The end of physical media & dedicated hardware: Inevitable?

[MrPopo]

but there will have to be those solutions.

I'm not convinced that the effort/costs of making these solutions work are worthwhile for the folks who would have to provide them...

Yeah, that's what I'm feeling. If the number of sales doesn't make up for the lost revenue in these alternative solutions then it's wasting money. I think if we crest something like if 70% of the population has good internet then that'll be the tipping point to ditch physical entirely. Now, a lot of that 70% might have bandwidth caps, but that won't factor into the calculation for digital only. It will factor in for a switch to streaming.

[marurun]

There are a lot of people who are in an area that is served by broadband but don't have it for cost reasons. They may rely solely on their mobile devices for internet. Those people would be excluded as well. I'm certain that going on-line only with digital sales is a viable model, but it's never going to be the only model. Someone is going to allow some kind of physical media, and that someone will lock up that particular under-served market. It may be that Sony and Microsoft aren't interested in that segment, but someone will be. I suspect Nintendo will be the company that continues to extend support to a physical medium. It's not like flash memory isn't going to continue to get cheaper.

[Arenegeth]

There's also the matter of internet stability and latency which is paramount for game streaming, but not that important for digital distribution.

Stadia in particular has further issues to limit its affect with the public, for one, is Google's partnership with AMD, which means games will essentially be running in second tier CPU's and GPU's, compared to competing Intel CPU's and Nvidia GPU's that outperform AMD's offerings in almost every case, especially if pricing isn't an issue.

And then we have the fact that they are rolling this thing out as software only, all processing will be handled on their back end, which theoretically means you could be playing Doom Eternal at 4k, 60hz on your brand new 4k TV that comes preloaded with a Stadia app as long as you have an internet connection.

That sounds great for game streaming in theory, but in practice, this will put an even higher threshold on the internet stability/latency part of this equation, I don't think even Google which probably has warehouses filled to the brim with servers and high end PC's will be able to handle millions of people around the world, playing games on 4k relying entirely on their network (never mind their own local network restrictions).

But going back to physical media getting dropped, which for me is a step away from game streaming, since more realistically there will be a stage of only digital distribution before streaming takes off, for reasons mentioned already.

As I said before, I think we still have one good generation of physical media left, since I don't think Sony or Microsoft will have the balls to open their next gen systems as digital only yet, well at least Sony won't, Microsoft might since they've basically given up on trying to compete on exclusive software, but that makes their next Xbox like a layman's Desktop for people who aren't willing to invest on a gaming PC, which might create a unique niche in the market for them, leaving Sony the only company competing at the console forefront, since Nintendo will probably continue with the under powered hybrid line going forward.

I think the collector's market is too small currently (and is only getting smaller as younger people are less likely to have the physical owner mindset), to self sustain physical media on ts own, if the big players aren't willing to support it on their platforms. I think the moment the big three drop physical, is the moment physical gets dropped altogether, at least for console. PC still gets some DRM free, data actually on the disc releases, but even those have become a rarity, and are probably going to be even more rare in the future.

[marurun]

I think I agree that Microsoft may have the best luck unifying, to an extent, PC and Xbox gaming, with the Xbox being a pre-configured, predictable, low-overhead PC-like platform. MS and Sony have already proven that you can create a relatively low-cost box using what is essentially PC hardware and get great performance without all the overhead of a full OS. A PC with equivalent hardware to either the PS4 or XB1 would not get the same performance, say, from a game on Steam. And I agree that Microsoft would be the most likely to ditch physical media outright.

But I also think Microsoft will be the only company in a position to compete with Google (shy of Amazon getting into the game) on streaming gaming. Sony or Nintendo would have to effectively have to get into the data center business first, or partner with someone VERY closely who already is. Those kinds of close partnerships typically don't end well for one of the two partners.

I also agree that that has the potential to leave Sony as the only contender with a dedicated console. And that may not actually matter, ultimately.

[isiolia]

Stadia in particular has further issues to limit its affect with the public, for one, is Google's partnership with AMD, which means games will essentially be running in second tier CPU's and GPU's, compared to competing Intel CPU's and Nvidia GPU's that outperform AMD's offerings in almost every case, especially if pricing isn't an issue.

May be worth noting that no consoles are using Intel, and the only one using nVidia hardware is the Switch. To be fair, nVidia does make products designed for this sort of thing (which they offer themselves). Either way, it's a different situation from a desktop PC using specific components/OS/drivers/etc.

Also, I wouldn't so much look at Sony as likely to be the last one standing with a home console. They bought one of the early companies trying to do this sort of thing (Gaikai) to turn into Playstation Now, and have offered streamed games on that for a bit now.

To me, it'd mostly be an issue of pricing model, if the tech part is decent enough now (as Stadia/beta stuff seems to indicate). I wouldn't be keen on spending tens of dollars per title (which is where early attempts failed I think), but a subscription model or modest use fee? That'd be the kind of shift that'd get a lot of new people playing games I think, and sell existing fans on the paradigm.

[marurun]

Stadia in particular has further issues to limit its affect with the public, for one, is Google's partnership with AMD, which means games will essentially be running in second tier CPU's and GPU's, compared to competing Intel CPU's and Nvidia GPU's that outperform AMD's offerings in almost every case, especially if pricing isn't an issue.

Oh, forgot to comment on this... I don't think this matters at all. Google, and competitors, will be offering virtualized offerings. Server farms running clusters of hardware units are less sensitive to these kinds of differences than someone's PC on their desk. I've no doubt AMD can deliver more than sufficient performance. Cost is often a massive factor in any enterprise like this. There's a reason Sony and Microsoft both chose to get CPU and video components from the same supplier, AMD, instead of doing a split setup with Intel providing CPU and Nvidia providing video. That reason applies equally to massive server farms. AMD has shown a willingness to do production at large scale and customize offerings for a range of purposes. Unless Nvidia breaks into the x86 CPU market or Intel finally produces some video hardware worth anything, any solution involving both of them is going to fail to be competitive at ROI.

[Arenegeth]

I was referring to their AMD partnership, to how it will affect them making any dent in the dedicated PC build market.

The dedicated PC build market is huge (as the millions of dollars spend of GPU's every year indicate, and that was before bitcoin farming) and especially for competitive online gaming, no elitist 'PC Master Race' type is going to go for a streaming service when is not offering something that at least compares to their custom rig.

You may say the Stadia is not for them, and I'd agree, I personally think Stadia isn't for anyone specifically, Google is looking to establish itself in a market that it knows is coming in the future no matter what, but is not ready right now, but a large portion of the people playing games like Overwatch and Apex Legends carry that power/refresh rate is everything mindset, and are already complaining about Google going for AMD.

I do agree that AMD will be good enough for the general public though, but it remains to be seen how successful it will be for them based on other considerations mentioned already. As is losing a segment of the (very dedicated) audience from the start, may not be good in helping them catch on early on.

[isiolia]

I think it's not especially relevant if the service is implemented right. I agree that people can end up being very particular about their experience, and may still gravitate towards a local copy on a high end machine if available. Same as some may insist on only original hardware on a CRT, etc for playing retro titles. That said, I think even among those sorts of enthusiasts, fairly few would never ever touch something "less". For example, the folks (like myself) that'll invest in the setup for 4K Ultra Blu-rays, and spend the extra money buying them, etc probably end up consuming a lot of streaming content too. Someone with a dedicated listening room and tends of thousands of dollars in stereo equipment may still just listen to MP3s in the car, or explore new music on Youtube.
The value in being able to jump back into a game from wherever, on whatever device, would make up for quality differences. The value in being able to hear about a random game and (legally) jump into playing it immediately, same thing.

[Nintendork666]

Stadia in particular has further issues to limit its affect with the public, for one, is Google's partnership with AMD, which means games will essentially be running in second tier CPU's and GPU's, compared to competing Intel CPU's and Nvidia GPU's that outperform AMD's offerings in almost every case, especially if pricing isn't an issue.

That's a stretch. AMD and Nvidia have always traded blow for blow in terms of CPU/GPU quality. While AMD has almost always been cheaper, they're not consistently worse by any means. Especially if you have to factor in what sort of CPUs will be needed to run these crazy Google game-center PC's. You might want a **** ton of cores running at the highest speed possible. AMD has always been the workhorse manufacturer of the two companies.

I'll stick w my PC for now. I don't trust game streaming yet... I still got this darn Steam backlog to get through

[BoneSnapDeez]

As modern goes full digital, we're going to see an uptick in retro games (re)released as (physical) plug and plays, standalone handhelds, smallish arcade cabinets, and so on. Hopefully the quality of those devices continues to improve.