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Forums - Microsoft - Microsoft: Digital Distribution Will Outstrip Physical Sales

Plaupius on 06 August 2008
TheRealMafoo said:
shams said:

As for piracy - its much harder to pirate digitally distributed software than it is to pirate physical media. Much, much, MUCH harder. Its probably the "real" push behind digital distribution.

 

I disagree. Try and pirate a 200 Gig game, vs a 6 Gig DL.

Pray tell me what is in the 200 Gig game? And who had the financial resources to make it?

 



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TheRealMafoo on 06 August 2008
Plaupius said:

What difference does it make is a disk will hold a terabyte in 10 years? Are games or movies going to need that much space then? The simple answer is a resounding NO. It doesn't matter. PC hard drives have been in the hundreds of gigabytes for quite some time now, are PC games that much bigger than console games that have had to fit in DVD? Nope.

Now, imagine having a gigabit internet connection, which in 10 years time is not far fetched. That's a gigabyte of content rouhgly every 11 seconds (assuming a single parity bit, don't know if that would be the case), or 5.4 gigabytes every minute. More than a single layer DVD in a minute. 10 minutes for a dual-layer Blu-Ray disc. Think about that and tell me it's not going to change the whole game.

Also, a point I forgot from my earlier post is the bigger picture: as content delivery starts to shift to the internet, and it's already begun, then the traditional brick-and-mortar stores are the ones taking the hit. Think about how many music stores selling CD's there are in your city now vs. 10 years ago, the same is going to happen with games and movies. Even if you would like to have physical copies, there won't be as many outlets selling them in 10 years, unless the market itself grows so much it offsets the shift to digital distribution.

 

PC's have not had very big games, for a few reasons. One is you only have DVD as a delivery system. 

I have no clue what a game will take up in 10 years. I bet if someone asked you 10 years ago if a 50 gig game was going to be made in 2008, you would have said a resounding NO. :)



Groucho on 06 August 2008
gebx said:
Other then my giant f*&cked up statement about PSN, my points still stand.

MS isn't referring to NOW but the future, and I find it funny how a lot of people here seem ...scared??... that digital distribution might be the future and that you're $400-$500 Blu ray machine that plays game might be obsolete before it even becomes maintstream.

No worries though, I probably feel the same if I had been suckered into Sony's promises..

 

I have to say that your dislike of Sony borders on... ludicrous. Sony has stated many times how much it would love to put, for example, PS2 games up as DLC on the PSN someday, but that the costs of doing software emulation of the PS2's GS (the EE is already covered) just aren't worth it at this time. You can believe that when its financially feasible, Sony will do it, just like MS wants to (but hasn't).

The original titles on PSN blow the larger amount of, IMO, lesser quality titles on XBL away, btw. Warhawk (also on BD), Siren: Blood Curse, Super Stardust HD, Pixeljunk Eden, Pixeljunk Monsters, Flow, Blast Factor, echochrome, Elefunk, to name some of the better ones... SOCOM: Confrontation (also on BD) in the near future, etc... You should pick up a PS3 and try some of them. ;)



kitler53 on 06 August 2008

why does everyone assume that digital distribution requires extremely large hard drives.

hulu.com



Plaupius on 06 August 2008
TheRealMafoo said:
Plaupius said:

What difference does it make is a disk will hold a terabyte in 10 years? Are games or movies going to need that much space then? The simple answer is a resounding NO. It doesn't matter. PC hard drives have been in the hundreds of gigabytes for quite some time now, are PC games that much bigger than console games that have had to fit in DVD? Nope.

Now, imagine having a gigabit internet connection, which in 10 years time is not far fetched. That's a gigabyte of content rouhgly every 11 seconds (assuming a single parity bit, don't know if that would be the case), or 5.4 gigabytes every minute. More than a single layer DVD in a minute. 10 minutes for a dual-layer Blu-Ray disc. Think about that and tell me it's not going to change the whole game.

Also, a point I forgot from my earlier post is the bigger picture: as content delivery starts to shift to the internet, and it's already begun, then the traditional brick-and-mortar stores are the ones taking the hit. Think about how many music stores selling CD's there are in your city now vs. 10 years ago, the same is going to happen with games and movies. Even if you would like to have physical copies, there won't be as many outlets selling them in 10 years, unless the market itself grows so much it offsets the shift to digital distribution.

 

PC's have not had very big games, for a few reasons. One is you only have DVD as a delivery system.

I have no clue what a game will take up in 10 years. I bet if someone asked you 10 years ago if a 50 gig game was going to be made in 2008, you would have said a resounding NO. :)

I do not believe for a moment that the size of DVD is what is limiting the size of PC games. Nobody plays a PC game from the DVD (at least nobody I know of), everything is installed on the HDD. There's no reason why a game couldn't span more than one DVD, in fact a PC game could easily be a lot bigger than what currently fits on a Blu-Ray, from a technical standpoint. Many PC users are downloading tens of gigs of stuff every month, why couldn't they download games that are that big? But still, the games are not that big.

I have started my gaming career on PC in the 80ies, the first games took a few tens of kilobytes max. Believe me, I have seen the size of games go up. But the thing is, it has always been accompanied by the rise of resolution and available colours. Games have also become more and more expensive to make, despite the huge advances in development tools. Are we to believe that in 10 years time, the resolution will go up from full HD and the development tools will take a major leap and lead to much cheaper development that what is currently the case? Do you believe that the costs of game development will come down. 'Cause that's the only way a 200 Gig game could ever be made.

Heck, I'm under the impression that a big part of the tens of gigs of the biggest games of today is duplicate data to reduce seek times. That's one reason why PC games are not as big: with HDD, there's no need to duplicate anything. Also, the difference between well compressed audio and uncompressed audio is so ridiculously small that not even 1 out of thousand gamers could notice it with their gaming set-ups. So, what do you need the space for? And more importantly, how can you economically produce that amount of content and make a profit?



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gebx on 06 August 2008
Groucho said:
gebx said:
Other then my giant f*&cked up statement about PSN, my points still stand.

MS isn't referring to NOW but the future, and I find it funny how a lot of people here seem ...scared??... that digital distribution might be the future and that you're $400-$500 Blu ray machine that plays game might be obsolete before it even becomes maintstream.

No worries though, I probably feel the same if I had been suckered into Sony's promises..

 

I have to say that your dislike of Sony borders on... ludicrous. Sony has stated many times how much it would love to put, for example, PS2 games up as DLC on the PSN someday, but that the costs of doing software emulation of the PS2's GS (the EE is already covered) just aren't worth it at this time. You can believe that when its financially feasible, Sony will do it, just like MS wants to (but hasn't).

The original titles on PSN blow the larger amount of, IMO, lesser quality titles on XBL away, btw. Warhawk (also on BD), Siren: Blood Curse, Super Stardust HD, Pixeljunk Eden, Pixeljunk Monsters, Flow, Blast Factor, echochrome, Elefunk, to name some of the better ones... SOCOM: Confrontation (also on BD) in the near future, etc... You should pick up a PS3 and try some of them. ;)

 

My dislike of Sony is related to a few things

1) Its arrogance at the start of the generation (which has been fixed)

2) Its PR Spins

3) and its Fanboys who believe its PR Spins

 

Not only that but I've already said that I would buy a PS3 when it comes down to $199 (but then that was said when FFXIII was still a PS3 exclusive...)



Proud Member of GAIBoWS (Gamers Against Irrational Bans of Weezy & Squilliam)

                   

TheRealMafoo on 06 August 2008
Plaupius said:
TheRealMafoo said:
Plaupius said:

What difference does it make is a disk will hold a terabyte in 10 years? Are games or movies going to need that much space then? The simple answer is a resounding NO. It doesn't matter. PC hard drives have been in the hundreds of gigabytes for quite some time now, are PC games that much bigger than console games that have had to fit in DVD? Nope.

Now, imagine having a gigabit internet connection, which in 10 years time is not far fetched. That's a gigabyte of content rouhgly every 11 seconds (assuming a single parity bit, don't know if that would be the case), or 5.4 gigabytes every minute. More than a single layer DVD in a minute. 10 minutes for a dual-layer Blu-Ray disc. Think about that and tell me it's not going to change the whole game.

Also, a point I forgot from my earlier post is the bigger picture: as content delivery starts to shift to the internet, and it's already begun, then the traditional brick-and-mortar stores are the ones taking the hit. Think about how many music stores selling CD's there are in your city now vs. 10 years ago, the same is going to happen with games and movies. Even if you would like to have physical copies, there won't be as many outlets selling them in 10 years, unless the market itself grows so much it offsets the shift to digital distribution.

 

PC's have not had very big games, for a few reasons. One is you only have DVD as a delivery system.

I have no clue what a game will take up in 10 years. I bet if someone asked you 10 years ago if a 50 gig game was going to be made in 2008, you would have said a resounding NO. :)

I do not believe for a moment that the size of DVD is what is limiting the size of PC games. Nobody plays a PC game from the DVD (at least nobody I know of), everything is installed on the HDD. There's no reason why a game couldn't span more than one DVD, in fact a PC game could easily be a lot bigger than what currently fits on a Blu-Ray, from a technical standpoint. Many PC users are downloading tens of gigs of stuff every month, why couldn't they download games that are that big? But still, the games are not that big.

I have started my gaming career on PC in the 80ies, the first games took a few tens of kilobytes max. Believe me, I have seen the size of games go up. But the thing is, it has always been accompanied by the rise of resolution and available colours. Games have also become more and more expensive to make, despite the huge advances in development tools. Are we to believe that in 10 years time, the resolution will go up from full HD and the development tools will take a major leap and lead to much cheaper development that what is currently the case? Do you believe that the costs of game development will come down. 'Cause that's the only way a 200 Gig game could ever be made.

Heck, I'm under the impression that a big part of the tens of gigs of the biggest games of today is duplicate data to reduce seek times. That's one reason why PC games are not as big: with HDD, there's no need to duplicate anything. Also, the difference between well compressed audio and uncompressed audio is so ridiculously small that not even 1 out of thousand gamers could notice it with their gaming set-ups. So, what do you need the space for? And more importantly, how can you economically produce that amount of content and make a profit?

 

I started playing games in the 70's. I lived it too. (I am 8 years older then you). My first PC was in 1981, when you were 4 years old :p. I have been playing PC games primarily from then.

Let me ask you this.... this year, a 50Gig game was made. If in 10 years, a 200 Gig game is made, that's 4x the size. Have you ever seen a 10 year span where games did not grow 4x?

I have not. If you are looking at the past to predict the future (and it looks like you are), how can you say you have any clue what we will be playing, or what it will be on, in 10 years?

If history tells you anything, it should yell you that the future is going to be something we never expected.

P.S. X-Plain for the PC is 60Gig. That does not include add-ons. We could see that game, with all the content that is out there, grow to 100Gig.



Bodhesatva on 06 August 2008

When do they expect this to happen? At some point in the history of mankind? In that case, I agree.



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TheRealMafoo on 06 August 2008
gebx said:

My dislike of Microsoft is related to a few things

1) Its arrogance at the start of the generation (which has yet to be fixed)

2) Its PR Spins

3) and its Fanboys who believe its PR Spins

See how that works.

If you think any company is worth defending, you really must have fallen victim to PR spin.

MS sucks as much as anyone else (and this is coming from someone who bought a 360 elite 2 hours ago).

Anyone who defends a corporation, is a fool (unless they are getting paid).

Love the product, not the company. They love your money, not you.



shams on 06 August 2008
TheRealMafoo said:
shams said:

As for piracy - its much harder to pirate digitally distributed software than it is to pirate physical media. Much, much, MUCH harder. Its probably the "real" push behind digital distribution.

 

I disagree. Try and pirate a 200 Gig game, vs a 6 Gig DL.

Easy. A 200Gig game comes on a disc, which can be copied. A 6Gig (or any size) digital download can't be copied, and might even require internet access.

Additional size is no deterent for pirates at all. Lack of physical media or drives is.

 



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