bardicverse said:
Dunno - You're becoming one of my favorite people to discuss things with quite quickly. =)

Thanks. I always worry when I make some of these posts, because I know how many people on this site complain about a large wall of text. But I find that it tends to make my point easier when I do that, since I'm not confined by space.

Trust me, I'm on your side with your points. In essence, Im playing devil's advocate to try and understand how systems like OnLive could work, and if they will have any bearing on the overall market.

That system as an option I think will be fine, and could work out. However, I hope companies don't try to follow a "golden egg" of sorts on this method, as I think everyone will lose.

My personal view is simple direct distribution, like how XBLA, PSN and WiiWare work - trash the need for an optical drive, make everything downloadable. Install kiosks at all game retailers where people can bring their system or just the hard drive(make an easy access HD like laptops have) and can purchase and locally dload any game they want (if they have a poor internet connection at home especially). This removes the need for shelf space, allows the store to carry every game produced for the systems, removes the need for manufacturing and distribution costs from the publisher, which can be passed down in savings to the customer. Less money spent manufacturing the game, possibly lower game prices. That's how I would see the future of console gaming sales. As for dead HDs, etc, just have adigital database like itunes or whatnot, that knows what you've purchased, so you cqan re-download them should there be an issue with the game data or the actual HD

This system could work, and I'd not mind it too much. I'll admit that I'm a sucker for the limited-edition packaging and extras, and I would be saddened to see that go. (Why yes, Atlus, I DO want your artbooks and CDs!) But, yes, there are still issues I would have.

Firstly, I'll look at the rental market. It won't affect me as I am now, but I do know that when I was younger, if I rented a good game, I'd want to own it. If there was no way at all to try a game, it means a game that someone has as being more marginable will be overlooked, and thus not bought. I'm not going to dwell on this, though, since the opposite side has already been argued, and would be mitigated if the company itself offered a demo or rentals. And on a distribution method like this, it's more plausible. So let me go back to other points made.

Removal of an optical drive is easily a good thing. It removes the part most prone to break *glares at dead PS1*, reduces costs, and for portables, improves battery life. It would also allow for smaller systems. And by making the system smaller, it becomes easier to bring the whole system into a store for downloading; I'll get to that in a bit. Remember the handle on the Gamecube? It could be a practical thing this time!

Now, space from the other angle. Yes, a retailer would need less shelf space. But every game would not remain carried, especially for the systems like the PS3. (For those skimming for bulletpoints, keep reading. I'm not knocking the system.) Hard drives lately have stagnated between 1-2 TB. Costs on them haven't come down, bigger drives are just a combination of multiple drives in a case, and some worry that the HD may be ending soon as a result. Given that the 1 TB drive is much more economical than the 2, I'll look at that one in my example. Take a single-layer BR disk- 25 GB. On a 1 TB drive, you can fit 40 games. But as more of those games start using dual-layer, they go to 50 GB, limiting the drive to just 20 games. The DVD case works out better; at 7.5 GB per game, you get about 133 games in that drive. That is, until you start looking at multi-disk games. And don't get me started if that happens to the PS3. At the company level, you would have to start providing multiple dedicated servers for this, in addition to factoring the bandwidth costs. But of course, at this point, there are so many things to weigh that it's tough to see where anything will go. Maintain these servers yourself as the company, and you can cut out the middleman. Or, you have stores maintain it at a local level, allowing customers to get their games faster (it becomes a local copy process). Maybe even a hybrid, sell it yourself as a preorder, then make it in-stores only?

I truthfully see companies choosing to keep the store route, as it allows them to get their games out to the largest number of people versus selling it themselves. Even niche companies like anime studios say that the bread-and-butter of their business is the B&M chain, so something larger like video games will need to keep a presense there. At this point, do you want to stream every copy of it you sell, even if you're sending to only, say, 10,000 locations several times over? It would be cheaper for stores to have to keep a copy locally, and as I mentioned before, it's also better for the consumer. So it means that stores would need to download these games to have them to sell. Now, who provides these drives to all the stores? I would assume that it would be the stores themselves. The cost incurred with having more games on your 'shelves' is that you need to buy more space. There is a limit, though, to how much 'space' a store will buy. Though admittingly, I can not rule out choosing to stream out every copy sold, either.

So, we're back to the question, what happens to the old games? Best case scenario, we have a system where both the store and publisher sell them, and the publisher keeps them up. Worst case, publishers don't keep older games up, and stores delete it to make space for newer games. This brings me to the problem I have with the digital method: nobody else can now get this game through any legal means.

Gah, sorry, I didn't mean to ramble on like that. Next was your point of cost. While yes, manufacture and distribution are part of the costs, I don't see them as being significant enough in the grand scheme of things to actually cause a savings to be passed down to the consumer on this regard alone. Where I do see the savings coming from, actually, is the reluctance of people to pay more for something they can't put their hands on. That will be what forces the price down. Even if they do choose to lower the price at wholesale based on this, I can't see it doing much at the retail level, with how it loves those $x9.99 prices. It would just then result in more profit for the retailer, which does nothing for the publisher. (Hey... sounds like another argument on this site elsewhere...)

Dead HDs... oooh... now we have to be careful. Industry concerns about piracy are high, of course. So you need a way to ensure that the person whose drive is being requested is actually that person's. This is where we need the system. The system could have a very small bit of read-only flash memory with the system's serial number. This is accessed by the games database to know what games you have bought. Part of the process of restoring a dead drive will also put that number on the drive, which is checked by the system when a drive is inserted into it. (Most likely place for this number would be the boot sector.) Anything less than this the industry won't go for. A password system has the problem of friends sharing their password, meaning that you could have a neighborhood where only 1 copy of a game is sold, because 8 people have the same password. And what about forgotten passwords? As for the drives issue, yes, they need to be easily changed, especially as games get bigger. So the serial number copy would prevent someone from selling their drive to someone else for money, then reporting a "bad drive" to get another copy, which could then be sold again, ad naseaum.

I'd like to get your thoughts on that, as seeing as you're pretty solid at breaking things down to the core. Maybe I missed something significant here.

I still think I'm missing something, but I'll put this up for now; maybe you can find the hole my mind says still exists?