http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/05/30/sony-considered-making-playstation-4-online-only

That's too bad. I would've loved download-only, assuming that network outages were far and few between.

It would've meant more money for developers, less for GameStop because there wouldn't be any ***-hats buying used games for $55 instead of $60.

although eBay's video game business would swiftly die unless you could somehow give digital downloads to other people via codes or something, at the price of losing it on your own console.

I would have hated that. IMHO there's something special about having a physical shelf full of games.

What do you mean "asshats?" Tell me: what's the difference, in terms of financial gain, of one player purchasing and playing a game for 10 years, and one player purchasing a game, playing for 3 days, returning it, and a second player purchasing it and playing it for 9 years and 363 days? The game was used for the same amount of time in both instances, and the company makes the same profit off of one disc as well. Or are you suggesting 3 days' of playtime is worth the same $60 as several years' worth?

I'll say my piece on this one: I think digital download is the way to go for multiplayer games. I know a PS3 exclusive, I think it was Killzone, offered a digital download of just their multiplayer for reduced price, which is a great idea. With multiplayer, there is no set amount of "hours" worth of playtime; you play it as much as you enjoy it, and with digital download you always have it around to use. For online-only multiplayer, this makes even more sense; offer a game for at $20-30 instead of the usual $60, and if it is successful, use premium services and offer DLC to create revenue over time and pay for the continued upkeep costs of servers, patches, etc.

But for single-player games, with a technical limit to the amount of content and no required attention by the developers once it's released (save for glitch fixes), used games make sense. When you complete a game, you should be able to sell it back, and someone else should be able to use it, just like with any other product. What publishers should do is use first-party sellback options; buy back their own games for a competitive price, and then sell those used copies again for profit. You could even offer credit instead of cash, which players could spend on other titles from that publisher.

Also, those downloads better be cheap, because I just know I'll end up forking over cash for external Hard Drives to fit my library in. And don't even get me started on online-only. If gaming ever goes that direction, I'm sticking to my 3DS and it's nice little cartridges. Until internet is 99.99% reliable, forget it.

The difference is that if GameStop didn't sell or accept used games, the developer would have gotten two sales at $60 instead of one sale at $60.

That's a pretty big difference.

Also, I hate physical collections. They take up room, look awful (Nintendo Selects, New Play Control!, Better with Kinect and on box ads kill any hope for uniformity) and I could probably have trained for a marathon in all the time I've spent changing discs and cartridges. I've never been into collections though so I understand why you would like them.

I'm don't really care for collecting either; it's a pain trying to find a place to keep them all. But it's better than not being able to play when the server drops or my internet connection is having troubles. Downloads to a hard drive are a more favorable option, but that just SCREAMS piracy.

If digital download is where we're going, and I am going to be stuck with my purchase with no option to take it back for cash/credit, then I want one or more of these options made available for ALL games from Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and whoever else is going digital download:

1. Demos: Offer limited sample versions of every game so I have an idea of what I'm buying before buying it.

2. Rentals: Mostly for single-player, story-driven games. Let my pay per X hours of gameplay in addition to the option of a full price to permanently access the game. You could even make offer "access for X hours of gameplay or until one playthrough is completed." Also give me the option to pay the difference at any time to purchase game access permanently.

3. Refund: Have a refund period for full game purchases. If I don't like a game after 5 or so hours of gameplay, let me get a refund on my access. To be fair, this would also erase any gamerscore and achievments I earned, or at least suspend them unless I repurchase it.

4. Share: Give me "Share Credits" that let me gift a game to a friend for free for 1 hour per credit so he/she can play it. Limit me to 5 credits per month, but let up to 20 credits roll over month to month.

If at least some of these are available, I will accept online-only gaming.

Losing the physical games would also mean losing all that valuable marketing that retailers do for their business. No more giant cardboard cut-out of Master Chief at Best Buy. There would be no more advertising in flyers, and no more advertising on store websites. Developers would at most get tangential exposure as part of the bundled console experience if you're lucky enough to be Halo or whatever major title is licensed to represent the console. These things seem negligible to those of us who browse websites like IGN, but this is not the case for most consumers right now.

OK, and now to sorta counter-argue my own point: this might be resolved if retailers can provide some sort of physical ticket with a code that you can take home and use on your console. But it might be a tough psychological-sell to get someone to pay 60 dollars for a piece of paper that says "Street Fighter V download code".

We're probably moving towards digital downloads, but it probably won't be in this decade. Right now, physical copies of software occupy an important niche.

totally agree. Demos are huge on XBL, but there still isn't a demo for every game and a lot of games don't get demos until they've been out for a while. And rentals is also a great idea. These are all great ideas. I guess I never put much thought into the idea that a game I digitally bought could totally suck.

Now that I think about it, the only game I've voluntarily got in the past two years that I haven't liked was Skyward Sword. And Okamiden.

youtube is awesome

Friend.


Plus Spellman is right. (he always is swoon)


But too add to BC's point. Aside from second hand copies, Developers the companies wouldn't have to pay the royalties of retail, so they would also get some more money.


But I'd rather have the copies MYSELF.

dat cloud man physical objects are for nerds

Consumers wanting to save money are now considered "***-hats"?

News to me.

Save 5 dollars, contribute to big business
Lose 5 dollars, contribute to developers




hmmmmmm. It's one thing if you're saving $30 because Nintendo refuses to discount games, another entirely if Gamestop is just stealing profit.

With membership I save $10. By purchasing with store credit I don't have to pay taxes which can save me another $5.

If a business exists then the economy asked for it.

Gamestop has to contribute to social welfare as a whole. Information goods (digital goods) in this case, have a high fixed cost with low variable cost. I liked studying digital piracy in school. There exists customers who are not willing to purchase a game at a certain price, meaning there are losses from the trade that's not being made. With Gamestop as the middleman, not only will there be an increase in consumer surplus (happiness for the consumer who is now able to buy the game now) but there will be an increase in producer surplus as well (Gamestop is happy to gain revenue). But of course there are distributional consequences. The revenue that Gamestop rakes in is lost to developers of the game but also remember that society as a whole gains.

Y'know, reading this thread I'm warming up to digital distribution a bit more. There's a lot they can do with it. I'm especially happy with no longer needing to track down copies of today's classic games in the far future. If I buy a Sony console in, say, 10 years and it uses digital distribution, I should in theory be able to go back and buy old Ratchet and Clank and Jak games I could never try, like the Virtual Console on Wii and 3DS right now. That's freaking awesome.

There are just some major pitfalls. What happens when a company goes out of business? Right now, if Nintendo went bankrupt and shut down, I still have my Wii and game discs to play. But who's going to pay to keep the servers up so I can still play Super Mario World 18? Imagine spending $500-plus dollars on games over 5 years, to lose all of them when the digital distributor is gone? No no no.

And the online-only still freaks me out. What if I spill soda on my router by mistake?

Well online only is a huge leap that definitely couldn't happen next gen.

However, digital distribution isn't cloud based. You have the game on your hard drive after download.

This is the main reason people are pissed about Diablo 3.  I wouldn't count the idea out yet.

I meant specifically fofor

That's much more reasonable. We still have to deal with storage issues and piracy, but it's still more desirable in my opinion.