General Category > General Discussion
Civil Discussion: Will Physical Media die?
UncleBob:
Does anyone "cling" to dial-up internet? I know there are folks who can't get anything else that's in a reasonable price range... but my guess is, they'd give it up if they could.
ShoothimNow:
I live in the boonies, and I have a 1.5mpbs internet connection. I get offers to upgrade ALL THE FREAKING TIME, but when I call my internet service provider.. "I am sorry, your location is outside of our coverage area and you are unable to receive any internet from us", EVEN THOUGH I DO GET INTERNET FROM THEM!? Took me about 2 years to get it where I am at right now, but it is slow as molasses =(.
Also... I'm shocked no one mentioned this yet... If games "ever" go "digital only", expect to:
1) Download you games A LOT OF TIMES for space issues,
2) Upgrade your HDD and have many spares
3) Properly label what is on each HDD
4) HOPE TO GOD YOUR HDD DOESN'T DIE
A Wii Ware Game is what? Lol? 2MB's? Starhawk (Single Player Campaign) for PS3 was 10GB's, and that IS NOT the full game lol!
Streaming games over the internet would not be a viable solution for everyone, because I certainly CANNOT do that at my current location. Downloading the game would take about 4 days just to download 10GB's (I am not kidding), so if I REALLY wanted to play a game that is DL only, expect LONG waits, as well as HDD space losses.
Many know I use Vudu (better than Netflix IMO), Captain America HDX download is 8GB alone. As stated before, there is a loss of quality from streaming, but if I wanted to download my other 755 movies (based off Captain America's size), that would be 6040GB's, or ~6TB's. THANKFULLY many HDX movies are ~2-4GB's in size, but my PS3 is only 320GB (280GB after System Format Files). I just... don't have the space to own digital copies.
Luckily, owning HDX doesn't mean that I am stuck with HDX only, I can watch the SD version free of charge if I want to watch a movie right off the bat. HDX = ~4.5mbs, SD = ~1.5mbs (JUST enough that i can watch a movie if NO ONE ELSE IS ON THE INTERNET)
laurenhiya21:
I think it's possible, but I doubt it will happen anytime soon...
It better not anyway, I love my games in a nice little row on a shelf :D
(plus my Internet sucks, and I doubt it will get better anytime soon :/)
palmer6strings:
I personally would rather have physical media.
I also think if everything goes digital the country will be worse of in money flow wise because there will be less of a trade market.
All in all I highly doubt we will ever lose the physical media that we have. My guess is instead of cd's we could possibly go to USB. I've seen some bands (Lamb of God comes to mind first) release all thier albums of flash drives that had print on them. They actually looked pretty sweet if you aske me.
Like I said though, only my opinion.
wiggy:
^^^ The used market is nothing compared to new retail. All those big-ass chain stores would find themselves without product to sell, and the margin on hardware is tiny when compared to the margin on software/media. That would put some serious hurt on the big box stores, not to mention any of the stores like Game Stop that pretty much rely on media sales exclusively in order to stay in business. Those places would be completely wiped out.
Shoothimnow, that concern over HDD space is sorta moot. IF the powers that be moved to DL only media, then you'd better believe that multiple TB drives will get does into DVRs, PS4/5/6, Xbox 9,423, Wii UVWXYZ, etc. That's really the easiest part about the DL only equation to sort out, especially as SS drives become more and more affordable.