How Long Before Apps Overtake Physical Video Game Content Sales? 144
jamie writes "Horace Dediu crunches some numbers and comes to a startling conclusion: 'If you look at the red line above and its slope, it would indicate that, given time, the App store will overtake the entire physical media gaming industry. The time when that happens will depend a lot on the growth or decline of the physical game media business, but another four years seems a safe bet.' This follows on the heels of some earlier analysis of apps per iOS device and what that steady upward growth means."
The answer - not for decades (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, last years decline in physical sales was due to the Great Recession, and has already been reversed.
Sooner than you think (Score:2, Insightful)
Buy a physical copy of an iPhone game. Go ahead. Go to your local game store and buy an iPhone game.
Oh, wait, you can't, because you can only buy them through the Apple App Store. (App Store cards don't count, you still have to download the game and don't get a copy on physical media.)
Guess what? Sony wants in on that action for the PSP2.
The answer is going to be "when the people selling games stop offering them any other way."
We've still got a few console generations to go, the Nintendo 3DS still uses physical media but allows downloaded games too. I'm incredibly unclear on how the PSP2 is supposed to work, I think the failure of the PSPgo (download only) means it'll still support physical media, but make no mistake: the era of getting games on physical media is coming to an end. Honestly, by the end of the decade, I expect all games will be download-only.
And what's more stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Is if you want to actually analyze game sales, the question isn't iPad shit, it is on computers. The reason is on PCs you now have a choice between retail/mail order and download for almost all games. Services like Impulse, Steam, and Direct2Drive sell pretty much every title online. Their regular prices are usually competitive with stores, and their sale prices are almost always better. So is a person wishes to, they can buy games online. It is a direct 1:1 comparison since we are talking the same games, the same platform.
THAT would be the thing to research. This just sounds like yet another tech journalist (using both terms loosely) who is infatuated with his iToys and thus wants to write an article about how they are T3H FUTURE OF EVERYTHING!!!11. Real research would have been to talk to game publishers and find out how their sales of physical vs download compare, and how that has been changing.
There's little data on it publicly, but Stardock, who runs Impulse and has published Sins of a Solar Empire, Elemental and Galactic Civilizations, says it is about 4:1 physical to online sales.
It is clear that the online market is large and growing. I personally buy nearly all my games on Impulse and Steam these days just out of convenience. However what I do has no bearing on what society does at large. Without hard data, it is foolish to say everything is going that way fast. It probably is in the long run, but who knows how long?
For that matter until game consoles start selling their games that way there is going to be a large physical games market there. Currently only some things, mostly smaller more indy type titles or older games, are sold for download on consoles. All the current titles are disc only. Given that consoles are a big segment of the gaming market (as are handhelds, which are also physical sales) until that changes you aren't going to see a move to "no physical media).
I think we'll see the day when physical media is more or less totally dead, but I could see it being 30-40 years before it happens.
Re:So physical music is dead? (Score:4, Insightful)
Downloads don't revolutionize music consumption in the way the cassette did
Are you kidding?
Cassettes allowed portable playback - great. But digital downloads just made impulse buying possible. You can buy anywhere, anytime. It's not convenient to buy from a physical music store unless you're already in one.
Buttons (Score:4, Insightful)
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
The video game industry is not in danger until all these phones with games start getting dedicated buttons for those games. Touch screens and motion controls do not now, nor will they ever replace buttons.
How about story mod points? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, comment mod points are..umm...pointless, when the stories themselves should be modded -1.
How does this half-assed amateur blog nonsense make it to the front page of /. anyway? Is it really that slow of a news day for tech? Sheesh...