How behind the times are you.

Currently using a nice 20 Mbs connection in London !

Lets see an 8 Gig game would take approx 1 hour to download. Thats not unbearable takes me twice as long to drive to the shops and buy the physical media.

First 1TB would be more than sufficient today, the accessability of the price is debateable but if you would prefer you can get a 750GB drive for $120 which would also be sufficient.  Keep in mind that average game size, including PS3 games, is at about 10GB, which would mean room for 75 games..I don't know many gamers who own 75 full-price games (ie the ones that would take 10GB) for a single console let alone like them all enough to want them all on their drive all the time.  The cost issue is something that would actually be further reduced just by the use of the drives in this application. 

As for SSD, I agree they are too expensive right now, but I don't think anyone expects them to be in use tomorrow.  We are quite clearly talking about future console generations so discussing what is too expensive now is frankly shortsighted and missing the point.  What we do know is that annually the costs are halving and capacities are doubling.  At this rate in 5 years the current 256GB SSD which costs around $6,300 will cost $200 and store 8 TB.

What people aren't quite understanding I think is that while storage space is going to continue to increase on a ridiculous curve the size of games will not increase at that same pace for several reasons.  The costs of creating the art assets at current resolutions is already immense for developers and is proving to be a difficult business model as it is, but it will also be unable to keep up because another quadrupling in texture resolution provides diminishing returns for the increased cost in time and money.  Game sizes will continue to grow but they will not keep up with the storage solutions for practical reasons.

Again - size has *nothing* do with piracy.

If I was going to pirate a Wii game - the internet would NOT be what I would use. I would head to one of the many retail stores that sells pirated games - pre-burnt on a disc (or cartridge).

The best way to avoid piracy (for now anyway) is to simply get rid of physical media. Its a lot easier for people to head out and buy a CHEAP (i.e. pirated) version of some game, than it is for them to hunt down & install warez (on a console!).

Its not that it becomes impossible - its that it becomes much harder for the average person to pirate significant amounts of software. Especially when "online" consoles can be patched at will to block software or updates.

I'm familiar with the old joke "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of [insert media] going 60 mph down the highway.", and it's very true.  There is substantial bandwidth in the transfer of large quantities of physical media, but nobody is saying there is more bandwidth over the internet to the common household (although there is larger bandwidth for some setups).

I would love for you to provide some example of how physically making each disc and shipping it all over the world is more cost efficient than digital transfer to each home.  You seem to think localized data centers are a thing of the future but in every region of the world there are already data centers that rent out space and enormous bandwidth for these purposes to companies with needs just like these, if these data centers weren't cost effective they wouldn't exist.  This is of course not to mention that a torrent network could be established using the network of consoles to their advantage. My point being that their are numerous ways to tackle the issue whether it is with brute bandwidth from a centralized location, localized servers, or some other out of the box solution like torrents.  Where there is a will there is a way, it just so happens that we already know of several ways to do this particular task.

In fact your claim that internet bandwidth will "*never*" be adequate for serious distribution is false on its face.  Simply looking at Direct2Drive and services like Steam already offer digital distribution to millions of people, and they offer these services at the competitive industry prices or lower as is often the case with Steam.  Hell steam is usually able to saturate my internet connection. That link is a shot I took a while back when AC came out, and keep in mind I live in an area surrounded by corn fields.

The fact that the $4/month MS makes barely recoups their costs is hardly important to the consumers when they are also charging for all manner of things from their store.  The amount they make from XBLA and XBLM more than recoups the cost they spend on bandwidth, servers, and maintainence while simaltaneously generating a tidy profit for the creators of the content that is sold as well as themselves.

You asked why people would use digital distribution and as I've said repeatedly in this thread, because it's better.  It is more money for developers, can never be stolen, lost, or broken, never requires you to change discs to play a different game, doesn't take up space in your living room, you can play the game 2 minutes after its launched rather than waiting in line at the mall, etc...etc...

Again I point out that while the technological factors are not 100% in place today this discussion is quite clearly not about today but the future of console media.  It is extremely feasible that in 10 years time, as I said in my first post, this could be a reality for consoles.  It already is for PCs after all.

what are talkin about .! psn has playstation classics ! downloadable games origanaly from the 1st playstation!!

stop makin blind statements

You're kidding us if you think digital distribution isn't already logistically possible. Look at companies like Akamai which already have huge content distribution networks in place. To use their CDNs for something like games wouldn't put any significant additional strain in their network...

Heck, look at what Valve is able to do for PC games with Steam... If you think it wouldn't be possible (and easy) for Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo to do the same for console games, you're delusional.

With digital distribution, you also save significant energy by not having to make plastic DVD cases, printing labels, producing and pressing the DVDs themselves... Not to mention the savings in transportation of raw materials AND finished/intermediate products.

PS: Your truck example has no bearing here. Your truck is carrying massively redundant data (i.e. many copies of the same game), which content distribution networks do very efficiently with server-to-server communication. You don't need the digital equivalent of that truck to distribute games through the Internet. A more accurate analogy would be a bunch of motorcycles carrying a single copy of the game to each ISP, which then distributes the game very efficiently to their customers.

sony aren't even pushing digital distribution as much as microsoft, yet they have much more options available, and have probably got the ball rolling sooner than ms.

sony offers full retail ps3 games to download over psn, with a STRICT drm policy that prevents sharing the game on other systems. microsoft doesn't offer a single retail 360 game over xbl. sony were also first to offer ps titles over psn.

microsoft sell hard drives at an extortionate rate with only 2-3 sizes available (20, 60, 120). who would feel confident about digital downloads when they can't even afford the space? sony give the option to fit whatever space you want, at a MUCH cheaper price.

psn uses real currency, not points to price items, to me it adds a little more seriousness to what you're selling.


if you asked the average joe who was really pushing dd with these options, they would probably say psn right now.

I wouldn't be so sure about MS's initial support.

"We went around to everybody and asked 'Are you guys doing anything like this?' And everyone was like 'That's a million miles in the future...We can't help you." -- Valve

http://kotaku.com/385539/valve-asked-microsoft-to-build-steam-microsoft-said-no-thanks

I don't see this happening for quite a long time, seeing as the casual market is growing bigger every gen I'm sure that there's no way Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony would ignore the simple fact that a large number of people buy games with impulse purchases.

Everything is already becoming too complicated for most people out there, my sister was going to buy a 360 a few weeks ago but got confused over all the different models and HD upscaling and live subsciptions. She called me and said "I just want something that plays games like my ps2 did". This is one of the main reasons the Wii is doing so well imo, it's simple enough for everyone.

Half of the games I own, I would never have bought except for the fact that I was at the shops, had cash to burn and saw a game and thought why not.

If it's DD, I will pay, at the very most, $20 dollars for a game, $.99 cents for a song (DRM free only) and $10 for a movie (HD and DRM free).

Otherwise I can always get the song or the movie DRM free on torrent sites, and the game (if it's on PSN or XBL), I can always skip because I can't trade and will never see any value back on it and all it'll do after awhile is take HDD space and I won't want to delete it because I paid a good amount of money for it. That's the reason I haven't bought Siren PS3.

Music has a future in downloads(iTunes shows us that), movies also have a future (I believe more in terms of rentals than in terms of buying) and games have a future as well (quirky, cheap, or casual games), but physical media is definitely needed at least mid-term, i.e. at least for the next 10 years.