I posted this in response to another conversation, but I figured it had enough merit to begin new discussion. So here it is:

What people don't realize is that digital distribution can be done in other forms than downloads. Take a firewire hard drive, for example. Put a firewire port into a console, hook up a 500 GB HD, and you have faster access speeds than you would have off of optical media, with a lot less heat buildup inside the system. No laser, no internal HD, it'd be a breeze (no pun intended ) to build a high end system without wasting time on keeping the unit supercooled.

Back on the firewire hard drive. You can unplug the drive anytime you want, and have it embedded with a registered serial number. Take your drive to your local game dealer, they register your purchase online, and load the game onto the drive from their local server in the store. If your HD fails, they verify the failed HD serial number, authorize a new HD for your account, and you can get your games added back on, free of charge. Need more HD space? Buy another firewire HD drive, and you're all set.

I see this as the way that the industry will go, in addition to downloadable content. Optical media has one foot in the grave.

Before you go and say "but I like holding onto physical copies of games, movies, music, etc" just remember that all that manufacturing takes up resources (plastic is made from oil products, energy costs to run assembly lines). Also, by not having to spend money making "hard copies", developers/publishers can pass the savings from the process to the customer in the form of cheaper games. Also, videogames won't have to fight for shelf space, as they'd all just be digital, on the local servers. You won't have to worry about a game being sold out, or phased out due to age. It will always be there sitting on the server, waiting to be copied to your HD.

Of course, a 500GB FW HD is common these days, who's to say that a TB FW HD won't be common within the next 4 years? Or maybe even that a faster port connection, faster than firewire might be available by then?

Right now, internet penetration and speeds are not high enough for digital media to prevail over physical media on consoles. However, we are also in the pioneering age where developers are testing the waters of profitability for digital media so this could quickly change.

As for your 500Gb External argument. Price a 500Gb external Seagate or WD and tell me what you get. Available and cost effective are very different things.

in my opinion this is the future..... optical discs are an obsolete low life expectancy support.... and no BR or HD dvd or anything will change that fact... those support are slow, small expensive to produce and very fragile compare to other support....

and DL content is also the future.... the I like the physical copie excuse... is just an habit... people will get use to DL like they are with DL of MP3 now... people will change with time... and with high speed connection high capacity HDD... it's very possible that DL will be the way of the future in not so long from now...

we'll have digital top boxes... doing cable internet, IP phone, probably wi fi router, DVR... and video game console.. that might even be integrated in TV sets.... looking at the cell processor and Sony I think they have that idea in mind or something like it...

A good solution, but i like to get cheap used games and games lying on the discount racks of stores, i will never see a $5 game for download ever, plus what would happen to the lucrative used games market? Oh well, if they had these download centers it would be better than home distro due to the fact that i have dial up, i would be out of games if games distro were only through downloads. Plus i hate to set up accounts and pay by credit card and i see that as being the only way this will work, also people would always forget their HDD at home, and people could no longer make impulse purchases due to the fact they would have to take the device with them every time they wanted to buy a game. /rant

The hard drive idea could be easily manipulated so people can end up getting free games. Not to mention most people won't feel safe doing it and a "guarantee" from M$, Sony or Ninty will mean shit for items you pay 60$ a pop on. I like the concept but we are still at least a decade away from that becoming the dominate way of obtaining media.

Some of the larger bookstores are already heading down this road. Borders has begun setting up music kiosks for music sales, where they burn a selection to cdrom. Large flashrom device downloads wouldnot be much of a leap from there.

You'd have to come up with a standard filesystem, etc. for drives.

well I found not so long ago an external HDD with 2 500gb disc in RAID for less than 250 dollars...

now about connection speed... true for north america... it's one of the worst install base of high sped connection I have seen in a developed country.... I think I haven't seen a dial up connection in the past 5 years.... only in NA.... once again we can get high speed DSL connection 20MBPS with free phone and free TV for 30 euros a month..... here I have a 3MBPS cable connection with no TV no phone for 40 bucks....
so that explain why..... that's probably due to the size of the country.. it's way easier to equip a country like france than USA.... especially in remote places...

but with time or new technologies it will come here too.... I don't know about the legislation over that....but Power Line Communication is a good technologies to achieve that fast..; I know In france the power companies can't use it for legal issues... but I don't know about USA or NA in general....
for people who doesn't know what it is.. it's basically Internet through your power line... so virtually any place in USA is already equipped.... and almost every room has an outlet.... here is a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication

If it takes off I'll probably stop gaming. I buy my games second hand or heavily discounted. The WiiWare games are too expensive to appeal to me. If everything is distributed digitally there will be no second hand games and retailers wouldn't have left-over stock that needs heavily discounting to get rid of. Everything would be sold at full price or a small discount and there's no way I'd pay £40 for a game.

Powerline comm is already in place in certain "test" areas. The big challenge there is condition of the lines, different transmission equipment, etc.

EDIT:  forgot the biggest hurdle of all... SW-radio interference.

True, but by reducing manufacturing, you could probably shave a good 10 or so pounds off that. In theory, you wouldn't actually need a publisher for anything more than being the contact point to the retailer and advertising. A high end developer like Rockstar could actually drop Take Two and make the connection to the retailer themselves, and probably make the smae profit selling the game for 25 pounds.

 Agreed though, it is a market I didn't consider. It pretty much WOULD end resale value of a game. A question for you - how much on average do you pay for your used games?