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Physical 'Copies' of the New Call of Duty Are Just Empty Discs (techcrunch.com) 53

Posted by BeauHD from the bait-and-switch dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Cartridges and discs used to be how you got the latest games, but that's been changing as downloads have become more convenient and reliable. But some people prefer the sure thing: a physical copy, so they can play offline or with a bad connection. To them, Activision says "qq": the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II disc is basically just a link to a 150-gigabyte download. Now, to be fair, games that size don't fit neatly on even high capacity Blu-ray discs, which for distribution purposes max out at around 50 gigs. Not that we haven't seen multi-disc games before (I never finished Final Fantasy VIII because the final disc was scratched someday, Edea), but clearly Activision decided it wasn't worth the bother in this case. [...] Far from having the full game on it, the disc is almost completely empty. This 72-megabyte app is basically just an authenticator and shell that initiates the enormous download process. I'd be willing to bet that most of those 72 megabytes are 4K video files of logos. There's even a pre-order steelbook bonus (that's a metal case for the disc and anything else it comes with). Players may be disappointed to find that this fancy reinforced packaging protects nothing of value.

Obviously there is great waste entailed in the production of perhaps millions of discs (though the numbers are likely much lower than they used to) for no reason. But waste is endemic in consumerism. The bait and switch of it is the galling thing -- that Activision is taking the worst of both worlds. There's literally no point in even providing a physical version of the software if none of the reasons for doing so are fulfilled by it. It's the equivalent of the next season of Stranger Things coming on a disc that just loads up Netflix and starts streaming. Why bother? It's worth asking whether Activision could have built a version of the game that fit on a disc at all. Considering how proudly they've been advertising the realism of the graphics, probably not. A single 4K texture unit, say for a building front or character model, may be scores of megabytes, and any AAA game will have countless such textures. Meanwhile the audio and video assets also have to fit on there, and they can only be compressed so far before they degrade.
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Physical 'Copies' of the New Call of Duty Are Just Empty Discs More

Physical 'Copies' of the New Call of Duty Are Just Empty Discs

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  • It also cuts down on the costs for anti piracy systems.

    It's called the Big Julie distribution system*

    * If you don't get it go watch guys and dolls get some culture.

    • a 150-gigabyte download.

      Has Activision been taken over by Microsoft?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cstacy ( 534252 )

      It also cuts down on the costs for anti piracy systems.

      It's called the Big Julie distribution system*

      * If you don't get it go watch guys and dolls get some culture.

      I spoke with Harry the Horse, and I think the odds are 6 to 5 against getting any more physical games. And the payoff, I will tell you in a minute. After this download finishes.

  • Reminders from hurricanes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DrSlinky ( 710703 ) on Thursday October 27, 2022 @08:22PM (#63004265)
    Having just experienced a "once in a century" hurricane landfall, I can sympathize with people who still feel the need for physical discs. It took 10 days for us to get power back on. At that point, having felt so relieved that we were out of the woods, my neighbors and I all realized that Comcast was not going to be restoring service nearly as fast as the electric companies. So no internet and no TV. At least not for another week. Those games we already had on discs for our consoles were really appreciated during that week. As well as the local Redboxes.

    • So, just FYI, you don't need physical discs to play games without an internet connection. I've got a large number of digital-only games on my consoles' local storage. This is why people were flipping their shit about Microsoft's original plan to have the Xbox One call home every day. I've had my internet go out for days as well, and it would suck ass if the console decided just then it needed to call home.

      The physical discs are mostly useful if you want to transfer or sell your game. I never sell my gam

      • I think the focus on the useless physical media misses the point here. The root problem is that the game is absolutely massive. The Xbox Series X comes with a 1 TB SSD and the Steam hardware survey shows that only half of PC gamers have more than that. You could only store a handful of these 150 GB games on typical gaming devices, so if your tastes tend towards these big AAA titles you need to make some choices about what you want to have on hand.

        • Just get an 8TB Hard drive. only costs about $150. You could store 40 different 200 GB games on that disk. Sure it wouldn't be super fast, but you could swap the game files between your SSD and HDD in a minimal amount of time.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rhipf ( 525263 )

            Getting more external storage isn't really the big problem though. Having to download 150GB of data (and that is just for an update) just for one game is a problem.
            Sure there are a lot of places where downloading that amount of data isn't too much of a problem but there are A LOT of places where downloading that amount of data puts a real strain on Internet resources.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

              Getting more external storage isn't really the big problem though. Having to download 150GB of data (and that is just for an update) just for one game is a problem.
              Sure there are a lot of places where downloading that amount of data isn't too much of a problem but there are A LOT of places where downloading that amount of data puts a real strain on Internet resources.

              The largest amount of storage on a regular Blu-Ray is 50GB, so you'd be looking at a 3-disc install.

              You can change it to two discs if you use

            • This is just lazyness by the developers though. It's not like they are shipping a bunch of new assets. They could definitely do the update without requiring you to download 150 GB because they made a few simple bug fixes. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo should really put some pressure on the publishers to make sure they don't do this kind of stuff because it makes consoles look just as bad as PCs. People buy consoles so they don't have to deal with all this kind of crap. They want a VHS player for games wher

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 )
          The disc isn't worthless. It carries the license for the game so it can be resold, unlike the digital only copies.

          • The disc isn't worthless. It carries the license for the game so it can be resold, unlike the digital only copies.

            You sure about that? I wouldn't put it past them to lock the activation key to your account so even if you sold the disk the buyer wouldn't be able to install it. Wouldn't be hard to do.

            Yeah, I miss the days of stand-alone no-download-required games, too.

            • Unless the console makers explicitly allow this practice, it won't happen. While the tight control over publishing on consoles has some definite downsides, it also prevents individual publishers or developers from pulling shit like this.

              Granted, we're talking about Sony and Microsoft's good graces (/eyeroll), but their gaming divisions can be surprisingly sensitive to vocal feedback from customers. I suspect that's a direct result of a *very* competitive market. If you recall, Microsoft up-ended their ent

    • Physical copies may get destroyed in hurricanes and be gone forever.

      I think that's a bigger risk than being not able to play for a few days without internet. (What about power in the first place?)

      Yes, online game services have different and maybe even bigger risks. But physical copies are prone to physical damage. Fire, water, hurricanes.

  • My guess: Nearly everyone has reasonably fast connections these days, so downloading 150GB one time is not an overly significant burden. But when you have a physical disc, that essentially works as an authentication key for the game on consoles, which means you can sell or give the game to someone else, or even bring it over to someone else's house to play. Digital purchases are pretty much locked to your account.

    It's still sort of weird they don't bother putting any assets on the disc at all, but maybe

    • Launch day patches give developers and qa a few more weeks. Management gets to tell shareholders we shipped on time (or a few weeks closer to on time). Win. Win.

      Weeks matter with a holiday season target. Although CoD is such a high profile game it should be immune from the normal seasonality.

      We are literally decades past the point where the only reliable software on the disc has to be the installer and patcher.

      A reliable, stable game straight from the disc, that is so 1990s :-)

    • That's still a 24 hour download for _many_ people even with broadband speeds. Sure, you have faster than that, but most people do not. Even at a gigabit speed, which most people don't have, you add in the overhead and network inefficiencies and you're still spending several hours on this. For what? A stupid game from a stupid company that's probably not going to be as fun as a ten year old game.

      • Even at a gigabit speed, which most people don't have, you add in the overhead and network inefficiencies and you're still spending several hours on this.

        Let's say 1Gbit/s gets you effectively 100MB/s and calculate:
        150.000MB / 100MB/s = 1500s
        1500s / 3600s/h =~ 0.4h

        0.4h != 'several hours'

        It is longer than you're used to on a gigabit connection, I'll give you that. Apart from poorly seeded torrents, I generally expect pretty much any download to be done by the time I've gotten back from grabbing a cup of coffee. It is kind of a reality check to be struck with the realization that a download might actually require me to switch to another task while waiting for

        • This is maximum speed. You won't get that except in a perfect test. Perfect world, standard MTU sized packets, no gaps between packets except for that mandated by the PHY, you're probably around 80 MBps, maybe 100MBps if you can get only TCP jumbo frames. But that's for the perfect case. Now you've got multiple hops, many of which don't show up with traceroute, you've got processing delays, congestion, retries, etc. And how many want to download the game at the same time from a limited set of servers?

          If

          • 1. Still not 'several hours' at 400Mb/s.
            2. I get 100MB/s sustained on Steam downloads.
            3. Even 5 years ago, people were getting 65MB/s Steam downloads (and complaining about it: https://steamcommunity.com/dis... [steamcommunity.com] ).

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by G00F ( 241765 )

              You guys are way spoiled with your internet speeds. The US has median home Internet speeds of 167Mbps. [allconnect.com]

              For me when I get a new game that has steam, it use to take hours for it to do it's thing. And often just logging into steam, updating steam, then forced update to a single player game would also take an hour plus. (Games like xcom and dues ex)

              Solution, crack them. No more dealing with a crappy bloated resource stealing DRM app, and when I sit to play no more tinkering with whats my user/pass, or having t

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rhipf ( 525263 )

          Now calculate the connection speed the gaming company needs to have in order to sustain that 100MB/s (and most likely the connection will be Mb not MB) for thousands of customers that are going to want to download the game or update at anyone time.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jezwel ( 2451108 )

      My guess: Nearly everyone has reasonably fast connections these days, so downloading 150GB one time is not an overly significant burden. But when you have a physical disc, that essentially works as an authentication key for the game on consoles, which means you can sell or give the game to someone else, or even bring it over to someone else's house to play. Digital purchases are pretty much locked to your account.

      It's still sort of weird they don't bother putting any assets on the disc at all, but maybe they figure it'll all change anyhow by the time you install and hit the day-one patch? Hard to say.

      Place low quality assets (textures, sounds, cutscene video) on the shipped disc so that the game is playable instantly (or after any post shipping updates to the game itself). In the background download high-quality textures to replace those on the disc. Setup a priority tree on assets so that those encountered first (trailer, trainer, 1st mission) that match the current screen resolution are downloaded first.

    • My guess: Nearly everyone has reasonably fast connections these days, so downloading 150GB one time is not an overly significant burden.

      I have a 3 Mbit DSL at our vacation cabin, you insensitive clod!

      (Sorry, I hadn't used that clod-thing in years, it seemed fitting this time)

      But seriously, that is a 119 hour download.

      On my gaming computer I at least can remote boot it, start steam and let it download a few days before I go. Except for Microsoft Flight Simulator steam edition, where Steam just installs a Microsoft installer.. so Steam has no control of MSFS-assets and I actually have to start MSFS to have it download updates. But that was on

    • Also, many places have data caps. (More companies keep re-introducing them).

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by stikves ( 127823 )

      Not so fast...

      Physical copies are more than "licenses". They are permanent ownership (or whatever that means to a reasonable limit). I can be sure my frail PS3 will still run a MGS4 disc from 14 years ago. In fact, it has PS1 *and* PS2 support (older model), so it will even run Spyro the Dragon from 1998, even though it was delisted on the digital marketplace.

      My kids really like that game, and fortunately there *was* a remake. But if it did not happen, we still had the option to play the original.

      With MW2,

  • with a higher capacity available to us that plugged into a port ubiquitous to most gaming devices.....
    • But why would they drop $5 on something that would then give their marks, err customers, control over the product?

  • I only own some digital token for my ugly monkey NFT.
    Bored by the anti-climax, I decided to print out the token and put it on the wall next to my sofa.
    My friends are all jealous and posted the pictures in our Facebook group.
    Everybody laughed and even 1 guy said 'Thanks!'.
    Getting a thanks for a good laugh is always nice.

  • You will own nothing and be happy! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bubblyceiling ( 7940768 ) on Thursday October 27, 2022 @09:35PM (#63004389)
    This is a terrible way forward. A physical disc provides a lot more rights to the end-user than a digital download link. How is one supposed to resell these download links? Or trade em? This is essentially just a glorified licenses

    • Uh, you just sell the disc? There may not be anything of substance on the disc, but in the current console paradigm, it is still a valid token of ownership.

      In fact that would seem to be the only reason it even exists. Otherwise game stores could move to selling code cards and skip the whole disc-and-case bit.

    • A physical disc provides a lot more rights to the end-user than a digital download link.

      Not necessarily. You could easily distribute a game on disc that is tied to a particular account, or requires a monthly subscription. In the current world where games that phone home are common, you can exert the exact same amount of control over a game running off of a disc as you can over a game the consumer has to download.

    • Look, we've been here for years. If you were going to complain about this going forwards you should have raised hell about Steam like some of us did. Otherwise you're just proving how late you show up at parties.

      The Half-Life 2 installation process from disc went like this: Stick in the disc, install steam from it. This required that you be online. Steam now updates, the update is bigger than the install on the disc. THERE IS NO RESUME ON THIS DOWNLOAD, and if you are on a crap connection that drops (like I

      • Yeah, I remember buying PC games in the mid '00s that was 'steam installer and license key on a disc.' I want to say Dawn of War 2 as an example.

  • Thumbdrive (Score:3)

    by Malays2 bowman ( 6656916 ) on Friday October 28, 2022 @02:29AM (#63004923)

    Just put the damn game on a thumbdrive. Buying a disc with a 72mb file on it and having to download a 150gb file sits firmly in "Go fuck yourself" country.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by N1AK ( 864906 )
      You're missing the point. The product isn't sold as a way to avoid downloading the game it is simply a way that people who prefer to buy a physical item (for example as a gift or to display) can do so. Avoiding downloading is virtually impossible now because games come so buggy that patching is pretty much required anyway. A plastic DVD box and disc probably cost less than 50 cents to produce, a 128GB+ thumbdrive costs considerably more. Maybe there is a small market out there for people who would like to a

      • Except servers eventualy get shut down, and you are not even left with a game that is buggy as hell and your marine commando is colored pink purple polkadot with plaid stripes. So the only avenue left is to pirate what you paid for even if they can.

        Hell, I wish they would put the 70mb installer on a thumbdrive, just so if nothing else I have a thumbdrive that is more useable than a shiny coaster.

        And let me take a moment to thank AOL for the years of free floppy disks back in the day. But the fun ended when

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by N1AK ( 864906 )
          I'm not suggesting digital copies are perfect. I was a very late adopter of digital content, but by now there is no real point buying a physical copy and it is less convenient and it is only getting worse. I honestly can't think of a game where owning it digitally has led to me being unable to play it sooner than if I had bought a physical copy, but I can think of multiple examples of physical copies that became unusable before a digital copy would (two examples being damaged media and where version on disk

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's because they want to meet the deadline without having to have the game finished in time to mass produce discs.

      Getting it out now means they will get full price sales from early adopters, and then again when people buy xmas/new year presents. Any delay would eat into their profits, so they did a digital only release with day 1 patches. Downloader on a disc for those who absolutely must have one.

    • Basically no game these days, even console games on disk require large release day downloads. The extraordinary thing here is the size (150GB) but even that isn't that large considering what is the normal for a AAA title. In many cases it's been *stick in the disk*, *wait an hour for a 50GB update to download*.

    • COD updates are essentially a complete download. So if you are playing all modes (multiplayer, campaign, etc.) your updates would be 100GB+. These massive updates occur multiple times each year and you can not opt out.

      • "can't opt out"

        (inserts Quake XX]|||[ disc)

        O_O

        "Oh boy! I'm going to smash me some Shamblers real quick!"

        [Your Quake version is out of date. Downloading update...]

        [Estimated download time: 10 hours]

        X_X

  • With a physical disc, you don't need a credit card, or any real funds in a playstation account.

  • The only physical copy of anything I've bought in over a decade was a single cartridge for my Switch - just to fill the slot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by N1AK ( 864906 )
      Exactly. I was going to challenge this as there is still some justification for buying films if they are cheap and you are happy ripping them and running your own media server, but for games I really don't see the point. Consoles aimed at kids with relatively modest performance seem to be the only market left where physical media is remotely normal.

  • The point is also - end of life/ end of company pr (Score:3, Insightful)

    by laupark ( 668153 ) on Friday October 28, 2022 @06:32AM (#63005165)
    Download only games mean when the company decides it is too expensive to support or too old - 2 weeks or 3 years from now, their choice, no new downloads. Maybe even no playing at all That is IF the company does not go BK or merge with another company that loses interest in providing the game. And if you think you are safe because you DO have it downloaded, what happens when you have a bad drive. Failed system requires install, or get a second system for another room or home? No game for you. You will own nothing and be happy
  • I think Devin Coldewey has been living under a rock for the past decade. The last physical PC game I purchased was Fallout: New Vegas. I was super annoyed when the disc linked to my Steam account and proceded to download the entire game. Since then, I haven't bothered with physical media (for PC anyway). This isn't news, its just how things have been for a really long time.
  • You can pass one game.

  • They should reach out to her for assistance with their physical copy recompression.

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