| scottie said: I've ended up saying this in quite a few threads, so I'm creating this thread to discuss the main reason digital distribution will not be implemented next gen.
Retailers would not like it. This is the reason.
Elaborating further, we can assume that by the end of their life a console will have an attach rate of 10. This represents perhaps $100 - $150 (figure pulled out of thin air. Does anyone actually know how much the retailer makes per game?) in profits for the retailer. Add in that they deal in used games, and probably make somewhat closer to $200 profit on games for each console.
Note that I am making the assumption that a person buys all their games from the place where they buy the console. For large numbers of people this approximation is valid.
Therefore, retailers will only sell a digital distribution only console for $200 more than they otherwise would have.
And there are perhaps other considerations, about which we usually do not consider. It is quite possible that Sony and MS have a special deal with shipping companies where they get a special price on shipping consoles but pay extra to ship games. This would no longer be possible, and thus prices would increase more.
The only way we can get to digital distribution is by all the console makers making the transition over a number of generations. Wiiware/PSN/XBLA will become more important over the generations and slowly it'll become more possible to kill of retail games
Thoughts? |
Hmm "Retailers wont like it" eh
Given the retailers are being blamed by many Devs for chronic sales due to the practice of second hand resale. I should think that most Devs and publishers would be only to pleased to cut the retailers out of the picture.
I actually think the next gen consoles will require games to authenticate and bind to a console.
For example a title is sold in a store for 20 USD.
The user gets the media and can take it home but cannot play until a further 40 USD is paid online to unlock the content for the console. The consoles Unique ID is stored by the publisher as registered and that console will always be able to play the game.
Everybody wins. The user is free to resell the media but the next user will have to pay to authenticate again.
I realise there are flaws in this approach ie (Broken consoles, Cant lend to friends, multi console ownership) but it will give the games industry DEVS a much needed shot in the arm.
