Microsoft: Digital Distribution Will Outstrip Physical Sales

[Sqrl]

kitler53 said:

Sqrl said:

Digital distribution is better in every meaningful way, the only downside is a psychological one. Physical media can be lost, broken, stolen, etc..where as digital can be re downloaded at any time. If your console gets stolen there is no games for them to take also, you just remove your console from your account and re-attach it to your new console and voila you only lose the console and not the 20 games you own.

The only thing holding this back right now is bandwidth for most consumers, but that will get much better in the next 10 years and I would be surprised if we weren't downloading the majority of our games by 2018 when the Xbox 1080 launches =)

don't forget about space and efficiency.  I have 3 bookshelves in my living room just for dvd's.  although i do love my movies i'd prefer to get rid of them in favor of electronic copies just like i did with my music.  and i love the search features for finding my music, beats the hell out of searching the shelf for ten minutes to find that one CD you want to listen to.  I want those convieniences for my movies too. xD

 

 

Yes very true, an alphabatized list on your console is a lot more conveniant and space efficient than a bookshelf with game boxes on it.  Not to mention that all you would have to do is sit on the couch and pick up your controller to play any of your games.  You just start up the console and pick the game from the menu, no ejecting one disc and putting in another and then putting the boxes back up on the shelf every time you want to play a different game.

Hard drive space really isn't an issue either if they are designing a console for DD. Right now you can get a Seagate 1TB drive on newegg for $180 and that has enough space to hold twenty completely full BR discs.   By the time the connection speeds get to the where they need to be for the average consumer the drives will have grown considerably, we may have even switched to solid state drives by then.

Speaking of solid state drives I also want to point out that games will load faster from a drive, particularly if we are using solid state.  Current SSDs are already around 250 times faster than current HDs and HDs are faster than disc drives. 

I really don't see any drawback to DD system other than that people will have to get used to not owning a physical disc.  While at the same time the advantages are enormous; reduced living room clutter, no need to swap discs to play games, much faster game load times,  games cannot be stolen, cannot be lost, cannot be broken, and it will help put more money directly into the pocket of the developers by reducing their costs immensely.  The effect of which would be that expensive HD games are a lot more sustainable because developers don't need to sell as many copies to break even.

Remember that not only does this increase the amount from each game that goes to the developers it also removes the need for manufacturing which means more of the money they recieve will be profit.  More profitable games means developers who can afford to try new things, one of the reasons we have sequels coming out of ears right now (SC4, GTA4, MGS4, RE5, etc..) is because massive HD games are an extremely risky proposition.