Shadow1980 said:
Wasn't physical media supposed to be dead already? Like, right now? At least according to the digital-only evangelists it was. "Physical media will be dead in five years," they said... five years ago. All the printing presses and all the disc manufacturing plants were supposed to have been shut down by now. Yet here they are. While total disc sales are indeed down, all the losses are due to the decline of the waning DVD format. Blu-ray sales are growing. Maybe not as fast as DVD did, but it's growing nonetheless. Based on a DEG report from this past January, the Blu-ray penetration rate is nearly 59% of all U.S. households and about 75% of households that own an HDTV. Hardly niche. Book sales are still strong and show no signs of declining. E-book penetration is still relatively low and adoption rates appear to be slowing, at least for now. And according to at least one survey I saw, preference rates for physical over digital favored print books most of all. Print still accounts for the vast majority of revenue for book companies. Books have been a cultural touchstone for longer than any other format, Gutenberg having invented his printing press over 5-½ centuries ago, and they are going to be the hardest form of physical media to "kill off." Physical game sales are down from several years ago, but that's because of the cyclical nature of the console market, and software sales are going to start increasing this year and at least out until 2016 or 2017. Physical is still by far the most popular delivery system for console games (indies excluded). I'd imagine a digital-only console would fare about as well as the PSP Go. In fact, given that a third of 360s aren't connected, had MS went through with their original plan of an almost-always-online console the Xbox One might not have even broken 3 million in global sales to date, if that. Even the music CD, while nowhere near as popular as it was, is still viable and generates nearly half of the music industry's revenue, and if the mp3 was supposed to kill the CD it's taking its sweet time (and maybe, just maybe, crappy disposable pop is killing music). Hell, even the vinyl record is still around and has started growing again (though it's still niche).
Point being, not everyone has the desire to buy an e-reader or an mp3 player or download all their video games or stream all of their movies. Some people actually like to own a physical, tangible product, not pay for a "license" that can be revoked at any time. Digital upends everything we've come to expect regarding notions of ownership. First off, you own nothing, according to American jurisprudence, anyway. The first-sale doctrine? No longer applies. Say goodbye to the second-hand market or being able to lend or borrow titles. And what of being able to access your content years or decades from now? Say you stream all your TV shows or movies. What happens if your internet craps out on you? You don't get to watch anything until service is restored? Not a problem for physical. What happens if something you like gets pulled due to expired contracts or rights issues or some other reason (which does happen)? You don't get to watch it, perhaps not for months or years or possibly even ever. Period. Not a problem with physical. Or say you have a big collection of digital games. What happens if something happens and you lose everything? Redownload everything, you say? What if this happens after the system is no longer supported, including the shutting down of the servers that supply its digital storefront? You're just shit outta luck, I guess. Once again, not a problem with physical. If my system dies, my discs & cartridges don't die with it, and they're not dependent on some online service that may get pulled at any time. I just track down a replacement console and that's that. Unlike digital, which when removed from circulation is forever gone with no means to obtain it, even a physical good that goes out of production can still be bought second-hand. In addition to ownership and accessibility issues, there's quality issues. Most physical product is simply superior in quality in nearly every conceivable way to its digital counterpart. A Blu-ray viewed on a 1080p TV makes your typical Netflix movie look like shit by comparison. A well-mixed audio CD or record sounds far better than your run-of-the-mill mp3. And of course nothing beats the experience of thumbing through a good old hard-bound book.
Of course, even if all the myriad problems involving ownership of and long-term access to content were non-issues, not everybody could jump on the digital-only bandwagon even if they wanted because it's not an option for tens of millions of households. Something like a third of American households lack broadband access entirely, and many if not most of those that do have it have to deal with sub-standard connection quality and arbitrarily low bandwidth caps. With small hard drive sizes (relative to game file sizes) on consoles possibly requiring gamers to redownload games multiple times as they cycle titles in and out of that limited space, and with HD streaming video being very bandwith-intensive, those caps could be hit rather fast, and when you hit that cap your ISP hits you with an overage charge. And things aren't getting any better. In fact, if net neutrality dies it could make things even worse. Given the sorry state of internet infrastructure in America and probably other countries as well, a digital-only future is probably 30 years or more away from being feasible. Neither the demand nor the necessary infrastructure can support it. Right now it's still only the fantasy of tech geeks who think physical media is "caveman tech" and that "the cloud" is this wonderful magical thing that everybody should love. As for me, I'll still by buying physical media until the day I die, and I suspect that'll still be an option even past 2050.
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