The all digital future is not plausible.

Well it is plausible but in no way the best option yet. Ni no kuni is like a 20 gig download, that's too big I'm just going to say it. So the options are wait like two weeks for this to finish downloading or buy a disc and play it now.

Playing it now will always win that fight. Even if it was like two hour download, I'd still just go buy the disc, because then you get the box to go on the shelf. It's not matter of impatientce either.

Killzone shadowfall is 50 gigs fuck your digital future

Preference. That is what it really comes down too. Some people like being able to switch games without switching discs. Others like to have the box on the shelf. Either way, downloads are still really slow, and I do not know of any console with a pre-load similar to what steam does if you preorder the game so you can play it at 12.

Of course it's plausible. Your console uses the same connection as your PC and your PC downloads games like Shogun 2 (currently round 35gb, I think?).

Now, whether it's reasonable to do on a console that doesn't have at least a couple terabytes of space (necessary for the next generation of consoles) or on a home connection that is subject to a tight bandwidth cap is a different issue, entirely. Those are limitations that something could be done about, but are outside of your control until then.

Yeah reasonable is a better way to say it.

GOOGLE FIBER

Works fine for me dawg.

But yeah, for people with slow internet or no HDD/small HDD, it must be a bummer.

@JZ: Ni No Kuni is like a 10gb download, that shouldn't take any more than an hour or so. You're saving money on gas, it's cheaper on PSN, and you have the option to buy it whenever you want without having to worry about it being in stock. The only downside is that you don't get the physical copy. I personally prefer to have the disc and case, but not only is buying retail games digitally plausible, it's preferable to people who aren't insane like me.

10 gig in one hour? Where do you live, neo new york?

@ChinaDontCare said:

GOOGLE FIBER

I did and this was the first result! - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_fiber

My biggest issue is how, specifically sony and nintendo, limit your account to so many account. I could never buy as many games digitally on consoles like I do on steam until a limit like that is gone.

@SSully said:

My biggest issue is how, specifically sony and nintendo, limit your account to so many account. I could never buy as many games digitally on consoles like I do on steam until a limit like that is gone.

They absolutely MUST resolve THAT.

I have three 360s in my house and it's bullshit that I can't just have my profile on all of them at once. There's no reason it couldn't limit the play of restricted things to just one of those machines at a time. Fucking Netflix can figure that shit out, so can Sony and Microsoft. They also need to do away with the "x installs per y periods" thing. I ran into a bit of a problem in the earlier days of the 360, when I bought one, then bought another and gave the first away. Then bought a third (the elite) and moved it to a new room, and then the new that I still had were stolen in a home invasion. I bought a fourth and a fifth afterward and found that a lot of stuff wouldn't work and my licenses were all fucked. Sony limits you to five installs, I believe (same problem when you go through multiple machines). Microsoft, at the time, limited you to a transfer of licenses to something like once per year (I think it's once per 90 days, now). So I was fucked for quite awhile.

I certainly appreciate the option for both. Of course, based on my shitty internet I always go with physical copies unless downloading it is either the only way or significantly cheaper.

@SSully said:

My biggest issue is how, specifically sony and nintendo, limit your account to so many account. I could never buy as many games digitally on consoles like I do on steam until a limit like that is gone.

I thought Sony limited number of activations and not downloads. i.e. you can download as much as you want to one console, but, at most, that particular download can only be activated on 5 systems.

20gb is too big for what? If you're lucky enough to live in a country without bandwidth cap, you can easily download (pre-load) that overnight. If it's an option for every game on the next consoles... I'm gonna effin' do it. I'll agree that it's not feasible to move exclusively to digital games yet, but the all digital option is absolutely feasible (or plausible, as you're calling it).

@Branthog said:

@SSully said:

My biggest issue is how, specifically sony and nintendo, limit your account to so many account. I could never buy as many games digitally on consoles like I do on steam until a limit like that is gone.

They absolutely MUST resolve THAT.

I have three 360s in my house and it's bullshit that I can't just have my profile on all of them at once. There's no reason it couldn't limit the play of restricted things to just one of those machines at a time. Fucking Netflix can figure that shit out, so can Sony and Microsoft. They also need to do away with the "x installs per y periods" thing. I ran into a bit of a problem in the earlier days of the 360, when I bought one, then bought another and gave the first away. Then bought a third (the elite) and moved it to a new room, and then the new that I still had were stolen in a home invasion. I bought a fourth and a fifth afterward and found that a lot of stuff wouldn't work and my licenses were all fucked. Sony limits you to five installs, I believe (same problem when you go through multiple machines). Microsoft, at the time, limited you to a transfer of licenses to something like once per year (I think it's once per 90 days, now). So I was fucked for quite awhile.

Annoying, yes, but keep in mind that a whole lot of console users expect to be able to play their games offline. What if someone, say, copies their profile to a flash drive, puts it on a buddy's machine, downloads about 150GBs worth of games onto it, transfer his profile back, and goes home? If his profile is on his buddy's machine, and his buddy never takes it online again, then he can potentially have all of those games in the same way that you or I could potentially have a ton of pirated PC games. Since copying your 360 profile is essentially cutting and pasting it, you can't do that because it can only be in one place at one time.

Obviously this is easily circumvented by doing all of the above offline and then retrieving your profile when you go back home and connect your Xbox to the internet, but it's still a security measure that exists with a valid reason.

EDIT: Oh, on the topic at hand. It's likely that digital downloads on consoles will become a much bigger thing but I seriously doubt that it will become the major way to buy games. PC gamers have really dug into Steam and gotten used to the whole idea of having all of your games digitally, but most people still expect some kind of physical object when they buy something, though I daresay that the notions of things like Netflix and even paying for cable television have already set the idea in motion that digital games are possible.

All of this said, retail games will continue to be a reality in the same way that audio CD's and actual books will be simply because there's something about physically seeing something that people really like. Or maybe because someone might have a bandwidth cap. Or maybe someone simply doesn't have fast enough internet, or doesn't want to wait for a game as big as Max Payne 3 to download and would rather go through a fifteen minute install than a fifteen hour download.

By the way, one final little note - some people seem to think that a 20GB download is "no big deal" and "can be done overnight". I don't know what sort of godly internet you guys have but you seem to be vastly underestimating the number of people who still use relatively slow download speeds because it's a) cheap and b) fast enough for them. These people simply aren't ready to download that much data at once. And then what if a family has several kids that all want to download stuff at once?

I live in Canada and Bandwidth caps suck here. I have amazingly fast Internet but even with a very high package I only get 170gigs a month. That adds up. And big games do take up alot of that.

As for having to wait for the download, there is always preloading the game so you only have a few megabytes of information to download the night the game releases

@believer258 said:

@Branthog said:

@SSully said:

My biggest issue is how, specifically sony and nintendo, limit your account to so many account. I could never buy as many games digitally on consoles like I do on steam until a limit like that is gone.

They absolutely MUST resolve THAT.

I have three 360s in my house and it's bullshit that I can't just have my profile on all of them at once. There's no reason it couldn't limit the play of restricted things to just one of those machines at a time. Fucking Netflix can figure that shit out, so can Sony and Microsoft. They also need to do away with the "x installs per y periods" thing. I ran into a bit of a problem in the earlier days of the 360, when I bought one, then bought another and gave the first away. Then bought a third (the elite) and moved it to a new room, and then the new that I still had were stolen in a home invasion. I bought a fourth and a fifth afterward and found that a lot of stuff wouldn't work and my licenses were all fucked. Sony limits you to five installs, I believe (same problem when you go through multiple machines). Microsoft, at the time, limited you to a transfer of licenses to something like once per year (I think it's once per 90 days, now). So I was fucked for quite awhile.

Annoying, yes, but keep in mind that a whole lot of console users expect to be able to play their games offline. What if someone, say, copies their profile to a flash drive, puts it on a buddy's machine, downloads about 150GBs worth of games onto it, transfer his profile back, and goes home? If his profile is on his buddy's machine, and his buddy never takes it online again, then he can potentially have all of those games in the same way that you or I could potentially have a ton of pirated PC games. Since copying your 360 profile is essentially cutting and pasting it, you can't do that because it can only be in one place at one time.

Obviously this is easily circumvented by doing all of the above offline and then retrieving your profile when you go back home and connect your Xbox to the internet, but it's still a security measure that exists with a valid reason.

I don't see why you couldn't do this with signed keys. If that particular game is not signed with a key that matches your profile's key -- no dice. Or simply require that you do connect once to validate. But either way, you still run into the problem of homes having more than one console and more than one person -- and each persona is required by TOS to have their own account. So there are far more frequent legitimate reasons to implement it than there are not to.

@Branthog said:

@SSully said:

My biggest issue is how, specifically sony and nintendo, limit your account to so many account. I could never buy as many games digitally on consoles like I do on steam until a limit like that is gone.

They absolutely MUST resolve THAT.

damn straight. If the consoles want to get me to ever seriously buy digital day one releases, they need to lower the cost and seriously the reduce the hassle/BS.

Digital should not be as expensive, more of a hassle and less functional than a retail copy.

@JZ said:

Well it is plausible but in no way the best option yet. Ni no kuni is like a 20 gig download, that's too big I'm just going to say it. So the options are wait like two weeks for this to finish downloading or buy a disc and play it now. Playing it now will always win that fight. Even if it was like two hour download, I'd still just go buy the disc, because then you get the box to go on the shelf. It's not matter of impatientce either.

I can't hear you. I'm too busy downloading retail games on my PC...

@believer258 said:

@Branthog said:

@SSully said:

My biggest issue is how, specifically sony and nintendo, limit your account to so many account. I could never buy as many games digitally on consoles like I do on steam until a limit like that is gone.

They absolutely MUST resolve THAT.

I have three 360s in my house and it's bullshit that I can't just have my profile on all of them at once. There's no reason it couldn't limit the play of restricted things to just one of those machines at a time. Fucking Netflix can figure that shit out, so can Sony and Microsoft. They also need to do away with the "x installs per y periods" thing. I ran into a bit of a problem in the earlier days of the 360, when I bought one, then bought another and gave the first away. Then bought a third (the elite) and moved it to a new room, and then the new that I still had were stolen in a home invasion. I bought a fourth and a fifth afterward and found that a lot of stuff wouldn't work and my licenses were all fucked. Sony limits you to five installs, I believe (same problem when you go through multiple machines). Microsoft, at the time, limited you to a transfer of licenses to something like once per year (I think it's once per 90 days, now). So I was fucked for quite awhile.

[...]

By the way, one final little note - some people seem to think that a 20GB download is "no big deal" and "can be done overnight". I don't know what sort of godly internet you guys have but you seem to be vastly underestimating the number of people who still use relatively slow download speeds because it's a) cheap and b) fast enough for them. These people simply aren't ready to download that much data at once. And then what if a family has several kids that all want to download stuff at once?

I only have 25/10mbps, right now, but that's plenty to download 20gb in a few hours over Steam. I'm patient enough to wait three hours for a game. Certainly, not everyone has fast speeds, but most human beings live in high population cities and most high population cities have fast internet connections to anyone willing to spend more than $50/mo on it (I pay $120, including a static IP, 25/10mbps, no caps, and a 24x7 gauranteed business support response number). People spend more than that on their cell phone bill, which I find nuts. And you can get a similar account with slightly less speed for half the price. (Actually, mine started at $100, but over three years, comcast has fucking regularly jacked up my bill by a certain percentage every fucking year).

Anyway, the point is that it would be totally viable for many, if not most, people. That's enough to make it a feature of your product. That doesn't mean it should be the only method of acquisition, of course. But it should be an absolutely viable option for people to purchase and download and not have to deal with a physical product and a store and everything.

Steam is a perfect model in which they should follow. Link all games to your account, have multiple systems, no problem, works as long as you use same account id.

No shit that's the PC I'm not talking about the PC

@JZ said:

No shit that's the PC I'm not talking about the PC

What's the difference?

@Slag said:

@Branthog said:

@SSully said:

My biggest issue is how, specifically sony and nintendo, limit your account to so many account. I could never buy as many games digitally on consoles like I do on steam until a limit like that is gone.

They absolutely MUST resolve THAT.

damn straight. If the consoles want to get me to ever seriously buy digital day one releases, they need to lower the cost and seriously the reduce the hassle/BS.

Digital should not be as expensive, more of a hassle and less functional than a retail copy.

Between Steam and GOG, I easily have around 2,100 digital games and I'm completely happy at the prospect of doing that for consoles. However, they need to earn my trust the way Steam did. After nine years with Steam, I feel safe that while certain issues with developers themselves not maintaining files, Valve won't fuck with my games. They won't take them away or break them and they will work on the next computer I buy. And the one after that. I mean, as long as they still work on the OS I use at the time. I have no such faith in Microsoft or Sony. I have faith that Microsoft and Sony will screw me over if I move around on consoles too much, have too many consoles, lose some part of my account access, or because they just feel like artificially terminating access to a whole range of games, because "we're on a new generation of consoles, now!". I feel that, if nothing else, there would be a short built-in obsolescence to any purchase I make from them. And, on top of all that, I'm dependent on their continuing to operate the servers and make those downloads available.

The technological point is already largely solved. They gotta work on that customer service and trust.

Hmmmm whats the difference between the pc and a console, hmmmmm I wonder.

@Branthog: Couldn't of said it better myself there. I have about 15 downloadable games on my ps3(not count PS Plus) and I fully expect to not be able to carry those games over to the next console simply because I dont trust sony on maintaining a good system like Steam. I never spontaneously buy games on ps3 for this very reason, while on steam I will buy a game like the cave at full price simply because I watched the damn quick look. Even though I might not play the game to completion this week, I know for a fact that I can easily download it any time I want without any issues.

Oh shit, I can get Ni No Kuni digitally?!

20gigs or not, I've grown to prefer having things on my hard drive a la my PC, rather than having a collection of discs. But then 20 years from now I may not be able to play it. D:

Hmmmm whats the difference between the pc and a console, hmmmmm I wonder.

@Slag said:

@Branthog said:

@SSully said:

My biggest issue is how, specifically sony and nintendo, limit your account to so many account. I could never buy as many games digitally on consoles like I do on steam until a limit like that is gone.

They absolutely MUST resolve THAT.

damn straight. If the consoles want to get me to ever seriously buy digital day one releases, they need to lower the cost and seriously the reduce the hassle/BS.

Digital should not be as expensive, more of a hassle and less functional than a retail copy.

Between Steam and GOG, I easily have around 2,100 digital games and I'm completely happy at the prospect of doing that for consoles. However, they need to earn my trust the way Steam did. After nine years with Steam, I feel safe that while certain issues with developers themselves not maintaining files, Valve won't fuck with my games. They won't take them away or break them and they will work on the next computer I buy. And the one after that. I mean, as long as they still work on the OS I use at the time. I have no such faith in Microsoft or Sony. I have faith that Microsoft and Sony will screw me over if I move around on consoles too much, have too many consoles, lose some part of my account access, or because they just feel like artificially terminating access to a whole range of games, because "we're on a new generation of consoles, now!". I feel that, if nothing else, there would be a short built-in obsolescence to any purchase I make from them. And, on top of all that, I'm dependent on their continuing to operate the servers and make those downloads available.

The technological point is already largely solved. They gotta work on that customer service and trust.

Not only is it plausible but it is also possible. I downloaded Need for Speed Most Wanted day one and it took less then 2 hours to download. Now whenever I feel like playing I just select it from the xmb. Sure initially downloading some games like Super Street Fighter 4 can be a pain in the ass but once you have them there the convenience will make you realize that digital is the future! 

@ajamafalous said:

@Branthog said:

Between Steam and GOG, I easily have around 2,100 digital games and I'm completely happy at the prospect of doing that for consoles. However, they need to earn my trust the way Steam did. After nine years with Steam, I feel safe that while certain issues with developers themselves not maintaining files, Valve won't fuck with my games. They won't take them away or break them and they will work on the next computer I buy. And the one after that. I mean, as long as they still work on the OS I use at the time. I have no such faith in Microsoft or Sony. I have faith that Microsoft and Sony will screw me over if I move around on consoles too much, have too many consoles, lose some part of my account access, or because they just feel like artificially terminating access to a whole range of games, because "we're on a new generation of consoles, now!". I feel that, if nothing else, there would be a short built-in obsolescence to any purchase I make from them. And, on top of all that, I'm dependent on their continuing to operate the servers and make those downloads available.

The technological point is already largely solved. They gotta work on that customer service and trust.

This is basically my situation as well. I have over 800 games on Steam because Valve has earned my trust over the years. I've bought maybe 5 games in boxes in the past two years. I have 12 Mbps down and no bandwidth cap. Digital games are cheaper and significantly more convenient for me, so why would I not want them?

I should mention that I was one of those guys who hated the concept of digital stuff and felt it would cause a disconnect and loss of value. Over time, they won me over. Now, I prefer things digitally as long as I feel a sense of security about my content and my asserted "ownership" of it into the future. Give me that and I will gladly forgo piles and shelves full of more fucking content that I play or read or watch once and then never touch again, but dedicate ever-growing amounts of permanent real-estate to throughout my life. And if you can give me a discount on the price, too, that'd be swell. :D

@Branthog said:

Between Steam and GOG, I easily have around 2,100 digital games and I'm completely happy at the prospect of doing that for consoles. However, they need to earn my trust the way Steam did. After nine years with Steam, I feel safe that while certain issues with developers themselves not maintaining files, Valve won't fuck with my games. They won't take them away or break them and they will work on the next computer I buy. And the one after that. I mean, as long as they still work on the OS I use at the time. I have no such faith in Microsoft or Sony. I have faith that Microsoft and Sony will screw me over if I move around on consoles too much, have too many consoles, lose some part of my account access, or because they just feel like artificially terminating access to a whole range of games, because "we're on a new generation of consoles, now!". I feel that, if nothing else, there would be a short built-in obsolescence to any purchase I make from them. And, on top of all that, I'm dependent on their continuing to operate the servers and make those downloads available.
The technological point is already largely solved. They gotta work on that customer service and trust.

Couldn't have said it better myself. And it's why I buy a lot more digital games on Steam and GOG etc and will likely continue to o that for the foreseeable future. It's a better value and experience there.

You are absolutely right this is a business choice on MSFT, Nintendo and SNY's choice, not a technological one.

I think plausible is the wrong word. It is completely plausible and, in fact, quite easy for many of us to do this in just a few hours. On a country-wide level it may not be realistic, as much of America and the world are not on as fast of a connection as I am, but they will get there soon. Furthermore, I think we can assume that the next consoles will have 500GB hard drives available as an option. That means one could download about 20 games the size of Ni No Kuni right out of the box before having to expand. The future is here my friend.

I'm fine with digital games, but yeah my 80gig ps3 doesn't have the room for 20gig games... hopefully ps4 and next xbox come with fairly good storage room if this will be a viable way to do business on consoles.

Just depends what sort of connection you have. With things like Google Fiber and the next gen Verizon FIOS stuff in the US we are easily breaking the 100 Mb barrier, At that rate a 20 GB download wouldn't take more than a couple of hours. I've downloaded some pretty massive PC games but a console does have limited hard drive space. I'm sure the new God of War is going to fully saturate a dual layer blu-ray so we are talking about a 45 GB download. That is more than the total hard drive space of some PS3's and a significant portion of most others.

10 gig in one hour? Where do you live, neo new york?

@JZ said:

10 gig in one hour? Where do you live, neo new york?

What's unreasonable about that? I live in the middle of the Canadian prairies and a download of that size would take about 40 minutes on Steam. I have 50/5 mbps internet and I know tons of others who do as well.  It isn't that rare anymore.  Edit: Calculated it. At a steady rate of 5 megabytes/second (which is totally reasonable for me when I use Steam. Sometimes I get 10 even), it would take about 2000 seconds to download a 10 gig file, which is 33.33 minutes.

As long as you have the hard drive capacity and the bandwidth to do it, it's entirely plausible. Sooner or later, that is going to happen. Why? Because there is no overhead to worry about - just host the file on a server and let everyone pay for it and get it. It's not too different from how PC games originallygot started, it's just that now you have to pay for it rather than just redistributing shareware.

@TheHT said:

Oh shit, I can get Ni No Kuni digitally?!

20gigs or not, I've grown to prefer having things on my hard drive a la my PC, rather than having a collection of discs. But then 20 years from now I may not be able to play it. D:

Usually this would be true, but my PS3 harddrive is running out of space, and i don't really feel like replacing at this point, with all these new console rumours and stuff on the horizon. PS+ isn't helping either!

My data cap is the biggest obstacle right now. I do buy everything on PC digitally anyway but it's a struggle every months to not go over.

I'd be a bit more concerned with buying digitally on console for full retail games. I guess none of the console makers have earned my trust that i'll be able to play my games in 5 years from now.

Biggest plus to buying digital? No taxes. 9$ in taxes for a 60$ game adds up quickly.

@ChinaDontCare said:

GOOGLE FIBER

This, too bad I don't live in Kansas City :(

Also, having the ability to open a game without putting a disc in is so nice.

Yeah, you confused "plausible" for "practical". That's not what plausible means at all.

Once we get to the point where any console can handle a larger hard drive as a default option it'll be a lot easier to have a bigger digital library. Although with the right setup it's not that hard to have a pretty sizable collection. I have about 130 different games on my ps3 at this moment but it's obviously not a lot of full ps3 games. (11 and most are less than 12 gigs) Which is a reasonable amount plus if I'm done playing it I just delete it for now. I almost never get around to playing a game twice so I don't mind not having that certain game on my hard drive all the time.

@JZ said:

Well it is plausible but in no way the best option yet. Ni no kuni is like a 20 gig download, that's too big I'm just going to say it. So the options are wait like two weeks for this to finish downloading or buy a disc and play it now. Playing it now will always win that fight. Even if it was like two hour download, I'd still just go buy the disc, because then you get the box to go on the shelf. It's not matter of impatientce either.

I downloaded the entire run of Seinfeld (45GB) in about 50 minutes the other day, so uhh. Yeah.

Not that I'm saying everybody has a connection that fast, but it's more than possible for me. 20GB is nothing. In fact, I would much rather download Shogun 2 (30GB+) than use a DVD to install it, that's just hassle.

(and before anyone says anything, I own Seinfeld on DVD, but who wants to keep switching discs?)

A 20 GB file with my internet speed would take a day and a half given PS3 games downloads slower than PC games do. I wish downloadable games were more price competitive since they are competing with retail and other consoles as well as Steam and here is hoping next gen consoles come with a minimum 500 GB HDD as well as faster download servers so even large files can take less than 12 hours.

My 2Mb connection and 40gigs PS3 agree. But yeah for those that don't live in the sticks like myself, I bet downloading 10GB in half a second or whatever is part of the fun.

Lucky bastards.

Here's the thing. The reason full titles are so large is because they can be. Ni No Kuni could exist on an all digital platform, but it would have been made differently. See also Xbox 360 titles. How many of them are 20 gigs? Not many, I bet!

As far as I can tell no game really needs to be 20 gigs. The only games that are this big in filesize suffer as a result of their own bloated filesize and flood of cutscenes.

Would Ni No Kuni have been worse with fewer cutscenes? Maybe. Would it still exist? Absolutely.

I really hope that when the new consoles comes out I'll be able to exclusively buy games digitally.

Here's the thing. The reason full titles are so large is because they can be. Ni No Kuni could exist on an all digital platform, but it would have been made differently. See also Xbox 360 titles. How many of them are 20 gigs? Not many, I bet!

As far as I can tell no game really needs to be 20 gigs. The only games that are this big in filesize suffer as a result of their own bloated filesize and flood of cutscenes.

Would Ni No Kuni have been worse with fewer cutscenes? Maybe. Would it still exist? Absolutely.

It's viable for me because I have no internet cap. Though this is certainly not the norm in NZ, so for plenty of people 10-20 out of their cap is just too much.