Xbox One

[FredEffinChopin]

Gamefly is awesome. I love it like the brother I never had

 

I feel the same way about it. Not only is it a huge convenience for me to be able to try out games before I buy them (often from Gamefly, but not always), but I also feel like it's a relatively innocuous (to the industry that is crying poverty over used game sales) way to provide people who can't constantly drop $ on games an alternative to get to experience more titles than they could hope to otherwise. To my knowledge anyway, I could be mistaken. While they do also buy used games off of customers, from what I understand they buy up a certain amount of a game at launch and purchase more retails copies as/if the demand for a title increases, and then sell them off steadily as demand decreases until they have a comfortable amount to keep in circulation.

 

Anyway, I'd be seriously sad to see our way of doing things become obsolete. Especially since console developers could find that that obsolescence may work both ways. That type of a decision might seriously wind up coming back and biting the next gen right in the ass, for everyone involved.

*crosses fingers*

[Yantelope V2]

MCV posts a lot of rumors that don't turn out to be true but there's this

 

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/exclusive-no-disc-drive-for-next-xbox/092534

[TheMightyEthan]

I can't imagine it won't have some sort of physical media, though that doesn't necessarily have to be an OSD. But without physical media they're eliminating the portion of the market that lacks either internet access altogether or lacks the technical knowledge to get it set up with their game console. I would guess (though I have nothing to base it on) that that's not an insignificant portion of the market.

[Thursday Next]

Taking MS numbers, there's 66 million Xboxes and 40 million accounts. So around one third of Xboxes are not connected. (obviously there's some discrepancies there with RRoD's and people with multiple accounts), also not sure if that's 40 million gold accounts or just accounts total.. http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/121/1216177p1.html

 

So yeah, a bit soon for jumping off of the retail bandwagon just yet, another generation or so I reckon. Xbox 1080 / PS5 might be physical media free.

[Yantelope V2]

Well, again, it's all a question of which makes you more money: retail distribution and 66 million people or complete control of all content released and a slice of the pie for every download to only 40 million people?

 

Also, it doesn't hurt to cut $20-30 out of the cost of each unit shipped. That's significant.

 

Also, also it doesn't hurt not paying Sony royalties for blu-ray drives.

 

Also, also, also aren't you factoring more for what % of people will be online 3-5 years from now rather than right now?

Edited March 9, 2012 by Yantelope V2

[Thursday Next]

Well, thing is we don't know how many of those connected boxes have ever downloaded a full title. If the market only sees the internet as being for DLC add ons, or worse still just to enable online play, then you cut down that 40 million even more.

 

From a publisher perspective, the market isn't ready for all-digital yet. The platform holders may see things differently, but I doubt it.

[Yantelope V2]

You don't see the iPad and iPod as proof that all digital can work?

[TheMightyEthan]

I think it could work, I just don't think they'll do it because they'll automatically be eliminating a large portion of the market. iPod and iPad have proved it can work with smaller titles, and I think XLBA and PSN have borne that out, but I don't think it would work as well with larger retail releases.

 

I would not be surprised if every 720 game has a digital release day-and-date with the retail one though. In fact I'd be surprised if it's not that way.

[deanb]

You don't see the iPad and iPod as proof that all digital can work?

EA and co would like to sell titles for $60 a pop. Not the $7 a pop they have for their titles on iOS.

 

TN is right, only 2/3 of the console market is net connected (And not all XBL accounts = 1 Xbox each. We had 4 XBL accounts to one console back in the day, it's why I have random games like FIFA on my account, Jag couldn't be arsed to make his own so used whatever was loaded at the time). And not all of that net connected segment are going to be getting digital content. As Yantelope likes to point out, only 20% are picking up DLC. That's just cheap trinkets, never mind buying a full game through the service. And if Sony/MS have complete monopoly over the games retail channel you really think they'll reduce the fees that are incurred through physical retail where there's competition?

 

It would just hurt everyone involved at this current stage; gamers, publishers, developers and platform holders.

[Yantelope V2]

It would just hurt everyone involved at this current stage; gamers, publishers, developers and platform holders.

 

Except maybe MS....

[FredEffinChopin]

I'd say especially Microsoft. Watch how quickly consumers jump ship if games are solely available through 12-hour downloads, and at a price that is set by MS. They'd shoot themselves in the foot with a bullet so giant that it would take a leg with it. The time just isn't right yet to make digital distribution the sole method for a home console. Our tech needs a little more time in the oven. My prediction is along the lines of Thursday, PS5 at earliest.

[Thursday Next]

You don't see the iPad and iPod as proof that all digital can work?

 

Like Dean said, you're looking at a totally different market. In fact, Dean's generous with his $7 price tag. Those games are few and far between. In fact, what we're seeing on mobile is that freemium / paymium is the way to go, ($0.99 maybe $4.99 tops). Low to no barrier to entry and then charge for consumable in-game items. Not something I want to see on my console.

 

To be honest I don't think I'd like to see a console go download only until Origin is able to directly serve content to the customer. (Not just Origin, Steam, D2D et al as well). If there's no competition at all then you are going to see a very unpleasant market place. The reason Digital works so well on PC is that it is open which forces some aggressive pricing.

[Yantelope V2]

To be honest I don't think I'd like to see a console go download only until Origin is able to directly serve content to the customer. (Not just Origin, Steam, D2D et al as well). If there's no competition at all then you are going to see a very unpleasant market place. The reason Digital works so well on PC is that it is open which forces some aggressive pricing.

 

I don't disagree with this reasoning at all. XBLA and DLC prices can be crazy and totally disjointed with their retail offerings.

 

As far as price points go, EA is already trying to shake that up with the DLC waves incoming and online passes etc. Who's to say a DLC only console would stick with the $60 price point?

[TheMightyEthan]

If anything I'd expect the price to go up due to a lack of competition. You'd go from a bunch of retailers all competing for business to just MS and Sony (and maybe Nintendo) competing.

[Yantelope V2]

I mean, you're saying customers might not pay $60 for a game on a DLC console for whatever reason. Who's to say gamers wouldn't buy a game console if it meant games only cost $50, or even $40? I'm just saying that the $60 price point isn't fixed.

[deanb]

It would just hurt everyone involved at this current stage; gamers, publishers, developers and platform holders.

Except maybe MS....

MS = "platform holders". The ones that get hurt if they make several million consoles that no one buys because publishers refuse to make games for it and gamers refuse to buy due to not wanting to go purely digital. PSPGo was only a couple years ago.

 

You don't see the iPad and iPod as proof that all digital can work?

Like Dean said, you're looking at a totally different market. In fact, Dean's generous with his $7 price tag.

That's the generous price tag EA puts on Sims :/

 

It does need to see MS and Sony adding on other DD platforms with next generation before they can go fully DD. Or they can say hello to extensive cracking efforts. Even iOS has Cydia, and Amazon/GetJar/etc on Android.

 

edit:

I mean, you're saying customers might not pay $60 for a game on a DLC console for whatever reason. Who's to say gamers wouldn't buy a game console if it meant games only cost $50, or even $40? I'm just saying that the $60 price point isn't fixed.

You've seen PC right? They actually started at $40/50. With DD many of the publishers have aimed for a $60 price point. Yes the price isn't fixed and can be raised or lowered, but as TN said in the Sim City thread you'd have to be a moron to price your games lower.

[Yantelope V2]

Yeah, the word "complete" may not be a good one for a retail game these days. Complete: "With all parts included; with nothing missing; full." I doubt you could say that for anything released by EA these days. I'm not saying you're not getting your money's worth with a $60 retail game. By all means games these days are 10x what they were back two generations ago but arguing that your game is "complete" at $60 is hardly true when you're putting out tons of additional content.

[Thursday Next]

Like Dean said, you're looking at a totally different market. In fact, Dean's generous with his $7 price tag.

That's the generous price tag EA puts on Sims :/

 

lol... Ooops. Still it's over what most would pay for an iOS / Android game (and I think it's over-priced).

[WTF]

They didn't say there would be no physical media. Just that there would be no discs and that's a big difference. If they said no physical media our discussion makes sense but even the writer of the article on MCV said that it's just they rumour that there would not be a physical disc drive.

 

However if it is the next-gen I'm not sure if we should have cart or SSD or other physical drives replacing an optical drive just yet. It'll not be cheap and considering the 360 works mostly due to the 3rd party presence it's not a smart decision. Plus it means there's always going to be limited number of copies of a game (Take a look at handhelds) and the prices could go up. However anti-piracyyeah that could work.

 

I don't think it'll be a digital console next unless they're just planning to release an XBLA lite console with integrated kinect and a bigger storage drive for isos of games.

[deanb]

I think we're not entertaining the idea of it being carts because that'd be even more stupid of a move than going fully DD. We've already covered many times before that flash memory is not cheap. A Blu-Ray drive is like £40 to buy one, so buying in a couple million probably a fair bit less. Then a couple quid for the discs. A 32GB card, closest to a 25GB BD, will set you back about £30. That's 3/4 of a games cost. Carts make sense on a handheld because :

1. Don't need as large a space for the game so can get away with 4GB carts.

2. They're lower power draw

3. Hard to break.

 

As a console uses large capacity to store those high rest textures n models they need a bit more than 4GB, they're plumbed up to 250W+(380W for first PS3) power supplies, so power draw isn't an issue, and consoles don't move or get sat on as often.

 

An "Nextbox Go" is however a possibility. At least as testing the waters a few years down the line to see how console folks are dealing with DD before going full blown with 9th gen DD-only. If it doesn't have blu-ray (or something on-par, but MS has zero incentive to make a new media format unlike electronics/entertainment firm Sony) then it only makes it that much easier to skip on.

 

Carts are too expensive, DVD is way too old, and DD only too new/fucked up business-wise/user-base prohibitive/experimental.

[WTF]

Well you could argue what you like but here's the thing. The article clearly states

1) there will be no disc media

2)there will be some sort of physical media

 

It may be a rumour. But you can't say yes to digital distribution when it clearly states the rumour is that there's no disc media but some other physical media. Of course carts are not ideal but BluRays in mass production are a lot cheaper than £40. Not to mention that it's also going to be cheaper by 2013 when the device will be massproduced. There's differences in prices. By carts they could by proxy include flash drives. It wouldn't be digital distribution and wouldn't require the internet but you could have encrypted flashdrives that store the game information and require to be connected to the machine to be activated. Some firmware/bios link with the xbox could activate it. Of course it can be emulated later but the prime motivation of the next xbox is 1) reduce piracy 2) cull used game sales. Those are the two things they're focussing on.

 

I doubt they'll do purely digital distribution since it's difficult to download huge files for a lot of people. But they could have an authenticity check run and require your device to have firmware updates (which can be downloaded and installed like on the PS3 even if you do not connect your Xbox to the internet). They are not stupid to go purely into DD and yet they do not want to use a disc drive. There's not a lot of possibilities there when it's both physical and not a disc drive.

 

Actually SSDs can be carts too. You could have something like a CF card that usually streams 1080p footage with ease (Those are expensive but there are similar cards too that are cheaper). As is right now, they know that a lot of 360 users 'install' their discs onto the hard drive and so when you think about it in ther terms they know they want a physical drive but a disc isn't necessary. However hard disc space is. A proprietary memory card or a flash cart or ssd or something that both lets you install it onto the hard drive as well as runs from the medium would be what they're looking for.

 

However while these are all rumours, you can't entertain digital distribution speculation to the max when they said they're using a physical medium. That's pretty much ignoring what they said even if it is a rumour considering this is in the article itself -->

 

" Although the console will not include a disc drive, it will offer compatibility with some sort of interchangeable solid-state card storage, although it is not known whether this will be proprietary or a more standard format such as SD. " Plus he's tweeted a fair bit saying the rumour said there will be some physical drive just not discs.

[Battra92]

Digital download only just isn't feasable for a mass market device without seriously shrinking your customer base. My wife and I are looking for houses and if we go rural we'd have to pay $65 a month for 3mbps max DSL. There are places we've seen where even that isn't available. What about those who don't want to spend the money on broadband?

[deanb]

360 users install games to their hard drive because then it means the 360 won't eat their disc. A problem that can be resolved with the tougher blu-ray let alone a flash drive. (Well and 50 cents buffers, but MS do need a profit...)

[excel_excel]

If it does go all digital, then we'd be in the same position we are now. €60 to €70 to buy on xbox live, €50 to €40 to buy a download code in the shops. Was thinking of cheap storage to sell games on, but nothing is a cheap as discs right now anyway. Seems a bit silly to forgo such a cheap medium.

[WTF]

@dean I know why we copy discs onto the drive. The other reason is that it does in fact decrease load times (At least that's why I copy my discs onto the drive) and @excel true but maybe they don't want to pay the licensing fees to the BluRay consortium. Sony probably has some discounts being a member of that group but I doubt MS would have any discounts and they already have most streaming media players for their devices that they could think about forgoing an optical disc media. It's not the first time a company makes an unsound decision and MS does seem to be making a fair few ones including the whole deal with win 8.