Microsoft: Digital Distribution Will Outstrip Physical Sales

[DirtyP2002]

TheRealMafoo said:

dbot said:

gebx said:
Other then my giant f*&cked up statement about PSN, my points still stand.

MS isn't referring to NOW but the future, and I find it funny how a lot of people here seem ...scared??... that digital distribution might be the future and that you're $400-$500 Blu ray machine that plays game might be obsolete before it even becomes maintstream.

No worries though, I probably feel the same if I had been suckered into Sony's promises..

Digital distribution is the future.  It will start to be a reality in the next generation, and you may see diskless consoles 2 generations from now.  That's 15 - 20 years from now.  So why is MS talking about it now.  Is it to divert attention from their pathetic attempt to prop up hd dvd?

 

 

Yes, if HD-DVD had won, there is no way in hell MS would be pushing digital downloads.

 

 No, MS pushed VoD since 2006 or something. When Vista was introduced MS said something about the VoD-possibilities with it. HD-DVD was not Microsofts priority. Toshiba was the big name behind it, MS supported it. IF MS would have straightly focused on the HD-DVD, things would be different by now.

I mean Dreamworks / Paramount took 150 million Dollar to support HD-DVD exclusively. At the same time, MS was offering 45 billion Dollars for yahoo. There you see where their focus was. I know you can't compare these things, but it is interesting to see the relation moneywise. The formatwar was just a secondary theater of war for MS.

@topic:

I really love the VoD! I just downloaded Primal Fear with 420p and it took like 12-15 minutes after I received the message "the movie is playable" (my translation, I got it in German :D) I don't know about HD-Movies but it will be like 90 - 120 minutes I guess. I use a 3mbps connection. That is not very fast, even in Germany, but it works out pretty well. (one part is downloaded, rest will be downloaded while i am watching the movie)

The "Games on demand" is a good thing, too. I had hours of pure fun with Xbox Live Arcade so far. And it is just not true that good games got to be huge. GTA IV was and is a huge game and it fit on a single DVD with 9,6 GB. A 9,6GB download is not out of reach in the next generation or even this one. It would take around 7.5 hours with my connection. With a 25mbps connection I could play GTA IV after 1 hour of downloading. (hope my math is correct.) And memory-space is almost free today. This won't be a problem.

But GTA is not a great example. Let's take CoD4 or Halo or whatever. These games can just work out like the movies did. you download first 1-3 chapters of the game and during your play you are downloading the other chapters. This would be possible and very easy to use. (does the PSN work like this or do you have to download the whole game first? serious question) GTA would be a problem, because there are no chapters. Sandbox games would just take longer to download.

In a word: In countries with a decent online-infrastructure on demand is possible right now! Japan, north America, Australia, south Korea (???) and western Europe (Germany, UK, France, Netherlands, Belgium, scandinavia, austria, swiss, Spain, Italy (not sure about their internet connections)) do have the internet-connections it takes. But things will just get better with improving internet technology and spread bandwidth.