Digital Downloads: The Wave of the Future

In the current 1Up Yours Podcast (http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3149993), special guest Newsweek blogger N' Gai Croal reveals that Gamestop punished Sony and sent a message to other game publishers considering offering digital downloads of current selling games. Sony allowed PS3 owners to download Warhawk. Gamestop retaliated by having Sony pick up ALL extra " off the shelf" copies and take them back. Gamestop refused to sell Warhawk, sending the message that it would fight future digital downloads of current games. This does not affect older games like Xbox Originals (Halo, Crimson Skies, etc.) because of the way Microsoft killed the demand for those games when it stopped supporting the original Xbox console in favor of the 360.

What worries me is that people are cheering for a future of only digital downloads (not in the podcast, just message boards across the net). Why are people so excited about a future with only digital downloads? There are so many negatives to it. Think of all the things to consider,

- Retailers make way more off software than hardware. If retailers aren' t making money (or literally can' t make money) off software they' re not going to stock the hardware. If retailers aren' t stocking gaming equipment then retailers don' t have to worry about competition. So unless digital publishers will offer launch day sales then expect to pay more for new games. Futhermore, if hardware isn' t being stocked that would include controllers and other equipment. That means I' d have to wait for the mail for all my hardware purchases and pay shipping charges.... no thanks.

- Time consuming. I can drive up the street and physically grab a game a lot faster than I can download it. With the move to high capacity formats, games next gen could easily be reaching fifteen gigs. I am NOT going to wait for a fifteen gig download. Really we' re already there. MGS4 is what? 15-20 gigs? That' s going to eat up a lot of time.

- Bandwidth. Game X is coming out. EVERYONE wants game X. When game X gets released hundreds of thousands of people will try to download it at once. Game X is fifteen gigs... and you' re averaging about 500kb a sec download speeds because of the traffic. Awesome... Also, high speed in America still isn' t too " speedy." You' d have to upgrade your service and see your monthly internet fees rise. Why should I have to pay more monthly just to play a videogame?

- Space. I' d run out of hard drive space WAY before I run out of shelf space. I can either physically buy a game and have it available to play whenever... or download it, delete it when I' m out of space, then wait an extremely long time to download it again if a friend wants to come over and play. But wait, there' s option three, buy another hard drive. That' s just more unnecessary money I shouldn' t have to spend.

- Durability. With both Apple/Microsoft pushing for DRM free music it' s a lot more practical to download a CD then make a physical copy of it. That won' t be so easy next gen with both Microsoft and Sony switching to high capacity formats. DRM free or not, once a game is on your hard drive it' s not going anywhere. Someone may find a hack to get the game on your PC and then burn it, but that also means purchasing a high capacity burner for your PC... yeah that doesn' t sound economical at all. Also, you must consider hard drive failure. Sure you can download all those games again for free since you' ve already purchased them, but if you have 100 gigs to download that' s a lot of time wasted when you can just as easily plop in a disc.

- Used game market. I, like a lot of people, enjoy being able to pick up older games at a discounted price. Easier on the wallet, bonuses for trading in older games, and it feels good getting a good deal on an awesome game. Not anymore. Don' t bother looking because you' re not going to find a used copy of Oblivion for 40 bucks. You' re paying the full 60 so you can have the honor of downloading it.

A mixture of digital downloads and discs doesn' t sound to bad. Essentially you' d have to best of both worlds where those who want to download their games can and those who would rather have a disc can stop at Walmart and buy it on disc.

But I don' t see how anyone could wish for a future of only digital downloads. It makes me wonder if they really thought that idea out...

I agree. I want physical media. All Hail Blu-ray!

"This is sad. There's no other word for it. The person who invents a way to punch someone in the face over the Internet will make millions from the demand generated by people like this." Youtube comments

Im torn, i love getting a new medium, but i also like the option of downloading. I want both really, i want to type in a serial number into a webpage and then have the option of downloading the tittle i got

I like disks. More specifically the disk art that comes with ' em.

Agent, the format war is over, you might want to switch to the winning side(WalMart is backing HDDVD+ $100 dollar price point)

I dont want to celebrate, I want to sell you hate.

I don' t buy that the world will go totally to the " download-only" method. It is far too impractical. What if I download something from a company, lose the download over time and want to redownload it again in 10 years? What if I have a different machine with a different MAC address and machine ID? What if the vendor and/or company that provided it for me in the first place went out of business?

As it is now, I can take a disc of a game I buy and play it in my friend' s machine. I have it forever. If I replace my machine, the game will still work with the new machine without having to go through any kind of BS whatsoever. These kind of advantages just can' t be countered in any possible way via the download-only method. Even if you can burn your own media, the amount of time it takes to download is ridiculous. Also that would lower the amount of potential customers, as everyone in the USA without exception would need access to ultra high speed internet to make this even close to being feasible in the videogame world.

Discs will still be around, just like vinyl records are.

But slowly over time, as we get cheaper, faster internet and bigger, more reliable harddrives, all the negatives of DD will disappear.

And we' re increasingly becoming a disposable wealth culture. Where we used to buy stuff and make it last for ages handing it down from generation to generation, we can afford now to keep it until we get bored and then throw it away.

So many games these days are played for 8 hours and then never played again. I think the longest I' ve played a game was everyday for a whole year! But now people tend to buy a game, get bored and then sell it on.

Games are being designed around people with short attention spans or busy lives with little gaming time.

Sure there will always be people who like to collect and keep the classics as a physical item, just like many enthusiasts still collect vinyl. But DD will become the norm for the vast majority. Especially since the ones who benefit the most are the devs themselves.

Retailers like Gamestop will have to adapt and start selling software via DD themselves or risk being killed.

Agent, the format war is over, you might want to switch to the winning side(WalMart is backing HDDVD+ $100 dollar price point)

Yeah and they had less than 100 000 units, they were sold out in just a few minutes. Walmart was trying to get rid models that weren' t selling. When Blu-ray lasers shortages subside, prices will fall. Meanwhile Blu-ray movies are STILL outselling HD-DVD 2/1. The format war is not over as long as HD-DVD is still on the shelves but they' re half dead. Even the Porn industry has choosen Blu-ray. FATALITY!

Blu-ray has far more support and the technology is at least twice as capable in ever direction. I talked about this before but Blu-ray has over three times the theoretical capacity and about twice the theoretical bandwidth. No one will buy HD-DVD rom drives when Blu-ray drives can carry twice the data per second.

The processors and RPM are not high enough for either to see the difference but once the technology catches up with the potential of the drives and both are maxed out. We' ll actually see suckers who bought HD-DVD ROM drives upgrade to Blu-ray. Actually so will owners of current Blu-ray ROM drives. Both formats are slow compared to what Blu-ray will be at in two years. We won' t see much difference with the movies as they are locked down so older players can play the new movies but Blu-ray will take a giant dump all over HD-DVD ROM drives.

Every PC enthusiast will go Blu-ray. I' m not sure if HD-DVD will die but I' m positive Blu-ray will survive. Microsoft will have no choice but to switch sides, PS4 and Xbox 3 will both have Blu-ray built in. Xbox 3 might have both.

http://www.engadget.com/2005/09/19/blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd-state-of-the-s-union-s-division/

Who' s winning again?

"This is sad. There's no other word for it. The person who invents a way to punch someone in the face over the Internet will make millions from the demand generated by people like this." Youtube comments

Porn industry is irrelevant, 99% of their customers are online now. Paramount jumped ship, and multiple others are now going both. I dont think you realize how many consumers shop at only WalMart, and when they see HDDVD $100-200 and BluRay $300+, what do you think the mass sheeple are going to buy? Soccer moms and old people are the mass market, and they dont care which format is superior(we' ve already seen this with the Wii for a year). If its cheap, the sheeple will buy it. Which is the better format doesnt matter, the cheapest does. (just like Betamax vs VHS)

Also, Ive been saying from the beginning that Wal Mart, not gamers or technophiles, will decide the winner.

And that article is the history of optical media and the 2 specs, all it proves is BluRay will be better(which Ive agreed), not which is or will win(ning).

I dont want to celebrate, I want to sell you hate.

I think the only things that should be allowed for digital download are games from 2 or more generations ago.
That way it doesn' t hurt retailers. And screw those mega nerds with 25mb+ connections. *im on 10mb* fk it takes ages to download shit even on my connection* :\
And plus when you buy somthing digitally thats it its yours forever, But if you buy a cd you have the choice to resell it.

[IMG]http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/4130/newsigba8.jpg[/img]

There' s no 100$ HD-DVD player. That was a 5 second sale. They wanted to liqudate useless stock that wasn' t moving. And 200$ is not mainstream yet. You have to understand that people buying HD players are people with HD televisions. HD is not mainstream yet, and people buying this shit mostly know what they are buying. The early adopters do at least. Blu-ray will drop in price as HD becomes mainstream. Price won' t be the determining factor here. It' s the only thing HD-DVD has going for it, and it is loosing this advantage everyday as Blur-ray players are getting cheaper at a faster rate.

So far there are more PS3' s sold than HD-DVD players. Movies are being sold 2/1 in favor of Blu-ray. That won' t change overnight. Paramount was bribed for temporary exclusivity. Blu-ray still has more studio support.

I don' t even care which one wins in the movie business (even though Blu-ray is kicking ass). I care about which will be the better Rom drive. This is where I made my decision, and eventually even those with HD-DVD rom drives will realize and upgrade to Blu-ray ROM.

Blu-ray has a wider numerical aperature along with a tighter track pitch allowing for the same data thoughput at lower RPM. So eventually when the RPM becomes the bottleneck Bluray will have higher speeds. In addition Blu-ray is ingeniusly designed for thinner discs, allowing them to spin faster before shattering. So while HD-DVD' s will spin at about 10,000 RPM when maxed out Blu-ray will be at 15,000RPM.

Bluray will have a maximum speed of 18x or 648Mbps while HD-DVD will be at about 9x or 328.95Mbps. Blu-ray will be able to transfer twice as much data per second! HD-DVD is hopeless!

Data transfer speed is King. 99% of the reason to upgrade to one of these drives is to get the higher transfer speed, it' s everything. Especially for a console. In the future when both meet their potential only an insane person would choose HD-DVD over Blu-ray. Blu-ray is winning now at a price disadvantage but when that goes away and it gains it' s performance advantage HD-DVD can kiss it' s ass goodbye.

As for movie quality, Blu-ray movies have a standard of 53.95 Mbit/s while HD-DVD has a standard of 36.55 Mbit/s of raw data transfer. The difference can be seen if the right codecs are used.


I give HD-DVD two years.

"This is sad. There's no other word for it. The person who invents a way to punch someone in the face over the Internet will make millions from the demand generated by people like this." Youtube comments

I want to be able to download stuff and then burn it on a disc myself.
That way I' ll get the stuff easy and I' ll be sure I get to keep it.

Not matter what' s in question, digital is the future.

I want to be able to download stuff and then burn it on a disc myself.
That way I' ll get the stuff easy and I' ll be sure I get to keep it.

Good idea..

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Yeah but whats to stop you form making tonnes of copys and spreading em around for profit :\

[IMG]http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/4130/newsigba8.jpg[/img]

Yeah but whats to stop you form making tonnes of copys and spreading em around for profit :\

They could tie the disc to your gamertag. That is to say every unique user has an invisible key attached to it, the download also has a unique key. The idea is to permanently tie the user to a single download. So whoever is signed in when the disc is burned for the first time is the sole user that can access the disc. Obviously the user would have to be signed in to burn/activate the disc but not neccessarily to play. But it would all be automatic of course, no entering product keys.

That' s what I want the music industry to do. I' m fed up with this locking songs to my motherboard. It' s fucking ridiculous. Itunes I' m looking at you! Everytime I upgrade my computer I have to spend months re-encoding all my CDs. Why can' t they tie it to my account instead of my computer?

Just a thought.

"This is sad. There's no other word for it. The person who invents a way to punch someone in the face over the Internet will make millions from the demand generated by people like this." Youtube comments

I don' t like digital downloads myself. Neither for music or games. I' m someone who likes to have a physical product with nice artwork. On the other hand, many games these days have very little besides a basic manual. But I still like to have an official box/dvd-case and some disc that I didn' t burn myself on the pc.
In the end, having the option isn' t bad for those who want to download I think. The fact that so many are cheering for this is a sign of these times I think (consumerism). Many things are getting more and more " throw away" . For example games seem to lose their value much sooner after launch compared to before I think.

I don' t like downloads either but even with the physical media I own i want to be able to lock it to my account instead of my computer. Preferably I wouldn' t have to lock it to anything but Apply likes it that way.

"This is sad. There's no other word for it. The person who invents a way to punch someone in the face over the Internet will make millions from the demand generated by people like this." Youtube comments