit of a bummer.

Another reason, albeit a minor one, for why we're moving towards download-only is because even the most carefully-made Blu-ray will suffer disc rot years down the line. Downloads, or at least the back-ups you make of them, could potentially last forever. If Valve ever go out of business, all Steam games will have their DRM patched out of them, so Steam games will last, at least.

ROM cartridges were pretty sturdy things too, though, so I expect the retro market for those things will stay pretty strong.

Errkal wrote:What country are you in?

I think part of the issue with this discussion is different countries have very very different internet services, the UK is pretty good and most people can get 20mb Broadband or fibre which makes downloading fine.

I'm in Wiltshire, which may as well be a different country to be perfectly honest, this is somewhere that when Virgin Media started laying cables around town, they chose not to bother with my estate entirely.

20mb for a regular connection around here is a pipe dream, 9mb is pretty much the maximum i can expect.

I'm fine with not being able to resell games because my personal belief is that you do not actually own games. Once information is publicly available no one has ownership of it, since it can be duplicated endlessly and is not actually a material good that can be possessed. That only thing that counts is authorship in so far than no one other than those who created something have an ethical right to profit from it; unless with the permission of the creators.

When you buy a game you are paying a contribution to those who produced it. You do not actually 'own' anything.