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How Much Longer Will Physical Game Distribution Survive?
Posted by
Soulskill
on Thu Mar 05, 2009 05:18 AM
from the shortly-after-blizzard-conquers-the-earth dept.
from the shortly-after-blizzard-conquers-the-earth dept.
GamesIndustry is running an interview with Theodore Bergquist, CEO of GamersGate, in which he forecasts the death of physical game distribution in favor of digital methods, perhaps in only a few years. He says, "Look at the music industry, look at 2006 when iTunes went from not being in the top six of sellers — in the same year in December it was top three, and the following year number one. I think digital distribution is absolutely the biggest threat [traditional retailers] can ever have." Rock, Paper, Shotgun spoke with Capcom's Christian Svensson, who insists that developing digital distribution is one of their top priorities, saying Capcom will already "probably do as much digital selling as retail in the current climate." How many of the games you acquire come on physical media these days? At what point will the ease of immediate downloads outweigh a manual and a box to stick on your shelf (if it doesn't already)?
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Eve onlin (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a good indicator at all really. I would expect Eve sales to be largely saturated already, and growth across any medium to be low. Slow box sales on this do not really indicate anything particular about success of distribution channels this late in a game's life.
Re:Online sales (Score:4, Interesting)
Does it cost 20%-30% more when a EU resident downloads an Adobe product form their store than if a US resident does the same? I don't think so.
I don't think so either: Photoshop CS4 costs $699.00 in the US for direct download from Adobe, or EUR 887.12, the equivalent of $1115.00. That's considerably more than 30%. The VAT accounts for about EUR 110 of the difference, tho'.
ZDNet (God, I hate referring to ZDNet) did an article [zdnet.co.uk] on the pricing imbalance last year. A 50% premium for products in Europe seems t'be standard for them.
Most other companies charge more for downloadable software in Europe than in the US, although the VAT generally accounts for most of the difference.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The amount of money in the US that will go to Social Security and Medicare this year completely dwarfs the money spent on Iraq over the past six+ years.
I always buy boxed games (Score:4, Insightful)
In general, if I've paid for something, I want a tangible object.
I've this constant concern that *something* will go wrong in the digital process. I know it probably wont, and generally hasn't, but I'd still much rather be able to say "look - I _do_ own this, I've got the box and everything". That said, I don't have any paper records for, say, my banking. Priorities and all that.
Re:I always buy boxed games (Score:5, Insightful)
I also like physical objects, generally for music. Whilst I have downloaded a couple of games on Xbox and PS3 and I don't have the same fear of something going wrong, there is a huge downside.
I can't lend it to a friend.
I can't sell it on or even give it away when I'm done with it.
This sucks.
I don't mind the suckage on low-value items like Flower or Noby Noby Boy, or Xbox Live Arcade bits and pieces, but on full games?
No thanks.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I agree this is crap but it's exactly the direction the publishers want to go in. They still equate this kind of thing with lost sales.
And I want to re-sell! (Score:5, Insightful)
I buy 100% retail boxed, tangible products. I want to be able to exercise the First-Sale Doctrine to re-sell my games after I complete them so that I can raise more money to buy more games. I also want the market to control the pricing of a product. Historically, after a few weeks on the market, retail-boxed items can be found for half the price of their digital counter-parts. Why? The game sucks. It may be fun at a $30 or $40 price point, but is a regret at a $60 price point. The market realizes this, and boxed games can be found for $40 whereas the digital copies are still at $59.99 (ooh, but free shipping and no tax!)
Digital copies are just a way to destroy the used-game market, undercut pawn shops (e.g. GameStop), lock out libraries, and permanently tie a person to a product so that they can never get rid of it.
Parent
Re:I always buy boxed games (Score:4, Insightful)
"I can. And neither of us worries about ever returning it."
You can lend downloaded game content to friends? How, oh great and wise one, is this acheived with steam, XBLA or PSN? Or are we talking piracy?
"I'd have a hard time to find a sucker who would buy the physical copy as well.
ebay, game stores, whatever. You can get some value back.
"I can give it away whether I'm done with it or not."
So piracy then? That's the solution?
Personally I'd like DRM free stuff that I can buy, sell, transfer etc. Until then I'll buy disks or do without (other than for cheap-ass stuff like Flower/XBLA).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting questions.
Firstly I would prefer the transfer not to have to involve a broker, in this case steam.
Secondly I'd prefer not to let steam set the price for selling it back, though to be fair they can't screw you any more than the bricks'n'mortar stores do. I'd like cash too, not tie-in to their network. Just because I might usually put the money towards more games doesn't mean I definitely want to do so.
Thirdly, if they allowed lending or selling to others then that would be great. Much better than
Re: (Score:3)
But who thought the banking system would collapse, or that Atari would be bought by the French, or that Commodore would have gone under after the Amiga. Just because Steam is going OK now doesn't mean they will stick around.
I like physical media - same as I dislike online activation. If I've bought it I want to play it and not be reliant on an external company to allow me to play something I've paid for.
Re:I always buy boxed games (Score:5, Insightful)
issues with downloads:
- when the DRM server goes down, you lose your stuff. The question is not whether it will, but when. We need some king of DRM escrow.
- because of the drm, we're beholden to not only 1 drm system, but 1 file format, 1 software, and sometimes even 1 hardware vendor, or 1 product line form a specific vendor. We need a DRM standard, shared amongst all vendors.
- we lose the right to resell or even loan our stuff.
Parent
We have the technology... (Score:5, Interesting)
You can see this already with PC gaming. Digital distributors like Steam have pretty much demolished the brick and mortar stores. My local GameStop barely has a PC game section anymore and it's not because the PC market is shrinking. In fact, it's growing.
Brick and mortar stores are dying and they know it -- for PC games anyway. It's like they are not even trying anymore. I am an independent video game developer, and I tried my best to let GameStop et al sell my company's game, but they do not even return calls. We have not even gotten an email back yet.
Meanwhile, our upcoming title is going to be sold in virtually every single online store -- some of them responded within a day of being contacted. Here's our list so far [wolfire.com].
Brick and mortar stores are still clinging on for consoles releases. Retail stores pretty much are the only place to go when you want to buy the latest AAA titles (except Amazon, which is like digital distribution with very high latency).
You've missed the point (Score:5, Insightful)
"Digital distribution" and "on-line stores" are not synonymous.
I buy most of my games and movies from on-line stores, but I still get physical media for my cash. This is also true for AAA titles - my copy of MutantExploder7 will land on my doormat on the day of release.
It is the prevalence of low-overhead (and sales tax avoiding) on-line retailers that has been killing bricks-and-mortar establishments for the last 10 years.
Parent
Re:You've missed the point (Score:4, Insightful)
1. It's cheaper to buy the physical item
2. The DRM encumbered nature of today's video games makes it almost essential to have the physical disk and box, if only for proof that you own the damned thing.
3. The pirated version of the game can be less hassle than downloading the game.
4. You have to go to disparate sources to get different types of game downloaded.
Once these issues have been overcome we will be downloading games, but at the moment it seems a long way off. The publisher's of games seem to control the download distribution of their games much more closely than record companies do and let's not forget the games industry is still growing they have no particular reason to change their business model.
Parent
As long as they keep the packaging shiny (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really need to ask? (Score:5, Insightful)
At what point will the ease of immediate downloads outweigh a manual and a box to stick on your shelf (if it doesn't already)?
At the point where I can download a DRM-less installer or ISO and do whatever the hell I want with it.
Anything short of that, and I'll keep buying physical media.
Re:Do you really need to ask? (Score:4, Informative)
For older games, there's Good Old Games [gog.com]. Cheap titles, no DRM, download again and again...
Smallish selection so far, but rapidly growing.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How does buying physical media make such products more DRM Free? There is still DRM the CD/DVDs. When you copy the game from CD to your PC in essence the same thing happens. High and Low Bits from one media are communicated to an other. Wither it is Computer to Computer with a TCP/IP Layer or from CD to Computer with a IDE/SCSI or whatever communication protocols that you use.
Sure there isn't Physical DRM's on Music CD like there is on downloaded Music. That is because the technology at the time didn't hav
Never! (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply stated, if companies stop selling their games on physical media, then I shall stop buying their games.
I've been fucked over by DRM-laden downloads on the 360, thanks very much. Every time mine goes back for repair, none of my paid-for-DLC works on the new box I get back, and I have to get into an hour-long argument with tele-bozos to sort it out. I have no interest in extending that process to every game I own.
It could be now if they are willing. (Score:3, Informative)
> At what point will the ease of immediate downloads outweigh a manual and a box to stick on your shelf (if it doesn't already)?
Well, since you ask.
1. When they are immediate. Some games are (and NEED to be) very large, this is hardly immidiate. If it's over an hour to wait I could easily go out and purchase the game quicker.
2. When they are not restrictive. I have very old games that I still lvoe to play. This means I need to be able in install my game on any machine I like when I like. This generally equated to DRM free. And DRM free includea activation of any kind. I want to play it when I want to, I may be without phone/internet etc. I want to install and go. Machines change, but drm may stop me from playing it in a "emulator" (computers may change so much that I need to emulate my old hardware to play the game, however I still want to be able to do it) or on some classic machnie I have cobbled together out of old bits people have given me (which is way better than the machine I played on back in the day as the expensive stuff then is still junk now!)
These may sound liek a lot of requests but they are not. 1 is outside of the game producers infulence (as it should be) but 2 certainly aint hard to do.
Since Valve changed their prices in Europe... (Score:3, Interesting)
... I get all of them in physical media. (http://steamunpowered.eu/ for the details)
OK, I've bought a few from GOG, but they still do it right.
I think it's freaking ridiculous that I can go to an on-line shop and get a game delivered to my door, for half the price I can get it from Steam.
Digital media. It's much cheaper, but we get to keep the profits, pass none of the savings to the customer, and you pay more for the "convenience".
They need to sort out the pricing. (Score:5, Insightful)
I bought Dawn of War II from the supermarket ; because it was a lot cheaper than getting it on Steam - even if it is natively a Steam game.
Why, in this day and age, are physical boxed copies retailing for less than the digital variant? In this particular case, there is literally no difference between the end results - both methods have the game, installed in my Steam folder, registered to my Steam account. Neither has any resale value. I even had to wait to download an update.
I would rather have downloaded it all, it would have used less materials, and perhaps given more money to the developer (in theory). But for less money, I got more value - I got a disk with a "preload" on it. So physical distribution isn't going away until the download costs less than a retail boxed copy, or until they stop offering boxed copies altogether, and the latter is probably the route that they will want to take - no competition, no discounting.
presents (christmas) (Score:4, Insightful)
You cannot give a download as a (Christmas) present.
The trouble is that the chance of actually finding what you want in a shop is very small. It's all filled up with mainstream crap.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I would imagine not. These are the sort of small-batch, high markup items that it might be worthwhile to continue producing. I'm guessing at the volume that these things are produced, there's not as much overhead, and less guess work about how much to push into the retail channel. What you won't see is manufacturers trying to guess if they need to press 10000 disks or 15000. "Limited-edition, hand numbered, pre-order only" are like free money for the developer, whereas physical media, boxes, freight, an
Re:Physical is still the best bandwidth (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that while network bandwidth does not follow an exponential increase in bitrate over time, disc format capacity does. So this would suggest that the gap between online delivery and physical media is going to get larger, not smaller.
Now that's not true. I've only been online about 10 years and i can actually notice the exponential increase, something like this:
1999 56k
2003 256kbit
2004 512kbit
2005 1MBit
2006 2MBit
2007 4Mbit
2008 10MBit
At least, that's been my experience in the UK. Here's another diagram [homepages.cwi.nl] going from 1982(log scale, so it's exponential)
Parent
Re:Physical is still the best bandwidth (Score:5, Informative)
Now do a list of game sizes. It will probably go something like this (install size):
1995 20MB
1999 400MB
2004 4000MB
2008 10000MB
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now do a list of game sizes. It will probably go something like this (install size):
1995 20MB
1999 400MB
2004 4000MB
2008 10000MB
Try more like:
1993 The 7th guest: 1300MB
1995 Wing Commander IV: 3900MB
2000 Baldur's Gate 2: 2800MB
2006 Neverwinter Nights 2: 5500MB
2008 GTA IV: 16000MB
I assume you mean size of installer discs, since we're talking distribution? I'll gladly admit it's gone up over the years, but if you take the biggest mofo space wasters like you do if you claim games today are 10-20GB then you're way off. Sure, many games were only a few hundred MB but very many games today still do just fine on a gigabyte or two. Apples to
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The question is, why are they measuring bandwidth levels in Internet Explorer versions? :-)
"MP3" for games (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't have "MP3 for games" yet. They're already pretty compressed.
Actually we have. It's called "procedural generated".
It might be not as extreme as in "Spore", but that's the current tendency among game developing studios.
Bandwidth have dramatically exploded recent years.
Storage size has also seen good increases.
But there's only so much content that a reasonably size team of artists can spit out within a reasonable amount of time and within a decent budget.
It took quite some time for games to start filling CD-ROMs.
And that was back a time of ever increasing screen resolution and color-depths, of cinematics, etc.
Now this tendency has curbed. Lots of player consider current graphics "realistic enough". We aren't much avidly awaiting a 100x increase of polycount or texture size for the next few years (some consoles like the Wii don't even bother bumping up the generation of their graphics hardware).
FMV cinematics slowly got replaced with in-game animations done with the engine it self (see almost 99% of recently released games - things like Command and Conquer series are rather the exception).
More studios resort to automatic/programmatic content generation for their assets to stay withing man-hours and budget limits (see for example the recent presentation of engines like Id's Rage which can handle lots of terrain details as the artist only paints heights and soil types. Or most recent FPS which use a dynamically generated sky box / time of day effects instead of relying on lots of artists designing lots of different settings).
Size requirement for games aren't increasing as much as the rest.
BlueRay disc are great for lots of usage (they will be useful to pack a whole TV-series' season on a single disc, they will be invaluable in fields that have to manipulate and backup huge amount of data, they will be great to store an exhaustive Linux distribution on a single media like Debian).
But the time until we start seeing multi-BD games will be long, even longer than the time before multi-CD games appeared, or even multi-DVD for that matters (there even aren't that much yet)
Parent
It's all a question of media (Score:5, Insightful)
And likewise it will be with the next media format, and the next, and the next. You can't compare MP3s and games because songs have a fixed size. Games do not.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But games will make a bigger profit with an iPhone app store type platform, so all the programmers will go with that. One click purchasing will make them a lot of money.
The content you could put on a 20GB disk would be truly awesome, but what is in it for the game companies?
Re:It's all a question of media (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:It's all a question of media (Score:5, Insightful)
First obviously, no download waiting - if the DRM isn't as asinine as Spore's was, then when my machine needs to be rebuilt I can quickly put all of my games back on rather than wait forever.
Second (and I have done this) - I can sell my games LEGALLY to friends when I'm done with them and vice-versa. They get a $50 game for $10-$20, and I get a rebate of sorts. Can't do that with downloaded software (well, I suppose you could copy it to a DVD then find a crack of some type, but hell, your buds can do that, too). Kind of like the e-book argument.
Finally, there's the subjective (OP mentioned this, to be fair) - I *like* having the physical media and the packaging. Hell, Fallout 3 actually even included a REAL, printed manual! Woohoo!
To be sure, there are many benefits to download distribution, but it's nice to have options and I would hate to see the total demise of packaged games.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You can also play at your friends house and your house simultaneously IF you choose play offline. But this is true with most multiplayer games now that tie your account to a CDKEY. Your Steam logon is like your unique CDKEY. Although I'm not sure if you can play 2 different multiplayer games at the same time on 1 account (multi logging isn't possible I'm sure).
As for that REAL, printed manual....
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, there's another good reason for physical media. I got Fallout 3 as a present for Christmas. How in the heck do you buy someone an online download for a present? Do you unwrap an envelope that has a 64 character key?
Re:It's all a question of media (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:It's all a question of media (Score:5, Insightful)
Most markets in the states, you do not have a choice. You have ONE cable operator, and usually ONE DSL operator, and that's it. If they both have horrible policies, you're screwed.
You could always MOVE of course.
So no, "get a proper ISP" isn't an option for everyone.
Fortunately I've got one of the "good" cable providers. Of course I don't do large digital downloads or participate in frequent peer-to-peer, so it probably wouldn't matter much to me anyhow.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And now you tell me that they are living in communism where state sponsored monopolists get all the action?
Things change, I guess.
Re:It's all a question of media (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's more of a fascist corporatist model.
Because we treat corporations legally as people and because they had almost unlimited wealth for the last 30 years, they changed the laws to destroy capitalism wherever they could.
We are now free to choose from LeftSockPuppet or RightSockPuppet. If either sockpuppet looks dangerous to the corporations then they flood their news stations with damaging stories about the sockpuppet and we obediently vote for the other sockpuppet instead.
Parent
Re:It's all a question of media (Score:5, Funny)
No, it's more of a fascist corporatist model.
Because we treat corporations legally as people and because they had almost unlimited wealth for the last 30 years, they changed the laws to destroy capitalism wherever they could.
We are now free to choose from LeftSockPuppet or RightSockPuppet. If either sockpuppet looks dangerous to the corporations then they flood their news stations with damaging stories about the sockpuppet and we obediently vote for the other sockpuppet instead.
I'm so sick of sock puppets. I'm glad we finally voted in a marionette.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As you said, "here in the UK...". In the United States almost nobody has the option to change ISPs (much less changing for the 'better'). I'm in a Charter area (on the east coast of the U.S.) and you know what my options are? Dealing with a 100GB cap they implemented without my consent or... changing to dial up. There is no in between for me at all. Do I download songs? Absolutely 3-5MB per song. For video games we are talking 4GB - 50GB per game. Therefore, my chances are good that I can only download 2 ga
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Here, the broadband speed curve seems to be steeper than the "game size growth" curve.
I still prefer 4 hours of digital download to going down the shops and paying a whole bunch more for game if I want it NOW (talking about the UK here, 16Mbit ADSL in my case). As ADSL does not keep up with growing game sizes any more, BT's 21CN fibre network will come online.
There's a whole world of advantages to digital downloads:
My instantaneous purchase are often made when the games shops are shut on an evening.
They are
Yeah, Pirate Bay doesn't do boxed media !! (Score:3, Funny)
Boxed media is dead !! Pirate Bay confirms it !!
Steam = DRM = Bad (Score:3, Insightful)
While I like the convenience of Steam, let's not forget that if Steam goes belly up, games bought there will become unplayable. Yes, there is offline mode, but you can't switch to offline mode unless you're online and the Steam servers are reachable.
Whereas most of the games we have bought in physical form will still be playable even after the company who made them goes bankrupt, as long as the physical media haven't decayed enough to become unplayable. And there are precautions against that too, like Vir
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While I like the convenience of Steam, let's not forget that if Steam goes belly up, games bought there will become unplayable.
They announced that in that case the games would be unlocked.
Let your 11 year old nephew play with your account for a few days, and he might get the account banned, and you lose access to all of your Steam games.
He can get his own steam account, that ungrateful little brat.
Around here, anyone under 25 only gets to play with gcompris and maybe ktuberling on a locked up read-only account. If a stick and a piece of string was good enough for me, it should be good enough for them.
(waves cane)
Re:Steam = DRM = Bad (Score:4, Interesting)
While I like the convenience of Steam, let's not forget that if Steam goes belly up, games bought there will become unplayable.
They announced that in that case the games would be unlocked.
That statement's been debunked several times, if VALVe goes belly up the administrators that take over are incredibly unlikely to allow anyone to flip a switch that would destroy the value of the company's assets. It's nice that they say it, but reality won't give them any control over it in that situation.
I like to purchase games through Steam to avoid having to hunt down the games in stores, as I've generally had bad luck when trying to get game-related items from stores here. I imagine it'd be similarly useful for people that would otherwise have to expend a large amount of transport effort to acquire the boxed version of the game. Some games, like Red Alert 3, even remove their boxed DRM in favour of the Steam version, which I tend to find less intrusive (it's pretty invisible to most internet-connected users).
As for the quota issue, in Australia the ISPs began implementing quota-free services on their own networks to counteract the large amount of bandwidth consumed doing things like gaming. Several even offer Steam content servers on their own networks as quota-free. Customers with Internode [on.net] and Bigpond [bigpond.com], for example, are able to acquire most (all?) Steam content quota free so bandwidth caps are irrelevant when downloading games; the only limiting factor is speed.
If American ISPs follow the Australian ones with the quota-free content servers and such we might find the number of people downloading games from Steam won't decrease when hard caps are implemented (since traffic on their own networks is essentially free they're likely to offer it).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I am guessing that you live in the US. In the UK buying games from Steam cost anywhere up to 50% more than from an online retailer who is selling the physical game.
The latest example of this was Dawn of War II, Steam price - £34.99, Play.com price £22.99, High street price - £29.99.
Valve have a really useful platform with Steam but buying games through it makes no sense in the UK. Especially as if you buy Dawn of War II retail you get all of the ben
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Payment on complition of the game would be more fair. You should be able to choose from:
pay 0USD: the game sucked
pay 1USD: barely playable
pay 5USD: ok game but too short
pay 9USD: very good game
pay 20USD: the best game ever
If the game takes weeks to finish, I would allow small payment (once or twice) during the game, as in:
0USD: not very good
1USD: ok
2USD: loving it so far