Speculation for the next round of consoles

Shadow wrote:

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.

You can't force people to use a service that isn't viable to them, though. They will lose a lot of sales if they do that, and the second-hand market for the Blu-Ray-enabled consoles will skyrocket, as will modification of consoles and copying of otherwise download-only games onto Blu-ray discs.

Basically, instead of forcing people to arse around getting their console to work with a meagre internet connection, it will force people to resort to piracy, which helps no-one.

Who is it not viable for? Have you got any figures? You're saying millions, but I doubt that.

Shadow wrote:Who is it not viable for? Have you got any figures? You're saying millions, but I doubt that.

Anyone who doesn't live in a major city in a well-provisioned country. Seriously, I spent 6 years living away from cities, and internet access was a hell of a struggle. And this is the UK. Imagine somewhere like Brazil, which is a huge country, without anything like the infrastructure you require.

Look, just because something is new, it doesn't make it better. It certainly doesn't make it infallible.

I think Microsoft's next console will have its games available on Blu-Ray disc and as digital downloads. I don't think it'll be a case of one or the other, supporting both makes more sense.

MCN wrote:

Shadow wrote:Who is it not viable for? Have you got any figures? You're saying millions, but I doubt that.

Anyone who doesn't live in a major city in a well-provisioned country. Seriously, I spent 6 years living away from cities, and internet access was a hell of a struggle. And this is the UK. Imagine somewhere like Brazil, which is a huge country, without anything like the infrastructure you require.

Look, just because something is new, it doesn't make it better. It certainly doesn't make it infallible.

Brazil are still buying Master Systems aren't they?

I think any country with over 95% BB availability will be forced down the download route, they may well do a different machine in territories where downloading is actually unfeasible, but the likelihood is that anyone in one of these countries that was wealthy enough to buy a games console would have a decent net connection.

I really do think we're talking about a tiny minority of people and Sony and Microsoft are totally reasonable to ignore those people. I don't think you quite understand just how much more money this will make for the games makers, just getting rid of pre-owned would be a massive boost.

And why couldn't my vending machine idea work? You take your HDD to HMV, plug it into a machine which will install the game for you.

Shadow wrote: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.

Complete and utter fantasy. It's just too traumatic a shift. At the very most, we'll have a whole generation straddling the divide; simulataneous retail and direct-download releases for all games. Nobody is stupid enough to fundamentally split their userbase like you've described.

If you cease all retail releases you annihilate your relationship with the biggest source of hardware sales. Nobody wants to stock expensive and bulky consoles without being able to sell nice lucrative software along with them.

Shadow wrote:Who is it not viable for? Have you got any figures? You're saying millions, but I doubt that.

Plenty of countries don't have an Internet infrastructure as good as the UK. I think we are blinded by just how good we have it here and just assume everyone must be as well. MCNs point about not living near an exchange is valid as it affects a fair amount of people (me included as my exchange can't even get free sky BB due to it not being upgraded).
Download only may indeed be what Microsoft/Sony want but they can't force people to do anything.

GT - The Future of Gaming

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Peter Crisp wrote:

Shadow wrote:Who is it not viable for? Have you got any figures? You're saying millions, but I doubt that.

Plenty of countries don't have an Internet infrastructure as good as the UK. I think we are blinded by just how good we have it here and just assume everyone must be as well. MCNs point about not living near an exchange is valid as it affects a fair amount of people (me included as my exchange can't even get free sky BB due to it not being upgraded).
Download only may indeed be what Microsoft/Sony want but they can't force people to do anything.

How many people in countries without broadband provision are likely to buy a next gen console? Sony at least, will be launching with a Blu-Ray drive, Microsoft more than likely will do too, even if it's only really for backwards compatibility. If they do stop selling disk games in the larger territories that doesn't mean they can't sell disk versions in smaller territories who can't feasibly use BB.

And of course my vending machine idea that I've now mentioned three times, which has been ignored every single time, is a perfectly viable solution.

The only people that are going to be upset by this are the core gamers (myself included) I've got thousands of games, all in near mint condition, all proudly on display or carefully boxed up so I can pull them out in years to come, I will buy boxed games for as long as I possibly can no matter what premium I have to pay.

The fact of the matter is - and it is a fact - the games industry is losing far too much money to the retailers, especially through pre-owned. 25% of what Game sell is pre-owned, about 40-50% at GS and 100% at CEX, that is absolutely HUGE amounts of money that the people making the games aren't getting a look at, you can argue all you want that people would buy less games if they couldn't trade in, but you can't argue that the games manufacturers are massively losing out.

You will not find a single person at any publisher who doesn't despise the retailer, despite all of the work they do together, with the publisher chucking money at GAME to push their game and stick up posters, the shop is still stood there pushing a pre-owned copy of the game as being "Just as good as new". No-one would say it, but I'm convinced the advent of digital distribution is intended as a big "strawberry float YOU" to the games retailers that have been screwing over the industry for the last two decades.

Sony are already selling games as download only in case you hadn't noticed, Wipeout would normally be a huge release, but they're selling it as download only, if this doesn't prove to you they don't give a strawberry float about people with gooseberry fool internet then nothing will.

When I was deployed to Afghanistan, I took my consoles with me. I was perfectly capable of buying games at the amercian PX store, but had no way top connect those consoles to the internet. I know most soldiers with consoles take them with them on deployments, to help pass the time. Your suggestion eliminates any possibility of them buying games. You have a very narrow view that everyone must have their consoles in their living room, near a router and under a large HDTV. This is simply not the case.

Console gaming should only have 3 pre-requisites. A TV, a power supply and some cash. At no point should an internet connection become a necessity for gaming.

They should be really wacky and give the console free and you subscribe to XBox Live/ PSN and get downloadable games and online gaming as part of the fee - a bit like mobile phones.

The next gen will use discs, unless they intend to also sell the consoles directly as well as shops won't touch them.

If they do get rid of disc games I expect countries with slow speed internet to get discs, just as Sony are doing with Ratchet Quest For Booty in continental Europe.

The only thing for certain is that next gen the business model of selling consoles for a loss and trying to make money on software is finished, there is no way Microsoft and Sony are going to do that again. So expect either smaller leaps in power or to pay more.

Rik wrote:The only thing for certain is that next gen the business model of selling consoles for a loss and trying to make money on software is finished, there is no way Microsoft and Sony are going to do that again. So expect either smaller leaps in power or to pay more.

Yep, I agree with this. I think the former is more likely, as PS3 struggled at £425. I also think it'll be a while before the next round starts in earnest.

Too be fair the broadband infrastructure in this country is pretty bad well behind other countries in Europe.
I can see ISP's (I work for one) being unhappy with this and they are already penalizing high bandwidth users by throttling their connection.
If they do this I only hope they keep an option for people to play games through disk based media, I want the box/manual and im sure a lot of others feel the same way.

akijones wrote:Too be fair the broadband infrastructure in this country is pretty bad well behind other countries in Europe.
I can see ISP's (I work for one) being unhappy with this and they are already penalizing high bandwidth users by throttling their connection.
If they do this I only hope they keep an option for people to play games through disk based media, I want the box/manual and im sure a lot of others feel the same way.

I will always buy the boxed version if it's available too.

You can draw some comparisons with the music industry, loads of people are using digital downloads, but the CDs are still selling too (I almost always buy CDs), the difference is that everyone still has CD players, you can use a CD on loads of different devices around the house, however you can only play an Xbox game on your Xbox people aren't losing functionality by having it as a download so there isn't that barrier.

And MCN you're just ignoring all the possible solutions I'm offering to your problems, please stop being obtuse.

Shadow wrote: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.

I think they will start to push the service but at the moment I can't see it being viable with the broadband structure is this country. As has already been said, not everyone has broadband, and of those who do a lot of people have really low caps on how much they can download each month. Then there is the amount of time it takes to download a game, I can't see leaving a console running for long periods of time being very popular.

The vending machine idea isn't bad but again it could prove time consuming and hard for shops to implement, especially at first. I wouldn't be too happy about having to walk around town with a hard drive to buy a game either and it would knock off half my impulse buys. Also how would ownership work, what happens if it gets wiped somehow?

Ownership would be linked to your GT or PSN ID like arcade and PSN games are now.

You wouldn't have to wait for a game to download, you could play it and it'll download in the background for most games.

The broadband take up is the only issue really, but if you look at how many more people have high speed internet connections now when compared to 3 years ago, you'd expect most people to have some sort of broadband, and caps and stuff should be all but eradicated.

Also worth considering, if these consoles launch in three years it's going to be another three years after that before they really start to sell to the masses, who can say what BB will be like in 6 years? We barely even had broadband 6 years ago!

Shadow wrote:Ownership would be linked to your GT or PSN ID like arcade and PSN games are now.

But how would that work for people without the internet who are using the vending machines?

Shadow wrote:You wouldn't have to wait for a game to download, you could play it and it'll download in the background for most games.

Ok cool, I don't know enough about how feasible this is for most games but if it can be done then that takes care of that problem!

Shadow wrote:The broadband take up is the only issue really, but if you look at how many more people have high speed internet connections now when compared to 3 years ago, you'd expect most people to have some sort of broadband, and caps and stuff should be all but eradicated.

Yeah the take up should be higher but I'm not sure about caps, I think there is some limit due to the networks currently in place but I don't know nearly enough about it to make proper comment.

Shadow wrote:Also worth considering, if these consoles launch in three years it's going to be another three years after that before they really start to sell to the masses, who can say what BB will be like in 6 years? We barely even had broadband 6 years ago!

Very true and hopefully we will have a better structure in place by then. However I would think that designing would have to be started way before that happens so there would have to be a more traditional system as well with maybe the potential to switch focus later down the line.

Shadow wrote:And MCN you're just ignoring all the possible solutions I'm offering to your problems, please stop being obtuse.

Like it or not, these are problems many people face. Ignoring them isn't good business sense.

Why wouldn't a vending machine that you plug your HDD into work? Nintendo did a similar thing in Japan years ago, surely this'd be even better for your squaddie mates? It could just be the size of a PC, you plug in your HDD, enter your GT or credit card details, it bills you and gives you your game.

In three years data transfer rates will be improved so it shoudln't be much of a wait, shops would be willing to stock the machine as it'd be a lot easier than having stock rooms full of games. It'd be a lot better for the environment too, which is all the rage at the moment.