Hello,

Everyone knows that both physical and digital medias have their problems and benefits.

The problem of physical media is that you have to change your disc everytime you change the game, it can break, break the disc reader. But you can trade it, sell it, lend it, and dont waste hard drive space.

Digital media you cant resell, trade, lend, need hard drive, , but you dont need to get up and change discs, wont break, dont need to go to the retailers, is avaliable day one(for us in brasil, is important).

I was thinking in a new kind of media that could solve the problems of the two kind of known media. The closer to a solution i became is a physical game enabler. Here how it works:

There is a physical device(under a portrait with the game box art, or a card, or even a figure), that comunicate with the console by distance.

the console, once on while, communicate with nearby devices, and identify all games that are less than 5 meters from it.
then the console allow you to play the digital copy of the game.

-so, as long you keep your games in the room, you dont need to trade discs, in fact, you get rid of disc reader (also helps in the console cost).

-if you lend the game, you wont be able to play the game. you can sell used games. as long they are out of reach, you cant play them.

-Going full digital would screw the retailers, and the market would lose all the consumers that go to shops for buying games. So, is also a would help the market in this transition step between physical and digital.

-The only disavantage is that you have to download the game. But, the storage devices are growing faster than the size of the games, and also, everywhere you can start dowloading the game before the launch date, so, not a big deal.

So, all advantages of digital and physical are there. This should be the future of gaming media.

So, what your saying is that if you lose the box, you are fucked? Well, thats a pretty big issue then cause that defeats the purpose of having a digital game since one of the main benefits of a digital game is so that you dont have to rely on physical media cause people can lose physical media where as with digital, all you have to do is just sign in and bam, your library is there and heres another thing... Another advantage of digital media is that if I am going somewhere, like to my friends house, I don't have to carry a whack load of boxes/discs in order to play them and this kinda prevents the advantages of Digital Media imo

So no thanks

Nintendo seems not to get this. And wants me to freakin fucking buy the same game I have on 3DS VC at the Wii U VC.

Of course, if you lose your physical game, you wont be able to play it. So, is not worst.

And of course digital media would continue., you can ditch your right of reselling your games for not having to carry them. 

In the case of going to a friend house, if he has the console, you could bring only the games(boxes, or cards). if you go digital, you have to bring the console, what is worst. 

Well, I would rather deal with the discs being inside my console than try to deal with the box cause when you put your disc inside your console, its relatively safe but the box on the other hand, there are many things that could damage it. And not to mention, if there is a wireless transmission involved and something interfers with the transmission, it might ruin ur game. Plus, if its wirelessly sending a signal and communcating with it, that means it requires a power source of some kind so if it runs out of batteries, it will cause even more of an issue.

And well, if you just bring then game, then you lose all your progress and with games like SSB4 where it gets really fun when you unlock a bunch of stuff, its very important. A much better idea for digital games would be "steams family sharing" where your friends can just play the games from ur library just as long as you aren't playing them at the sametime. Or since we are talking about the future, have it so that if you log in into ur friend's console, you will have ur library + progress right there

Too many issues.
1. The most realistic way for that to work will be that a chip is embedded in the disc. Kinda likean NFC chip. And the reader for that specific chip will be in the disc drive. So when u put the disc in it registers that disc to your console. So whenever you want to play the game as long as the game is say in a 20ft radius it will run without you having to put the disc in.

2. that would mean though that the disc doesn't just have an NFC sticker for registration but also a transmitter of sorts for area authentication. That ,means those discs have to be powered somehow. Not very practical.

3. A more realistic solution would be to make it possible to right data onto the disc from the console. so basically, when you buy a game, during the install process your console will write a lock key onto the disc, preventing any other console from running the disc. If you want to sell or loan it out, you have to put the disc in your coinsole and write the unlock key also deactivating it from your console. But even all this is just convoluted.

Physical media is going to die, that much is inevitable. There are just too many benefits of going all digital to ignore. Right now game discs serve for nothing more than a distribution and security package. Games on the PS4/XB1 doesn't even run off the disc at all.

Now think of the direction console design will ultimately go. A 6x bluray drive reads at 27MB/s and a 16x bluray drive reads at 72MB/s. A 2.5 HDD on a sata 2 interface has a peak read of 300MB/s, but in the real word averages around 220MB/so. That's why these consoles install and run everything from the HDD.

But that's not even looking at tech that would be in the next gen consoles. We would most likely shift to ME.2 drives, they are very small and run on a 4 lane pcie bus and could be at that point be either based on pcie 2 or 3. Either way, you are looking at local storage that could give you as much as 2GB/s transfer speeds. that is less likely to break, uses less power, almost 6 times smaller than conventional hdds...etc. snow when you can have that why would anyone want a standard HDD?or even worse a disc drive?

And with recent tech trends, basically with SSDs getting cheaper every year and with devices getting thinner and thinner further necessitating the need for SSDs, we could very well have 1TB drives in 2019/2020 for around what it cost to put in a 500GB HDD today.

so, what do you think will happen?

Yea, I wish Nintendo would have cross-buy for their VC games... Or even have VC games avaliable on every platform and not have the wonky way that they are doing it T_T

Its like, why can't I play Megaman X on my 3ds but I can on my wiiU? I get that X has higher graphics but I doubt that the 3ds is incapable of running 2d sprites when its more than capable of running games like Resident Evil Revalations

Why not a allow us the digital versions of games when we get the game. The code shouldn't expire, and be included within the disc. (think digital manual).

Since you have to be online to redeem the code anyway, if someone else redeems it, the digital version wont work anymore. This assumes you gave the game away. That way, you can loan your games out, and you still have access. When a game is sold back to the store, that store should be able to enter that code from the disc onto a master account.

That way, if you sell the game, you wont get lucky if someone who picks it up next doesn't have internet. Or, the game is never actually resold again.

Every problem is solved, and you can still loan your games to your friends... WHILE THEN STILL HAVING ACCESS TO THE DIGITAL VERSION, MIND YOU! IT'S GENIUS!

Just don't let your friend sell your disc, or enter your code, and you're good.

And, there might be a minor way to get around this, but nothing can ever be 100% fool proof when it comes to something like this.  

All these digital solutions dont allow you to resell the game. Im looking for a compromise, giving the player the choice if him want digital or not, if want to resell the game or not. But now the physical wouldnt require to change the discs. and keep family sharing and these stuff for digital media.

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About the power supply, in my orignal idea, i compare it with the pro controler, it has 80 hours of baterry and comunicates with the console. I think a device like the proposed would last for much longer, cos is more passive, less data traveling. ok, you have to charge your games, but if the battery time is long enough, is not a big deal.

best solution is if you download the digital game you should be able to burn it whenever you want :p