A major part of the digital/physical debate that people forget

[gigantor21]

Zones said:

gigantor21 said:

Zones said:

gigantor21 said:
Digital makes it far easier to enact all the licensing restrictions that the industry so badly want to enforce. That's why MS wanted to push their restrictive DRM on used game sales so much in the first place. Streaming services like PSNow, which "#4thegamers" Sony wants to make the standard for content delivery, would be even worse. Physical grants me as a consumer far more ownership over the game I paid for, regardless of what the licensing agreement says on paper.

PlayStation Now is not much different from music services like Spotify, Beats, and Sony's own Music Unlimited service. The same thing is happening with movies and Netflix.

 

The underlying repeating theme is that most people are reluctant to change at first, then very slowly they adapt to newer forms of media consumptions without ever admitting being unreasonably stubborn at first place. I am somewhat certain a lot of people who shit on PSNow at this time would be more than glad to pay a one time subscription fee per year to play games only three months old without even needing to purchase a gaming system to play them. Then of course all this unnecessary 'ownership' speech will go out of the window and most would pretend they had welcomed this future with open arms.

You're making an awful lot of assumptions there.

I wasn't anywhere near as apprehensive about, say, online multiplayer, or the move from cartridges to discs, or the introduction of anlog sticks for 3-d games. In all of those cases, the benefits far outweighed the potential downsides. Streaming services don't sound anywhere near as beneficial; the potential for lag and network downtime locking me out even in single player titles doesn't sound very enticing at any price, assuming that the pricing and offerings for such a service would be good in the first place. Even with digital downloads, I'm far more price conscious than I would be for phyiscal copy because of the inability to resell games I don't like and recoup the investment.

Some changes are just better than others.

Your last point is precisely why game companies are trying to push for digital and streaming services. To put it simply, the whole reselling and renting of games make the current business environment very unsustainable for the game developers. You can try and bring up analogies to make your point why this may not be the case, but gaming business is unique because there are not many revenue generating sources like there are with movies, music, etc.

Reality is, something like PSNow can potentially be way better than the current service in a few years, and it could act as an added revenue generator for game makers, but the initial negativity of such service by consumers is perplexing and it shows again that gamers, in contrast what most would say, are reluctant to anything they are not familiar with.

 

Yes, both PSNow and internet infrastructure, plus the pricings all need to sorted out first, but even then, there will be a backlash because the current status quo are more familiar with most consumers. But just like how for $5-10 bucks per month you can get unlimited music and it's a way better value than anything before it, $10-20 for all released games is fantastic deal, regardless of simplistic issues such as lack of physical ownership.

Considering all the problems that the industry is having making money, I have a hard time believing that shifting entirely to a Netflix-style service will help matters much. The movie industry has ticket sales, DVDs and Blurays to supplement streaming income; services like Spotify hasn't stopped the music industry from selling CDs or putting albums on iTunes. Streaming makes far more sense as a supplemental service alongside physical and digital copy than as a means of replacing consoles outright.

But frankly, I'm under no obligation to support industry practices because they make more money for the companies in question. That has nothing to do with whatever issues their business tactics force me to deal with as an end user. I don't own stock in these companies or work for them.