Future of gaming?

[JWeinCom]

zorg1000 said:

JWeinCom said:

Sort of... but I misspoke a bit.  The current digital formula doesn't hold that many advantages over traditional retail.  Aside from getting the game quicker... possibly, and not having a disc to manage.  And there are a lot of disadvantages such as no resell value, no lending, and not everyone having the internet for it.

I'm thinking more of a service like Playstation Plus, but for all games.  Download what you want, keep it untill your membership of.  And of course, you can buy physicals if you want.  That'd be a big leap forward.

I think a service like Playstation Now rather than Playstation Plus is what the future will bring.

The disadvantages of a pure streaming system outweigh the benefits.  It greatly limits the potential audience to those with fast enough internet for streaming.  In Netflix, buffering isn't that big of an inconvenience.  In gaming it is.  Multiplayer is a big barrier considering how much more data has to be transferred.  And streaming would require you to be always on which I believe people were upset about in the past.

The advantage of streaming is that you can get into a game quicker.  That's a bigger deal for movies than for games (as a game is going to last you longer, and people play fewer games over the course of the month than movies). 

Having data stored on the harddrive just makes more sense (unless there's some back end stuff I'm unaware of).  Companies are investing more in the PSNow type of system, but I think at somepoint someone will realize that just because it makes sense for movies and music does not mean it makes sense for gaming.