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Comments: 155 +- Games: Game Retailers Facing Digital Distribution Transition on Sunday October 25, @10:58AM
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This editorial at Eurogamer examines how the games industry is dealing with the growth of digital distribution — a transition they're handling better than other entertainment industries, but not without a few stumbling blocks of their own.
"The examples from other industries undergoing this transition are not promising, since they tend largely to focus on metaphors involving creeks and a distinct lack of paddles. Bricks-and-mortar retailers of music and movies have largely sat back and grumbled while their businesses were hijacked, first by online retailers of physical product and then by digital distribution services. ... Specialist games retailers who follow that model face little more than a decline into insolvency in their medium-term futures. Worse again, they face competing with far bigger companies to retain their slice of an already shrinking pie — as boxed game retail sales fall off in favor of digital distribution, supermarket chains are increasingly seeing high profile games as a worthwhile loss-leaders."
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James
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And the hardware? (Score:3, Insightful)
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There are those oldschool values like true ownership not rental, freedom to use stuff you paid for as you please - and they are important to some people.
True, but most of us can't afford to pay $10k+ for the copyrights of each game we want to play, so we settle for a simple $20 license instead.
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Games are computer software, and usually you pay for a license with them too (be it Photoshop, Windows or Visual Studio). Just because they're entertainment it doesn't change the fact.
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Music, movies, books and software share similar model - pay a lot in advance, product supply is unlimited and copyright is supporting the business model to recoup the initial investment. Hell, movie dvds shine exactly like game dvds. Why the games are allowed to play by the different set of rules?
If one day MPAA started
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Steam actually found the sweetspot between control and convenience, thus it prevails.
And, face it: You're not far from rental with "really" bought box items either. Ever tried to install and play an old game? 9 out of 10 times you'll notice that for some odd reason it doesn't work with your newer version of your OS anymore and the manufacturer can't be bothered to make it compatible anymore. If nothing else fails, the copy protection certainly will.
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For example g2play [g2play.net] sells games with really cheap prices (and yes they're legit [battleforge.com]). For example the new Cities XL game sells for 13 euros while everywhere else (online and retail) it's around 49 euros.
That's quite a lot cheaper than walking to store.
Re:And the hardware? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, 90% of the games I buy through Steam are weekend deals, where you can find new releases for maybe 30% off. Impulse is the same, I just bought the new Red Faction game for $15.
Parent
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Quite the opposite. A specialized store will probably have it, or at the very least know immediately where to get it within 2 days. A big store using computers as a sideline, additional income will only offer you what's mainstream and most of the time won't bother with special orders at all.
Especially with hardware I do not want to deal with stores that sell it alongside of consoles, dvd players and toilet paper. Neither with online stores. The reason is simple: It's cheaper for hardware manufacturers to de
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I can download hardware, sorta:
Project64
Dolphin
GnuBoy
ZSNES
Gens
Why are there still game retailers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Record stores are dead. Video rental stores other than a few major chains are dead. Why should game stores stick around? The only one near me is a tiny one next to a Cartridge World (ink, not ammo).
The A titles may still justify some shelf space at WalMart, but I don't see any remaining need for standalone game stores.
Re:Why are there still game retailers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two words: used games. You can't sell a digitally downloaded game back after you've played it. A game store will take a box title back. Though I guess if there were digital download rentals that would put another nail in the coffin.
Parent
Re:Why are there still game retailers? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's probably some people, but most also don't care about it. For me it seems just a lot of work to get something like $10 back from it (and then you really lose the value you spend for buying the game because you dont have it anymore).
Parent
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You can rent games from GameFly and it's cheaper than buying-then-reselling them. If that's what you're looking for, your needs are already taken care of.
Re:Why are there still game retailers? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) If I lose internet one day and I want to play a random game I have it is alot easier to install it with an actual disk (however some DRM is making this moot).
2) If I move and have to go back to 1.5Mb internet connection then it will be faster to install from a disk then patch online instead of downloading the whole game.
3) For some games the manual is extremely valuable (NWN, KOTOR, even WoW for the lore) and it is easier for me to thumb through a hard copy instead of a PDF.
4) This may make me appear old fashion but I still like a physical version of the product.
Parent
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For 1) and 2), for example Steam allows you backup or copy the game data to DVD's. Yeah it's an extra step, but it's possible if you need it. Many don't. And yes, games from Steam also work in offline mode.
What comes to physical version of product, I agree it's nice to have something on the wall even if its just for the hell of it and for looks. But it's not really more physical than that, and actually just downloading the game online is more failsafe than having DVD that can break or get scratches.
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I buy the disc for the shelf and the physical security, as I too am old school like that. I rip an ISO of it to my storage server and install from there. The holy grail though is something like Unreal Tournament 3 or Counterstrike: I have the game on my shelf in physical form and rip ISOs on my server, but the key goes directly into Steam and I can add it to my account there.
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Unless you got the CE, WoW's book was pretty much "Check the website for information."
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>Why should game stores stick around?
Well with the European Parliament being bought off by the large music and movie cartels, such that somone who is caught downloading a few dodgy torrents is kicked off the internet, and can no longer spend ANY money online, I'd say all those bricks & mortar distribution points may well see a resurgence in use!
Nice to see those large monopolistic bastards and their political bitches doing something for the little people, no?
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Exactly, and you can always see large walls of games, tons of albums and movies in large stores. I'm not from USA and I dont really buy from them myself because I enjoy just getting them online, but when I go buy hardware or something else, there's always lots of people there. Other thing is that there's actually many different gamestore chains now, which wasn't true pre-2000.
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To be fair that's also true for online preorders. Some games you get lets say $10 off if you preorder, some games (especially the ones with multiplayer) give you exclusive items if you preorder. It's not just Gamestop and physical stores.
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Preorder bonuses. Every big game these days has an in-game bonus for preordering at a brick and mortar (usually Gamestop, but can also include Best Buy and others).
That's a contrivance though. There's nothing that inherently ties such bonuses to bricks and mortar retailers, and it could easily be switched to another distribution channel. I suspect it's being done as a sop to keep such retailers on side, because it's in the publishers interests to do so- at present.
But I'm pretty sure that this will only be done as long such retailers are still necessary to the publishers, while people are migrating to online downloads. After a certain point, they won't be as importa
If I can't sell if used on Ebay... (Score:3, Insightful)
...I'm not buying.
The Digital download would have to really, really cheap (less than $10) to make it worthwhile for me to participate in this new economy. Why 10? Because oftentimes I buy a game on DVD for $20, play it, and then sell it used for $10-15, so my actual out-of-pocket cost for most games is less than $10 overall.
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Where are you buying games for only $20? And how are you managing to get $10 for them used?
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PS2/3 Greatest Hits DVDs only cost $20. Or less. For example I got Kingdom Hearts 2 this past spring for $18. Now come Thanksgiving I can sell it on ebay as a "like new" game for about $15.
In some cases if you hang onto a game long enough it will actually increase in value. Like Mario Sunshine which I was able to acquire it for $20 three years ago (Nintendo Player's Choice), and then sell it for $70 on Ebay last Christmas due to its rarity. Same applies to my copy of Final Fantasy 7, which I could mak
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Online play? What's that? (I kid.) No actually I have no interest in being harassed by a bunch of kiddies that lack manners, so the problem you describe has never happened to me. I prefer standard offline games - me versus the computer.
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If you wait about a year or so, or sometimes longer, depending, games come down in price. Buying immediately at full retail when they're released is foolish unless you've got a ton of disposable cash.
As an example, when Half-Life 2 first came out, I waited, because my PC's hardware wouldn't have been up to running it, and I didn't want to spend $1000 or so just to upgrade to a new box so I could play one game. Within about two years, I built a PC that exceeded the high end specs from back then, for about
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That's ok if staying behind doesn't bother you. But knowing you're playing a few years old games while others play the shiny, great new ones would bother me and probably many more people. You also couldn't talk about them or read on slashdot and other sites, and with mmo's and multiplayer games most of people would already be in high-level areas or many players left the game already, and you dont get the same fun.
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That's totally fine by me. I depend on people like that to stock shelves in used game stores with stuff they bought and don't want anymore. I'm more of a collector, and don't generally sell off anything I own, unless I have more than one of it. A lot of people buy a game, play it until they beat it or are bored with it, and then sell it. Some people really want to be the first to play a new game, and enjoy being the one in their group of friends who has all the insider knowledge, and who has gotten ther
Re:If I can't sell if used on Ebay... (Score:4, Funny)
I generally buy games "behind the curve", after they've come down in price, and after enough time for the hype to wear off, and for it to become common knowledge whether the game is actually that awesome or not.
Oblig xkcd. [xkcd.com]
The cake may or not be a lie! (I wouldn't want to spoil the ending for you).
Parent
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Because oftentimes I buy a game on DVD for $20, play it, and then sell it used for $10-15, so my actual out-of-pocket cost for most games is less than $10 overall.
Allow me to be the first to say.... THIEF!!!!!!!
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Actually, the Thief trilogy still costs about $30--but not a bad deal for all that really good gameplay.
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I used to think that way too until I stopped a moment to consider:
I pay about 60 bucks for a game. I can sell it used after a week for about 30-40, after a month for less than 20. After that the price drops to about 10 bucks and stays there. In a nutshell, that would mean that I rent the game for 30 bucks for the first week and for another 10-20 for another 3 weeks. And a game that's worth renting it for 30 bucks for a week is worth keeping.
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One thing though (Score:5, Insightful)
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>>>our broadband infrastructure isn't really equipped to download GBs of data as the primary way of purchasing games.
That's for sure. Verizon DSL recently had a "free week" of downloadable games. While most of them were reasonable in size, when I downloaded Tomb Raider Legend it took all night, plus a big chunk of the morning until I was finally able to play it.
Plus Verizon's player has a rather stupid design. You can't play games and download in the background. You have to just sit and wait.
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The resale angle is significant, and reduces the actual value of the item quite a bit. Returning is not as big a deal for CC users, as you can always tell them to give you your money back, or you'll have the CC company do it for you. It's a pain, but how many have you actually returned for legitimate reasons?
I think the bandwidth is there. Of course, that's based on my own experience and is totally anecdotal. Unless you need it immediately, a couple of gigs is easily downloaded in a afternoon or less using
Re:One thing though (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
NO!NO!NO! (Score:3, Insightful)
Uggh. I've had some HORRIBLE experiences with digital distribution for games (EA Download Manager, Steam).
Give me a hard copy over digital any day.
Re:NO!NO!NO! (Score:5, Informative)
The tl;dr version: Steam Support can really suck and that is the reason that many people hate it. See below for an example.
In my experience, there are three camps for Steam. Those rabidly against it due to the rights management, those who love it, and those who have had an experience with Steam "Support" and now loathe it. I'll give personal experience as an (anecdotal) example for you:
I bought Champions Online off of Steam on Sept. 7th.
To my dismay, when I attempted to activate my CD key, it was already activated. I called Cryptic for support, and after speaking to a couple of employees, was told that since Steam was my distributor, I needed to contact Steam to get a new CD key. i.e. it was Steam's fault. I submitted a support ticket with the requested information within an hour of buying the game. I received the confirmation email and a ticket number from Steam Support, everything to verify that they actually did receive my support ticket. Researching their average response time, I gleaned a community accepted value of "3 to 5 days".
Fast forward about 4 weeks (October 9th).
After weeks of checking, my ticket was closed with no reply. I logged in to check it, and status was set to closed. There was no indication that anyone had even looked at the ticket. I re-opened the ticket, left a polite but firmly displeased message about the quality of the support and restated my request to get this resolved.
Fast forward another 2 weeks (October 23rd, this past Friday).
I FINALLY receive my first reply from Steam support. It's a one liner asking me to paste my conversation with Champions Online support into Steam. Since I talked on the phone, I can't do that. I sent a note explaining this, and have yet to receive another message back.
The situation as it stands now, is that the close group of friends I bought Champions Online to play with spent about 5 weeks intensively playing it, and have since moved on to other games (Our usual schedule for many games). I'm now left paying $50 for a game I never got to play, and by the time their glacial support gets around to solving it, I've lost all desire to play.
I'm now a wary customer as well. I've been burnt and am now much more reluctant to deal through Steam, with their lack of phone support and awful online support. Given that my friends and I tend to consume at least one new game a month or so, they've lost a pretty regular customer. Due to my experience, some of my friends are also starting to buy games elsewhere as well.
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Re:NO!NO!NO! (Score:5, Informative)
If you chargeback they suspend your account, removing access to all the games you have ever bought.
I looked into it and discovered that little gem. It seems almost criminal.
Parent
Re:NO!NO!NO! (Score:4, Informative)
If they do that, report it to the card issuer (VISA/MC) . The card issuers are quite firm about how the people who use their cards are treated. Retaliatory behavior not supported by a court judgement could result in the vendor losing their capability to take credit cards. That's a healthy sized hammer.
Parent
Steam As An Example... (Score:2, Informative)
I'll use Steam as a good example of digital game distribution because they are very good at it, although have room for functional improvement. Steam is a good thing, but I didn't start out feeling that way. Even now, I have issues with not being able to grandfather (aka register and seamslessly update) in my old retail games that Steam currently offers the same downloadable version of. They have a limited list of retail games you can do this for, but it's not nearly extensive enough. I priced my retail
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Your point 2 on non-portability is incorrect. Right-click on the game you want to back up and select "Back up game files", and there's a wizard that will step through the creation of a back-up archive that you can easily burn to DVD. The back-up archive includes a reinstallation utility that puts the games back into Steam without any messing around, and the wizard includes the choice of whether you want CD-sized volumes, DVD-sized volumes, or larger, and they're just standard Windows files so you can burn t