How Much Longer Will Physical Game Distribution Survive? 478
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)?
Rarely buy boxed games. (Score:1, Interesting)
I haven't bought a boxed game for a very long time.
Last time I did, was C&C First Decade Special Edition, because I wanted it.
The only reason I buy box boxed games for PC, is because I want it for show.
Else I mostly buy my PC games from Steam.
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).
Re:What about special editions? (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, and retailers getting their cut is just a drag on profits.
So then... (Score:2, Interesting)
making copies of games and putting it on torrents should be perfectly legal. Payment on activation anyone?
But what about the prices? (Score:2, Interesting)
I love Steam too, but won't even consider getting most of my games from there because of the price.
In the UK, Dawn of War 2 was available on Steam on release day for £35, before VAT, which bumps it up to something around the £40 mark. In my local GAME and HMV it was selling for £29.99 including VAT. Rewards cards reduce the price on that too - I regularly get money off things at GAME. Ordered from play.com, the game cost £23 including VAT, and came through my door on release day.
I can understand retail stores need to add on something for stock distribution, staff, floor space, whatever - even play.com will be adding on something for warehouse space, shipping and others.
Can Steam really justify being so much more expensive than those? On top of this, the price of games on Steam doesn't fall anywhere near as quickly as it does in shops. Until it's at least the same price as shops, I'll still be buying physical copies.
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".
Re:It's all a question of media (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: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.
When (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not far off, but sort of requires a bit more of a shift in mindset on the part of the publishers.
Not without a fight! (Score:2, Interesting)
I disagree (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't think this is entirely true. I have the PS3 and am online but I don't have a single downloaded game. I don't like them. I'd rather have the game itself. That way I know that if something happens I still have the game. If my PS3 crashes for whatever reason (which it has never done; it's just an example) I don't lose my games. But then again I also don't download movies and other media. I prefer to have the hard copy. Besides, you can take a hard copy with you to a friends house for a gaming night, if you just have it on your console then your friend is required to buy that game too.
Re:So then... (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
Re:I always buy boxed games (Score:1, Interesting)
What if Steam allow you to sell the game back to Steam for online credit for the next purchase? What if Steam can allow you to transfer a game (lend) to another friend's Steam account. Or even sell a game to another friend's Steam account? Would you then always buy a digital copy of the game?
Re:It's all a question of media (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: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).
Re:It's all a question of media (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?