Speculation for the next round of consoles

Anyone saying downloads will be too slow or they can't be arsed waiting for a game to download, go and download WoW.

https://signup.worldofwarcraft.com/trial/freetrial.html

It starts downloading while you pop your details in, by the time you're finished entering them you can start playing, let's bear in mind that WoW is pretty much the biggest game ever too.

There's no reason 90% of games couldn't do this and any new release could be downloaded prior to launch and just unlocked on release day.

Personally I think they'll probably both launch with a Blu-Ray equipped machine with a terabyte HDD or bigger, all games will be available on disk or download at first, after about a year they'll both release a AAA title as download only, they'll force people to use the download service, and then disk releases will start to dry up. They'll have the DL games about £10 cheaper than the boxed ones too.

You can all say it'll never happen if you want, but this will happen next gen, I guarantee it. There's just no reason why they wouldn't do it, the extra money they'll make from cutting out retail coupled with the destruction of the pre-owned market would far outweigh the lost sales from people who don't have broadband.

I suppose for those people without decent internet they could put vending machines in high street retailers that you plug your HDD into and it installs the game to it.

The benefits to the format holders, publishers and developers far outweigh the negatives.

As for Nintendo, they'll probably keep with the disk based games, they're always a bit behind with this sort of stuff and in honesty their audience would probably be scared off by having to enter their bank details into the internet.

I find the over-eagerness to jump onto the next big thing to be a worry, especially when our internet infrastructure simply cannot handle it, and isn't looking likely to for a long time. We're talking incredible amounts of bandwidth here. And let's not get started on DRM.

What problems could DRM cause? How would it be any different to games that you download now?

I think you're mistaken about our net infrastructure, as millions of Steam users can testify, and like I said, just go and try WoW, you don't have to play it, just see how quickly you can go from clicking the link to being in the game.

Shadow wrote:What problems could DRM cause? How would it be any different to games that you download now?

I think you're mistaken about our net infrastructure, as millions of Steam users can testify, and like I said, just go and try WoW, you don't have to play it, just see how quickly you can go from clicking the link to being in the game.

Imagine if there's a problem with your hard-drive. You have to re-install all your games. Only you can't, not without re-purchasing them. And if you happen to purchase a lot of games, and fill your hard drive? Well then, you're strawberry floated. Gonna have to delete some of those games to make space.

Of course, you could replace the hard drive with a bigger model - BUT you can't transfer everything over because of restrictive DRM. And don't say it will never be a problem, because without the limits of disc capacity, then coding will just get lazier and lazier, and games will get more and more bloated.

And I bet the vast, vast majority of those Steam users live in nice big cities, never far from an exchange. What about gamers who live in villages, far from exchanges, and with rubbish net speeds as a result? They'd have to pay BT to come and sort something out for them (which isn't always guaranteed). And paying BT also entails having to take a day off work to wait for them to finally show up.

Too much hassle, with too limited a market.

I've never heard of anyone have a 360 HDD break, and even if it did, all your purchases would be linked to your GamerTag so you could redownload them all, which wouldn't be any hassle, because they'll almost all be set up like WoW (there's no reason 90% of games couldn't be).

And for the bigger margins they'll be making on everything plus not having pre-owned cutting into their profits, they really won't care about the minority of people who're out in the sticks.

By the end of the year every new PSP game will be available as a download, I expect a similar situation may happen with PS3 games next year too. Maybe.

On Steam, all your games are tied to your account so you can get them anywhere you log in with a steam account.

The DRM is a non issue really, and it almost completely stops piracy before the game is released.

I just can't see it being cheaper. It won't be.

I hope not. Ignoring people out in the sticks would be a massive step backwards for the industry. The industry is all about getting more people involved, not cutting people out because they don't fit in with some ridiculous pre-requisite for owning your new console. Discs cost pennies to make, so it's hardly a major loss there, and I think if people cannot trade in their old games to afford the new ones, then a hell of a lot of business will be lost. I know I can't afford games otherwise.

Last edited by Shadow on Mon Sep 22, 2008 12:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

MCN wrote:I hope not. Ignoring people out in the sticks would be a massive step backwards for the industry. The industry is all about getting more people involved, not cutting people out because they don't fit in with some ridiculous pre-requisite for owning your new console. Discs cost pennies to make, so it's hardly a major loss there, and I think if people cannot trade in their old games to afford the new ones, then a hell of a lot of business will be lost. I know I can't afford games otherwise.

It costs about £10 per game to print the disk, manual, box and insert and then ship it to a store, on top of that the store takes about £10-12 (if they sell at RRP).

I actually think that internet speed is a non-issue, what percentage of the UK doesn't have BB? About 2%? Even 1Meg would be enough.

And you're willing to alienate millions of potential customers in order to make that up? It makes absolutely no sense at all, in a practical or business sense.

Peter Crisp wrote:All this talk of Download only machines is far to optimistic. Sure we may all have super high quality broadband by 2012 but far to many markets that Sony/Microsoft are in don't have that luxury. Disk based media may be the only viable option for a large chunk of the user base and to cut out even 10% of people from using the machine means millions of lost sales.

This was the point I was laboriously trying to make..

IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN, I KNOW THIS AS A FACT, THERE REALLY IS NO POINT ARGUING ABOUT IT.

Shouting about it isn't going to make you any less wrong. Downloads are not the future. Not for the console market, anyway. Handhelds, maybe, as the memory cards are easily swapped, and the games are smaller. Consoles, no.

Last edited by Shadow on Mon Sep 22, 2008 12:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well we'll see whether it's a success or not, but the fact remains this is not my opinion, it is what I know to be in the works with Microsoft for a fact.

Sony have wanted to go download only for a long time, for a long while they were going to make every PS3 game available for download.

MCN wrote:Shouting about it isn't going to make you any less wrong. Downloads are not the future. Not for the console market, anyway. Handhelds, maybe, as the memory cards are easily swapped, and the games are smaller. Consoles, no.

Warhawk, Ratchet And Clank Q4B, WipEout HD, SOCOM all suggest Sony think downloads are the next big thing.

suzzopher wrote:
MCN wrote:Shouting about it isn't going to make you any less wrong. Downloads are not the future. Not for the console market, anyway. Handhelds, maybe, as the memory cards are easily swapped, and the games are smaller. Consoles, no.

Warhawk, Ratchet And Clank Q4B, WipEout HD, SOCOM all suggest Sony think downloads are the next big thing.

They do, for ages before the PS3 launched, people inside Sony were saying every game would be available as a download for less than the retail copy, this didn't happen in the end as I think they wanted to push the Blu-Ray aspect more, but more and more games will be download only.

suzzopher wrote:
MCN wrote:Shouting about it isn't going to make you any less wrong. Downloads are not the future. Not for the console market, anyway. Handhelds, maybe, as the memory cards are easily swapped, and the games are smaller. Consoles, no.

Warhawk, Ratchet And Clank Q4B, WipEout HD, SOCOM all suggest Sony think downloads are the next big thing.

Is that why they game the basic PS3 a 20GB HDD, then?

I fail to see how the next gen consoles will not have a disc drive. For sure they will, no doubt about it. Games are getting bigger at a rate faster than the progressive nature of Broadband. It's not going to happen.

Both machines will either adopt Blu-Ray (100GB discs) or another new format (which is highly unlikely but you never know). I can see the HDD being pretty big though so accommodate all the new services being pushed by the format holders.

Both will incorporate backwards compatibility. Gamers would have spent a good amount of money on DLC and service specific software (XBLA/PSN) so they will must/have to.

I also think that 1080p will be the standard with both applying technology to easily manage worlds of twice the size at 60fps. Not too sure how Microsoft are going to tackle the CPU needs for there new system but I imagine Sony and it's partners will scale the Cell chip to give PlayStation4 the required power. Actually, that could be crucial to them. By that time the Cell chip will be flying off the shelves and scaling the same technology will be much cheaper. We could see a role reversal in the price on launch.

MCN wrote:
suzzopher wrote:
MCN wrote:Shouting about it isn't going to make you any less wrong. Downloads are not the future. Not for the console market, anyway. Handhelds, maybe, as the memory cards are easily swapped, and the games are smaller. Consoles, no.

Warhawk, Ratchet And Clank Q4B, WipEout HD, SOCOM all suggest Sony think downloads are the next big thing.

Is that why they game the basic PS3 a 20GB HDD, then?

They have an easy to replace HDD which you can upgrade to how you use the machine. But from October the only two models on sale will be 80gb and 160gb units.

MCN wrote:
suzzopher wrote:
MCN wrote:Shouting about it isn't going to make you any less wrong. Downloads are not the future. Not for the console market, anyway. Handhelds, maybe, as the memory cards are easily swapped, and the games are smaller. Consoles, no.

Warhawk, Ratchet And Clank Q4B, WipEout HD, SOCOM all suggest Sony think downloads are the next big thing.

Is that why they game the basic PS3 a 20GB HDD, then?

No they did that because people were going crazy about the price, but downloads are the reason that they allowed people to expand the HDD themselves.

cooldawn wrote:I fail to see how the next gen consoles will not have a disc drive. For sure they will, no doubt about it. Games are getting bigger at a rate faster than the progressive nature of Broadband. It's not going to happen.

They probably will launch with a Blu-Ray drive, Microsoft might do two SKUs though, one without a drive, I expect after a while they'll revise the hardware and get rid of the drive once they've forced everyone on to the download service by making Halo5, FFXV or something like that download only.

Speculation for the next round of consoles

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