Kwaidd said:
I'm not saying you are wrong, as much as it pains me to watch physical media of all types dwindle, but the issue with all digital future is two fold...storage and internet speeds. We are already seeing how expensive built in storage has become and that companies have released recent models with less of it to "keep costs down". So, as game file sizes and storage costs increase, you are left with having to juggle a handful of games installed on the gaming product. Deleting and re-downloading games is an inconvenience in of itself, which is exacerbated by the fact that internet is woefully inadequate in a large majority of the world. As an example, the best I can get is a Verizon 4g lte internet gateway box, and I live in a great county just outside of a thriving part of the state. It takes an incredibly inconvenient and frustrating amount of time to download updates, let alone to swap games back and forth. One could say that instead of having games on the console and the need for storage, the devices should stream games...and there we are looking at the issue of internet again. Until these issues are resolved, it almost could be argued that there is more reason than ever to continue to have physical media. The issue with mechanical drive consoles is the read speed, right? Which is one of the reasons they have opted to have consumers install the game to the console, so it can run smoother/faster. With portable devices, small form factor (and high costs) limits the amount of internal storage. What solves all that? Full games on a fast reading small cartridge. The problem? Yet again, the cost of the storage media. The problem to solve then, is the amount of bloat in the games. Development time/cost and file sizes have gotten to ridiculous levels and it serves noone well. Bring better optimization amongst other best practices and not only would we not need more and more storage, but perhaps pricing would level off for a while. I could be way off with the tech side of my logic here. I don't have the industry knowledge that some in this thread do. I'm just an everyday consumer that has been gaming since the mid 80's. I like books that have pages I can turn, movies that I can take off a shelf and put in a hdr player and get an un-compromised experience...and games that I can enjoy the box art, read the back cover (or maybe even a booklet inside!!!) and get the satisfaction of simply popping the game in the console and playing, without all the extra nonsense. |
100% agreed with optimization. It blows my mind that Rebirth is 150 gb and Expedition 33 is 50 gb... absolutely crazy to me. I get Rebirth is a bit bigger in scope, but not 3x.
I think the wild card for physical is DLSS type stuff. At some point can games have lower resolution textures and just use upscaling? Same with audio. Both would make file size way smaller.
