I honestly can't see it. Even when 21CN (21st cent. network) in the UK. I very much doubt it will have the horse power to download a full game in the time it takes to get my coat and drive to the shops...
No doubt when they do digitally distribute, we're likely to be paying the same money for an inferior product. If Digital distribution comes around for proper retail releases (i'm talking games that aren't just 'mini-games' ie the excellent but short calling all cars and pac-man c.e.) there's no way that that distribution method is better than going to the shop and just buying the game anyway. At least I have a physical product, with a proper disk, an actual manual that I can flick through 'manually' and proper artwork. Where hell do I display this digital content? Do I have to take a picture of my 'game menu' after i've booted up my console just to show somebody that I have it? Oh yeah.. another thing while I think, we can't sell these games on right? So technically there will never be any price drops for games? You either pay Microsoft/Sony/Hell even Nintendo's set price for things. Forever. There's no competition. They can charge what the hell they want really AND there's no inherent penalty for doing so. They don't have to pay stocking fees for all the warehouses that are holding unsold games. They don't have to pay manufacturing costs as there are none. The only thing they have to pay for is the servers that distribute content. There's no way you're telling me that that costs just as much having to manufacture the game, then load it on a lorry and then transport it to a holding warehouse where games retailers get the stock at wholesale?
If anybody says that they'll pass the saving onto the consumer, will they hell! Look at the PS3, GT5:Prologue just came out. Every shop that has it in stock is selling it for £20. Low and behold on PSN it's selling for £24.99 for the digital download! WHY ISN'T IT THE SAME PRICE?! WHY ARE YOU CHARGING MORE?! It costs you next to nothing to copy those 1s and 0s over the internet apart from the electricity it costs to run those servers. I don't want to pay MORE for an INFERIOR 'product'.
They said that by this time ten years ago that books would an obsolete format and everyone will be reading books on a pc or on an eBook (ie the physical reading devices with lcd screens, not the distribution format). It's just not gonna happen. There's no way digital distribution for games is gonna occur in the next 10 years.
Mp3 is a different story. When that came about Dial up modems were what the majority had. Even then the slowest dialup modem could download an Mp3 file in 30-45m! Can anybody here honestly say they can download 9GB in that time right now?! I have the fastest consumer broadband package in the UK outside of London (20Mbps down 790Kbps up) and it takes me about 45 mins to download 1GB... I'm not prepared to wait 6h45m for a game to download (and thats considering I get 100% DL speed all the way through). I can go out and buy that same game 6 times over, and thats travelling there and back. Not everybody in the UK is as lucky as me, there's only a handful of cities and districts that can actually get the speed that i'm on. For most people the max they can get is 8Mbps, and even then they're not guaranteed 8Mbps, most are just on 2Mbps at most.
At my mum's house she got broadband as soon as it was available. We got 1Mbps on day one. it's been 6 years now and it's still on 1Mbps.
There's no way in hell that digital distribution is gonna take over optical media in the next 10 years, hell i'll put money on it never over taking in 20 years, yes i'm that confident (or unconfident?) that network infrastructure will not improve to the likes of what Japan have now.
Sorry for the rant. I just hope digital distribution never takes over. It's pissing me off that Music is going that way. I don't wanna pay £0.99 for a crapilly encoded file that I can only play on an iPod? What if my iPod dies, can i put it on my spare mp3 player. Doh!! I can't, Guess i'm just gonna have to go and buy another iPod then? Wait what's that you say, you can pay more for a non-drm version? WHA?! Why should I? £12 for a digital version of an album? erm... i'd rather pay that in a shop thanks... at least i get student discount then!
Argh can't stop ranting, sorry!
Wii 2 hardware...any clues?
There is an obvious incentive for digital distribution from the 'Big 3' of gaming, COST and direct revenue model that cuts out the middle man, game retailers.
I'm not sure what the downside is to the consumer, I think there are different perspectives on that. I've gotten the point where I hate physical medium. I'm watching my past console game collections get increasingly obsolete because of downloadable virtual game libraries.
Will there be a point to having a DC collection by next gen, what about a GC?
You can't sell a 40 game GC collection for $200 on ebay....worthless.
One day not only there will be no physical game medium....but there won't even be physical console with processing being done on a server.
I'm not sure what the downside is to the consumer, I think there are different perspectives on that. I've gotten the point where I hate physical medium. I'm watching my past console game collections get increasingly obsolete because of downloadable virtual game libraries.
Will there be a point to having a DC collection by next gen, what about a GC?
You can't sell a 40 game GC collection for $200 on ebay....worthless.
One day not only there will be no physical game medium....but there won't even be physical console with processing being done on a server.