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Forums - Sony - IS BLU-RAY THE FUTURE 4 GAMING

Domicinator on 29 October 2008
V-r0cK said:
mesoteto said:
nope downloads will be

You and other people can keep saying that but itll never be more main stream than physical media. For one, parents buy the games the most for their kids, its simpler for them to go to a store and pick it up. People like to hold onto and touch something real that they purchase and can keep to display as a collection. Another, bandwidth cap and not everybody has high speed internet or can afford them. itll take them much longer to finish downloading the game then to just go to a local electronics store, etc.  Unless those that prefer digital downloads are either fat and/or lazy people that cant get off their couches then i can see where that point is going.

 

More and more people have high speed internet every day and it just gets cheaper and cheaper.  Dial up is becoming a thing of the past very quickly.  And you can still get your kids something they can hold in their hands for Christmas:  MS points, PSN points, or Wii points.  You can walk into a 7 Eleven right now and buy gift cards for those.  (At least for Xbox you can, I don't know about the other two.)

So everyone who uses Steam is fat and lazy?  Everyone who watches an OnDemand movie is fat and lazy?  Everyone who plays a game on XBLA is fat and lazy?  I think you're a little off base here.  Digital distribution is convenient, fights piracy better than any other method, and will inevitably replace discs.




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tuoyo on 29 October 2008
Fei-Hung said:
BR will be the cheapest option for the next gen IMO since it will have a decent userbase and there is plenty of BR players out there already. The market might not take it too lightly to switch again. Also, there is no need for a new format, since the new BR discs will be able to hold more then 50gig as shown in some articles on N4G.

I dont think DD will go down to well, since having a physical disc in ur hand allows you to trade it in at local games shop this helps with the purchase of a new game, it allows gamers to swap games with friends and play games at each others houses. On DD, these things will stop to exist, games boutiques will lose their business, complications will arise when your console's HDD is filled and you need more memory. The second hand market will stop to seize to exist and this will be a big blow to all gamers. e.g. if I am not sure on a game, or it is not a triple A title, I will not buy it at full price, I will pick up a second hand copy. This won't be possible with DD.

If games this gen already are taking up almost 40/50 gig, can you imagin how much space games will take on the next gen? Given the fact that many countries still do not have great connectivity or suffer from slow broadband, it will be a major gamble for all game Publishers as well as the likes of Sony, MS and Nintendo since they will potentially be alienating a large group of gamers.

There are more questions then answers with DD and at present, BR seems to be the cheapest and best medium to launch future games on, especially considering the growth in BR sales and BR players as well as cheaper production costs as time goes on. It is only feasible to make this assumption.

There is a difference between being used as a video playback format and being used for games.  If Nintendo or Microsoft decide not to use Blu Ray it does not mean a replacement for Blu Ray as a video playback format is being introduced.  Wii does not use actual DVD discs.  So next gen they could go with some other high capacity disc other than Blu Ray (HD DVD for example).  This would be a cheaper option for them since they won't have to pay the higher Blu Ray licensing fees.  It is quite reasonable to expect that by the time the next consoles are released Nintendo may decide there are already so many blu ray players in homes that there is no benefit in including a blu ray drive in their console (for an additional cost).

 



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mesoteto on 29 October 2008
V-r0cK said:
mesoteto said:
nope downloads will be

You and other people can keep saying that but itll never be more main stream than physical media. For one, parents buy the games the most for their kids, its simpler for them to go to a store and pick it up. People like to hold onto and touch something real that they purchase and can keep to display as a collection. Another, bandwidth cap and not everybody has high speed internet or can afford them. itll take them much longer to finish downloading the game then to just go to a local electronics store, etc.  Unless those that prefer digital downloads are either fat and/or lazy people that cant get off their couches then i can see where that point is going.

 

tell that to teh growing industry that is wii ware, xbox live market place, and the psn.....then we can talk



 

perpride on 29 October 2008
Cypher1980 said:
akuma587 said:
I'll be genuinely surprised if all the consoles next gen that are using a disc-based format use something else than Blu-Ray.

 

Hmmm not sure.

Blu Ray is extremely expensive to license and in 4 years there will be alternatives particularly if you arent bothered about distributing High Def films which will almost certainly still be Blu Ray based for physical media.

I think some resurgence of HD DVD could come about.

The tech already exists and is much cheaper to produce than Blu Ray and the read speeds are improved. Factor in that the DVD factories can be retooled to push the format readily and the only downside is the non scratch proof surface and reduced capacity.

Of course if Blu Ray becomes more mainstream and is finally adopted by the public as a viable alternative to DVD then this may force the console makers hands.

If that comes to pass then I whole heartedly agree with akuma587

 

I'll be genuinely surprised if all the consoles next gen that are using a disc-based format use something else than Blu-Ray.

 



V-r0cK on 29 October 2008
mesoteto said:
V-r0cK said:
mesoteto said:
nope downloads will be

You and other people can keep saying that but itll never be more main stream than physical media. For one, parents buy the games the most for their kids, its simpler for them to go to a store and pick it up. People like to hold onto and touch something real that they purchase and can keep to display as a collection. Another, bandwidth cap and not everybody has high speed internet or can afford them. itll take them much longer to finish downloading the game then to just go to a local electronics store, etc. Unless those that prefer digital downloads are either fat and/or lazy people that cant get off their couches then i can see where that point is going.

 

tell that to teh growing industry that is wii ware, xbox live market place, and the psn.....then we can talk

 

you're telling me that the majority of those under 100million next gen owners are using digital distribution to get their games?? if you were able to purchase ALL your games online would you stop going to your local game store? how many people do you think wouldve wanted Halo3 as a DD instead of an actual physical disc? i doubt not many.  If as you say the industry is growing towards DD, and seeing how MS is strongly towards it, then their next Xbox console better not have a optical drive what so ever or else it proves that DD isnt as big as you think it is and people still prefer disc. You expect everything will be all downloaded onto the console's HDD..but what happens when its full? upgrade to a bigger HDD and reinstall all those games over again? With a disc you dont need to worry about storage space. Everybody wants everything to be as simplest as possible and nothing is more simple than just pop in teh disc and play. No internet required, no account required etc. As much as you think everybody has highspeed internet and things are getting cheaper etc, not with how the economy is going and believe it taht not everybody can afford fast internet. Many of you are looking at a North American perspective where we have it better then the rest of the world so dont think every else in this world can have what you have. Didnt India just start having PS2?



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scottie on 29 October 2008

My expectations for next gen

Ninty - will make their own format, as they did for the NES, SNES, N64, GC (I think Wii uses standard DVD?)

MS - will use HD-dvd, because Toshiba will license it to them for a penny, big push on downloads though

Sony - will probably use a format they want to push as Blu Ray's successor



dharh on 29 October 2008

I predict PS4 will use blue ray, Wii 2 will use an internally developed proprietary format that will probably be only double DVD space (maybe even just multi-layered DVDs), XBoX 720 will have fully downloadable library (they may supplement this with DVD installs using multiple DVDs obviously).



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Sardauk on 29 October 2008
dharh said:

I predict PS4 will use blue ray, Wii 2 will use an internally developed proprietary format that will probably be only double DVD space (maybe even just multi-layered DVDs), XBoX 720 will have fully downloadable library (they may supplement this with DVD installs using multiple DVDs obviously).

 

So by considering the cumulated sales of the WII and the 360, Blue-Ray is ... not ... the future of gaming ?



 

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joshin69 on 29 October 2008

To all that swear downloads are the future of gaming, have a think about people without or very restrictive access to the net for what ever reason. Are you gonna cut them out of the loop as a business? if yes you wont last a moment in a competitive market. Why because you are cutting your options. Just because you are an online gamer don't be fooled into thinking nearly everyone else is.



 

 assumption is the mother of all f**k ups 

kjj4t9rdad on 29 October 2008
Domicinator said:
V-r0cK said:
mesoteto said:
nope downloads will be

You and other people can keep saying that but itll never be more main stream than physical media. For one, parents buy the games the most for their kids, its simpler for them to go to a store and pick it up. People like to hold onto and touch something real that they purchase and can keep to display as a collection. Another, bandwidth cap and not everybody has high speed internet or can afford them. itll take them much longer to finish downloading the game then to just go to a local electronics store, etc.  Unless those that prefer digital downloads are either fat and/or lazy people that cant get off their couches then i can see where that point is going.

 

More and more people have high speed internet every day and it just gets cheaper and cheaper.  Dial up is becoming a thing of the past very quickly.  And you can still get your kids something they can hold in their hands for Christmas:  MS points, PSN points, or Wii points.  You can walk into a 7 Eleven right now and buy gift cards for those.  (At least for Xbox you can, I don't know about the other two.)

So everyone who uses Steam is fat and lazy?  Everyone who watches an OnDemand movie is fat and lazy?  Everyone who plays a game on XBLA is fat and lazy?  I think you're a little off base here.  Digital distribution is convenient, fights piracy better than any other method, and will inevitably replace discs.

This is true but, it will be years if not decades before high speed is available to half of the worlds population let alone everyone.  Everyone thought DD would kill the CD and that still hasn't happened.  Most people don't have enough faith in hard drives to last, and are affraid they will lose all the content on the drive.  The solution to that is to obviously back it up on a disc.  Why bother with that when I can just buy it already on the disc.  I agree DD will eventually be #1, but there will always be some sort of physical media.

As far as the next group of consoles, the PS4, and xbox720 will almost certainly have BR.  The next Wii I think will stick with DVD or some form of memory card/ cartridge.  This will be a huge mistake IMO.  By the time the next Wii hits the market more and more HD tv's will be in peoples homes and the size of the games are going to very quickly make DVD's not an option.