1. i m disagree that TF2 is the best PC game, but not about tf2 for console sucks (heck i didnt even know tf2 came out for the console)
2. XBLA games do have full fledged games (the quality are alot better than what PSN has to offer). And yes, i install nearly 105 games on my 250gb hdd and nearly 80 titles are xbla titles that uses 1.2 gb and including 5 games on demand. I could redownload as i wish.

Anyway what is it about SSF4 that ur complaining about?

console gaming should be easy.. buy cd, cartridge or whatever n put in the console n play...

not wasting time downloading n installing..

Digital download = death of 2nd hand game market

1 reason for death of games for PC

1. If u read my previous post correctly, i did not say it's the best PC game ever. I did say that TF2 is one of the best ONLINE pc game currently. Well IGN do rate is as 1 of their top current best game ever: http://pc.ign.com/articles/101/1011624p15.html. I have to agree to them on this as it's hell more addictive than of Gears of War or Uncharted multiplayer due to the consistent updates & upgrades on gameplay. Yup, TF2 was released before on 360 under the Orange Box package.

2. Do u know that a full game can take up to 20gb of space? such game as Starcraft 2 & Crysis 2. Do u think u can install 100 such games on your 360 console?

The problem with SF4 series is that they have to release a whole new game for major updates such as the SSF4 & SSF4: Arcade when they can just update it on top of the original SF4. This is because not everyone installs their game into their console & capcom is being a greedy b4stard for forcing us to pay a full game price for the updates.

sudah paham ka?

Hmm i prefer they keep both digital distributions and disc-based games.This way,people who like to keep them as collection can continue to do it or u can choose to download n play.Either way,looking at screamy nutx..digital distribution for a full game like Crysis 2 can be hard

meh. i don't see physical discs being phased out anytime soon. or even next gen. there are still lots of people who prefer the physical disc, and of course, the occasional CE with extra goodies.

and of course, like many said, with the internet in our country, chances are if games are all digitally obtained, alot of gamers 'loading' time will surely increased.

1. i not going to argue with you with the best Online game for PC, its pretty much to personal interest (i stop playing after 15min). Its out of topic anyway

2. Crysis 2 for the 360 is only 6gb and i m pretty sure its about 8-9gb for PC. For a 250gb HDD you could install 12 games of 20gb size

3. i agree that capcom wanted to milk the game by forcing fans to purchase the games for dlc contains. However this has nothing to do with Digital distribution, its related to business tactics not distribution

1. of course, personal interest but i think the rest of the world is with me. lol

2. u don't know anything about the size of pc games once installed. since console hardware is limited due to unable to upgrade the hardware, therefore they removed options such as shaders & anti-alising from the game hence the smaller size compared to computer games. 12 games only? i need more than that, sonny.

3. haih..u're the one who asked me what's my problem with SF4.

moving forwards AAA games may get bigger and bigger, and in time AAA games that we are playing now will be considered downloadable "Indie" titles.

The disc won't go away. not unless they solve the problem of bandwidth and limited hard disk space.

Not gonna happen.

Mainly due to the fact that not every gamer actually connects their console to the internet, or maybe they don't even have one. To make games DL-only will hurt the industry, especially if companies pull the "must always be online to play an offline game", like Capcom.

Maybe as a 2nd option, but discs are going to stay, especially Blu-ray, due to Sony's backing.

PC industry has already implement this. Saying DL only will hurted the industry, well in case of PC gaming, its still pretty much alive and surviving.

not an issue for me. currently i slapped 500gb of goodness in my PS3.. later planning to upgrade to 650gb.

and i have unifi. upgrading this September to 20mpbs. I'd say, bring it!

besides I have downloaded several full games from PSN

Assasin's Creed - 7gb
Infamous 7 gb
Infamous 2 16gb
Argarest War 8gb
Mod Nation Racers 8gb
Burnout etc etc

This post has been edited by snipersnake: Aug 8 2011, 02:07 PM

not a problem for me too.

since every game on the PSN can still be downloaded if ur prev copy is gone. Of course, if u think u have to dload ALL AT ONCE...I would be really time consuming. But if u dload 1 games at at time n then play n then dload, then it wouldn't be such a big deal if ur HD is damage n u lost all ur games in it.

I'm all for the thought of paying only what we want. For instance, maybe like one of the article said, u pay only a small amount for a basic game, then pay to dload the upgrades or extra characters u'd like to use in the game or mp. It's not like we're going to use all the extra things in one game.

Heck maybe we could even sell upgrades, mods, extra weapons, customized characters etc if we'd like to in the future..then gaming can in fact be a part time or full time income for certain people.

Only beef I got with this is the price. Since digital distribution eliminates 3rd party cost, why have the game at SSRP...

And yes, having bottomless storage space at cheap dirt price helps too

I'd say that physical media, disc-based distribution is here to stay.

Some may consider that digital download will drive down the cost of the games to the end user significantly, as it seems to be as the case of Steam. Apparently that's not entirely true. What are really happening now is that prices of even the disc version of PC games are slashed pretty much, or some may even already being put in the bargain bin. And that's while its console counterpart are still selling like hotcakes, thus having steep price cut won't be a logical thing to do. (this "bargain bin" situation and concept will look somewhat alien to us as piracy of PC games are still rampant in our country, so to say).

What I'd like to point out is that consoles are where the money at for game publishers, not PC. Heck, there are even lots of games which are consoles exclusives while still raking in so much money (some games are PC-exclusive just because of ergonomic factor, such as input devices requirement). This all thanks to the standardisation and uniformity on consoles (unlike fragmentation on PCs), albeit being on the inferior side hardware-wise for current gen. Sales of games are waning on PCs, so to recoup their investment, consoles to the rescue. So comparison of digital distribution on PC and consoles in terms of price will be rather moot, as prices wont be much lower when they are made available in downloadable version on consoles (except for some ocassion). Having them practically being given away on Steam doesn't mean they will be the same on consoles.

As matter of fact, cost of pressing those discs are pretty low compared to the production/development cost itself (just like films). Producing immersive game worth hours of playing time costs lots of money. And they don't have much option in sales window (as opposed to films, where they got various "window period" with various flow of income from cinema, pay-per-view, disc, premium channel and eventually on free TV). So AAA games at price of around a hundred ringgit is pretty justifiable. The steep cost doesnt come from printing those discs, in fact for big companies, printing those discs are virtually free. Heck even jack sparrow can sell you film on professionally good looking DVD for mere 3 ringggit, while still retaining most of the pie as their own profits (not to mention cuts already allocated for the "pirate distributors").

This post has been edited by thisisit: Aug 9 2011, 04:52 AM

Just want to say that if somebody wants to draw comparison of the situation with "death" of CDs vs digital songs, then think again.

Digital outsold physical copies of songs (in US at least) merely because of convenience factor. Buying digitally, a consumer can pick one song instead of an album, and that's the highly contributing factor to the success of digital music market. The same situation won't apply to games, as there's no way to do it the same way.

In fact, Valve already experimented with this formula in 2006 on Steam with SiN - Episodes, and just received limited success. With only 1 of the planned 9 episodes being made, they found that it's not a viable way to fund further mini-episodes. Thus, modular way of sales equivalent to digital music market is a no-go.

Still in the scope of convenience, I don't think downloading gigabytes per game is a convenient thing to be in current time, especially in our country. And unlike legitimate digital music, digital download of games on consoles are not shareable, or at least transferable, compared to their disc counterpart. And in any case of online gaming network outage (cough*PSN*cough), then good luck in buying your games online.

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Added on August 9, 2011, 2:07 amAgreed. Pop in disc/cartridge and play, that's the charm of home gaming consoles since decades ago.

Add more complexities then there are already PCs. Those run Crysis better too.

.

This post has been edited by LaskarCinta: Aug 9 2011, 02:18 AM

the writer of the article is not from our country too

The major advantage of DD is Retail price and convince. In case of Steam's sin episodes, it fail because of low value (expansive, low contents). Even steam Retail Price is price as much as the physical copies but why is it steam population 3mil?, its because of sales.

PSN users are going to rage at your statement.
technically PSN games DRM are transferable. XBL in the other hand, games could be played on any console as long as theres internet and purchaser account

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Added on August 9, 2011, 4:24 pmprinting media is rather low, but distribution and handling is not and plus with retailer and loyalty fees. Unless, publishers goes transparent about this, consumers are generally guessing the figures. But so far publishers are generally happy with cutting budget cuts from this. I could guess its could be more than $5 out of $50 (DD services require fees too)

The biggest save is from DRM on optical media which usually cost 15-20% of the total funding (Vary to publishers). Typically PC games which DRM is funded and operated by publishers. Centralized DRM servers, like steam, GFWL/XBL will cut the cost of DRM for the publishers.

This post has been edited by y3ivan: Aug 9 2011, 04:24 PM

...and many big provider in US already enforcing bandwidth cap. It's like having a really fast car is pretty useless when you have the same amount of petrol.

With the "article" saying bout how DD will reign against physical media in the next gen console I'd say it's blasphemy. With games growing bigger and bigger in terms of size, plus with rumors of imminent next gen console arriving, there are roadblocks for digital distribution of games in a crappy bandwidth situation.

And remember, internet connection are not solely for games. No one in their sane mind will want to waste all their bandwidth for just games.

.

Btw, those are just side points of my point. For convenience factor, it's more on how digital music thrives by giving the consumers convenience to freely select just the songs they want instead of an album. But on the gaming side, there's no way to replicate that "ala-carte" model.

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Added on August 9, 2011, 6:18 pmThought that you can't transfer the games to another PSN account. If that's not the case then my bad, sorry.

So now I'll write my will listing my PSN ID for my future grandkids inheritance

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Added on August 9, 2011, 6:53 pm- As for the SiN - Episodes case, what I'm really implying here is that modular concept of games (where they are separated much like how separate songs from an album works) just doesn't really takes off, so it won't replicate much on how digital music distribution thrives like they thought it should be too. The game got positive reviews plus being marketed heavily (even remembered reading in a mag featuring multiple pages of scope years ago), while being dirt cheap too, but still it garnered small amount of sales. So modular concept is a no-go (except for DLC's which are companion of a full game, which is also not printing much money unless it's Call Of Duty's).

- About those numbers, someone else already mentioned above that the price is much the same for PC games a while after its release, no matter it's digital download or physical disc. Consoles are the way to go for publishers (except some games) so the point is rather moot if someone's gonna compare that with console market.

- And to add, the numbers are largely contributed by the fact that many popular disc-based games are including SteamWorks with them (of which is pretty unnecessary for the publishers to do so). This is a common practice nowadays as publishers are getting more and more lazy in PC space (remember, somebody already said that consoles are where the money at) so they can get free matchmaking system when they integrate their games with Steamworks.

This Steamworks situation is similar to how "trojan horse" approach of how Sony slip in Blu-Ray into living room with their PS3's, either the buyers intended to play Blu-Ray movies or not (in the heat of vs HD-DVD war). Likewise, people who are intending to only offline gameplay are forced to create Steam ID whether they like or not. So now you have a gigantic number of Steam accounts because of that.

This post has been edited by LaskarCinta: Aug 9 2011, 08:16 PM