Shadow1980 said:
TL;DR, never underestimate the benefits of ownership. And never overestimate the (largely imagined) benefits of digital. Ownership, people, is control, and you want to have as much control as possible. Digital is a trap. |
Honestly I have my preferences, which leans to digital but tahts not because i Have anything against physical its just easier for me considering where I am to aquire games digitally.... and cheaper if you would believe it... than even if i were to buy used physical games. So I have not outright said we should just go all digital, believe me I know and understand the importance of physical media.
What I said about physical media was basically me breaking it down to its functional purpose in the deign of a console. And pointing out that its a purpose that can be circumvented simply by having an external drive instead. Be it bundled with the hardware or sold seperately.
EricHiggin said:
What if you have 50 BD game discs for this gen, and you buy a next gen optical discless console, for whatever reason you have, then what? How does your online account know if you still own the game, if it can't be read on the optical drive you don't have, to allow you to download the game to your mass storage?
Thre are a number of ways this can be tackled. For one as I suggested there could be multiple skus both of which doesn't have a disc drive. Difference being one comes with an external drive ($450 and say a 512GB SSD be it NVme or SATA) and one doesn't($399 and a 1TB SSD).
Do you have to pay $25 to $50 for an add on optical drive just for BC? Do you require the old optical disc always be in the drive to authenticate or do you allow users to download the game to their mass storage and forget the authentication afterwards? With one time authentication the add on optical drive would seem like such a waste, but if not, would also still leave the hassle of having to deal with physical media, which defeats the purpose of buying a digital only console. How long does this go on for with BC? At some point an option needs to be in place to actually fully transfer old physical games into digital, once and for all.
The ways this could be handled if it plays out like my suggestion above, is that the disc drive doesn't just allow you pop in your old games and use them as we do now, they also allow you buy PS5/XB1 disc games and use them as we use discs now. This way, the peopl that want that option will always have it and no one is being left behind. They are just paying a little extra for the disc drive as opposed to those that don't care about one.
And fr those that own the discless sku (and even for those with the bundled external drive sku), all the games they had previously downloaded last gen will still be accessible and downloadable to them, and for the games they bought physically, if they have any trophy data on it that could pass as some form of authentication that they own the game and allow them download it at no extra charge. They could have a site that allows you use your phone to scan the bar code of the game and use that to authenticate your copy.
If your PS/XB do you include some type and size of mass storage in the next gen console or do you leave it to these customers to purchase their own separate mass storage device if they wish? They wouldn't necessarily require a huge storage device if their net connection was sufficient enough to purchase the digital only sku in the first place. Data caps for some people though. However you may need a HUGE storage device if your aloud to download your 50 physical games during a single authentication process.
But it doesn't work that way, if you have 50 PS4/XB1 games and you get the PS5/XB2; chances are reinstalling all 50 games on your new console wouldn't be your priority. Wouldn't even be something you think of being that no one would have 50 games currently installed on their HDDs currently. A 500GB HDD wouldnt take more than 15, a 1TB HDD not more than 30. The kinda people that can afford or care to have 50 games intsalled on a HDD are probably already familair with using an external drive and own one already. They don't have to provide anyone with more than 512GB/1TB of interanl storage space really as long as they ensure there is an option for people to use an external drive for their old andnew games if they so choose.
There's a little more to it than first meets the eye here.
|
Replies in bold.
