Microsoft: Xbox Live users are "growing up", digital won't kill off physical games

[Zappykins]

wick said:

Zappykins said:

I disagree, I think physical media is on the way out, and the policy change people complained about, some who worked at the like of GameStop, will only hasten the shift.  As you have to stay digital to get some of the quick swapping features.  We shall see more if we can track digital sales. 

Think about Halo 5 having a significant ports of it's opening day sales coming from digital.

I took some family films, had them converted to digital, and given to my siblings and uploaded to the cloud. Now, if something happens to one, it will still be there. It also lets my parents watch their kids at any time without setting up the projector - as easy as sticking in a DVD. They do not degrade, get lost in a flood, or damaged.  And my nieces and nephews can make fun of their parents fashions from 20+ years ago.

Common Game stores that sell disk are one of the few physical medias left.

In remembrance of Music Stores:

You can see how 'Compact Disk Warehouse' was there, long ago.

You people seem to always forget that music and movies are tiny in file size compared to games.

You know how long it was going to take me to download my free PS+ copy of Uncharted 3?

10 fucking days.

That's right. 10 days non stop downloading.

The infrastructure is simply not there for most of the planet and won't be for a very long time.

When music downloads launched, most people were still on dial up, and it would take a long, long time.  Like movies were a few years ago.  And sometimes they would be charge for the time they were on the internet. 

I downloaded a game today - it was small only 1.6ish gigabtyes, seemed to take an entire 30 seconds or something.  And I don't have that great an internet connections. We can easily stream two HD movies off the same network, and throw in some other stuff as well.

With h.265 coming you can stream a 4K show in the same bandwith that would take a 1080p show today's standard.  And it can even do an 8K and 3D streams. 

Even if the game is like 30GB, who cares if you it at night or at work/school (unless you have horribale limits.)  I think it will be a very small issue in a few years (if it isn't already.)

PS Sorry that game is going to take 10 days.  That's terrible.  Can you do other things while it's downloading?  Can it stop an pick up where you left off?  (Xbox 360's do this, I would assume the PS3 can as well.)