Will physical distribution ever end?

Hello guys. Well, I like to have my games on cd and book and cover, it's a little paranoic, but I like it. I don't buy digital games for how much cool they are. So this is a little of an issue since digital distribution is rising as hell.. Will physical distribution ever end?

Not likely. How bad would it be if all your games were erased, and you had to buy them again?

Not likely. How bad would it be if all your games were erased, and you had to buy them again?

Gnosis13

Well it hasn't to be that way.. They just release new games through digital distribution.. but you could still play the physical games. I just hope the physical distribution doesn't ends.. there is nothing better than the smell of a new videogame :P

Instruction manuals used to be fun to flip through.

People don't usually care about this because they store their digital games on a hard drive, and store the HDD on the shelf. But I ask them, what's the joy of having a game without cover, what's the fun on receiving a game that you cannot unpack? Do you imagine receiving a game through digital companies like Steam? What a stupidity IMO :o

hopefully not

with download, you ahve to worry about storage and what if your system breaks or gets hacked, then your just screwed

when you own the physical copy yud be fine, plsu im the kinda guy that likes lending games to freinds and also borrowing them.

I think it's definitely a possibility in the next 10-20 years that gaming might go completely digital. For one thing, it stops used game sales, something of which the game industry doesn't seem to approve.

Sadly, I think physical distribution will be eliminated in the next 10 to 25 years. With technology advancing so rapidly, especially in terms of digital storage space, I definitely think that games will eventually be download only someday. I think we'll see the rise of this practice this next gen and it'll probably be the standard two gens from now, in my opinion. I don't like downloading games and prefer having a physical copy of the game. There is a much bigger sense of ownership and investment in doing so. The future of gaming, and physical media is a scary one.

Games are only going to get larger. There are already PS3 games that use up near the full 50 GB capacity of a dual-layer blu-ray disc. Thatwould be aHELL of a lot of data to download even just once, let alone twice when your HDD inevitably fails and you lose the game.

As long as you take care of your physical discs, on the other hand, they should outlive most people.

it could, but i dont see it happening any time soon. a lot of regions have bandwidth caps that limit online feasibility.

a lot of ps3 games are ****ing huge. you could definitely make the argument that the bigger ps3 games are large simply because developers know they are working with blu-ray and dont bother with compression, but then there are games the witcher 2. i just wiki'd it and the base game is 16gb (8gb more in additional content too). i wonder how well that is selling digitally in countries like australia where the internet sucks. even if we do come to accept that kind of download size, diverse electronics corporations like sony are going to push physical media in their consoles regardless.

then you have the current delivery package that is built around physical media. the more bite sized episodic content is still the minority and even that only stretches out the current delivery package rather than actually shorten it.

anyway, DD is obviously huge and still growing, but physical media are staying for a long time.

You guys can keep your physical copies, I've been digital for some time and there's no going back. While it's nice to have some boxes to look at, I'd rather download my games again, for free, than go and buy more copies because my discs became scratched and unreadable.

Bloody 360 even cracked one of my games, and it's a matter of time until it dies.

Anything mechanical is destined to fail. But my Steam games are safe being stored in lots of different servers. :D

It'll probably will in the future. Digital distribution can bring the publishers more money because they don't have to give a big part of the money to the retailers. It also doesn't use place, you can purchase it anytime and you can use it on different systems. Also you have no plastic which is good for our planet. Digital distribution is about the best thing that can happen to the publishers and the nature. Don't get me wrong, I like to have a look at my collection of 600+ games, but I guess digital distribution will erase physical in a not to far future.

it could, but i dont see it happening any time soon. a lot of regions have bandwidth caps that limit online feasibility.LoG-Sacrament

Precisely. It's a very well possible future, but it's not a feasible one so long as download caps exist. Those would have to be abolished first for digital distribution to take over.

Not in regions like Oceania whose major ISP's still hold to bandwith cap.

Even where I live where such a cap is not in place, I wouldn't want physical distribution to end. Having a game disc and a case is a similar experience to reading with an actual book. The physical medium makes the experience more special.

It will eventually. It already almost has on PC. I'm fine with it though. I have 130ish games on Steam alone and only about 17 physical games.

I hope not but it will. My estimate is not until cloud computing becomes the norm for all consumers.

Not until there's high-speed internet service available to every corner of the world where people play video games, and there aren't any download caps.

I don't see that happening since there nothing that DD does truely better than it.

probably not any time soon. The big 3 will probably turn more too it, but it wont become the only form of distribution for games for some time. As long as their are people who lack a highspeed, uncapped internet; there will always be physical distribution. Which is good, I always feel good to have the physical copie of a game.

Also I trust seller as far as I can throw what they sell or in DD case rent out. You can not touch a program.

If everyone has blistering fast internet then this might be possible, but until that day I don't see it happening soon. I prefer physical copies all the way.

It is likely. As soon as content providers and distributors get their heads together, they'll make it all digital. So long as competition exists and helps customers support the most competitive choices, this is a good thing. It is my hope that companies realize that well-treated customers are worth making a few concessions for. If we just had lockers in teh cloud from which to access our games, that would beat the heck out of keeping and maintaining a collection.

It is likely. As soon as content providers and distributors get their heads together, they'll make it all digital. So long as competition exists and helps customers support the most competitive choices, this is a good thing. It is my hope that companies realize that well-treated customers are worth making a few concessions for. If we just had lockers in teh cloud from which to access our games, that would beat the heck out of keeping and maintaining a collection.

JonathanL

Until a hacker group gets pissed and erases all traces of your purchases.

Some risks exists, sure, but a quality company will have redundant data to ensure you do not lose this. If a hacking community can wipe out your entire virtual collection of content, then we all may as well live as offline hermits, terrified of the big bad anonymous hackers of the world.

I certainly hope it never ends.

If I spend money on something I best be able to slap people in the face with it.:P

Recently played a 25 year old game on my NES. Works like its new.

I doubt most DD purchases will even last 20 years, because it requires servers for authentiction; servers usually get shut down within 10 years (or much shorter depending on the sucess of the service). Just a thought...

Hopefully not i have never purchased a digital copy of a game and i don't ever plan to, so if gaming ever goes all digital that is the day i stop gaming

Physical copies are more reliable than digitally distributed games imo. Plus I prefer having the actual game than seeing a bunch of them on a harddrive which require me to be running some sort of electronic device just to see.

I doubt it... If it does, I, and probably countless others, will be done with buying games.

It will never end but eventually it will only be used for super high price limited editions. The masses will be into digital but there might be some $200+ limited run physical edition with a bunch of books and audio cds and stuff for people who almost seem like they care equally or more about what the game comes in/with than the actual game itself.

I look at anime pricing in Japan ($70+ for every two episode volume but you get a lot of bonus items and nice boxes) as the end game of physical media.

The Internet infrastructure would need to vastly improve first. There are parts of the world important to the gaming industry that are way below a suitable standard to phase out physical copies of games without excluding many potential customers.

That said, its difficult to predict how the industry will be 20 years time.

I hope not, but I have a feeling it probably will.

I'm a collector, I hope not. I like seeing my shelf grow larger with game cases. I like the option of digital distribution, but I also wish they would put out limited copies for retail. Even if they need to mark them up. I would love copies of some XBLA games even if I had to pay an extra $10+ for them.

I think it will end, a lot of video game developers are telling that in a matter of 5-10 years digital distribution will overcome physical distribution...

Will Wright (creator of Sims, Spore and Simcity) said: But within five years we're going to have almost all the digital content we own, consume and browse, be cloud based. It's not going to be device specific. I should be able to interact with that content in some way on my iPhone, my iPad, my PC – whatever.

I want physical games dead for :3 but our internet isn't advanced enough world wide to allow it just yet. So maybe in 50 years. But it is for a better environment so ... yeah :/

and game related companies like microsoft allow you to redownload, so don't worry about having to pay again o.o

I think it will end, a lot of video game developers are telling that in a matter of 5-10 years digital distribution will overcome physical distribution...

Will Wright (creator of Sims, Spore and Simcity) said: But within five years we're going to have almost all the digital content we own, consume and browse, be cloud based. It's not going to be device specific. I should be able to interact with that content in some way on my iPhone, my iPad, my PC – whatever.

tjricardo089

And I guess you can't tell how much that will suck because you aren't thinking about restrictions. You really think you will be able to use something that was purchased from Apple to be used on anything but an Apple product?

It kind of defeats the point of clouds if every company has their own cloud that is only accessible with their products unless you are a homer for 1 company.

Not likely. How bad would it be if all your games were erased, and you had to buy them again?

Gnosis13

Well I know one thing. My whole collection of over 100 games was stolen, but when I got replacement PC and PS3, the downloads were still there...

EDIT: *Edited grammatical error*