"We really don't see the future of video games being merely confined to digital distribution," says Nintendo legend Good news for all those mums and dads who've just bought Wii Sports Resort and are still a bit scared of the digital revolution; Shigeru Miyamoto has said that digital distribution will never become the sole way you buy your games.... read more
"We really don't see the future of video games being merely confined to digital distribution,"
Didn't he once say that online gaming wouldn't work that great with consoles as well? But I hope his right about digital distribution. _________________ http://uk.youtube.com/profile?user=GRose7 Visit my YouTube page for videos of my drunken fun including me downing a pint of beer in 3.2 seconds.
This is the first time that i've agreed with Miyamoto in a long time. It does make you feel more secure having physical media. Also, internet speeds are not good enough yet for everything to be based on downloads. Perhaps in Japan, where a wireless dongle can get you 40mb and the standard household gets 50mb, but not here where the best we get is 50mb. The average here in Britain is 8mb, but you're lucky if you have that. Here in rural Yorkshire we get 2mb and it goes down all the time. Even if we get better speeds, we will see AOL/Tiscali/BT introducing 'gamer plans' that allow you uncapped speeds, but they will probably cost three times as much. Living in Britain p**ses me off. _________________ "Our world cannot be viewed through the glasses of common sense" - Masato Arai.
Currently Playing: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, Oblivion, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, Aion Beta.
PSN: lordirongut
Digital distribution will replace most physical methods for the simple reason that there is more money for publishers and developers that way.
Consoles always tend to lag behind the PC market in terms of technology by a year or two (ie CDROMs, internet gaming etc) and you can see by success of Steam, D2D and GoG that it's not going to take long before consoles catch up.
Personally I love digital platforms, I haven't bought a physical game in about a year thanks to my Steam addiction (just bought company of heroes gold for 8 quid, yay ) and it's great being able to use my steam account anywhere in the world and have access to my games.
The other pro is it gives a medium for the "little guy" who has a really good idea but no medium to send it across. The success of Xbox arcarde, steam and even wiiware to a certain extent show that more and more small developers will favour this over shipping a CD out across the world.
As always, Nintendo will be the last to join the party (like how the N64 still used carts rather than CD's ) but it will get there eventually.
Personally, I'm all for not stacking my room up with games and faff around with CD keys etc
Yeah this digital hocus pokus is all well and good but as the chap above (LordIronGut from the mighty Yorkshire) says in the UK at least we get bum shuffled with the internet, does anyone actually get 8mb?? Can you imagine downloading Final Fantasy online? geez you could have gone to the shops to get a hard copy and then sat down in Starbucks to marvel at the instruction book over a fancy coffee before returning home to play whilst the download would have stopped twice and the Xbox would have melted under the strain. _________________ Remember everything is eventual, guns will make us powerful, butter will only make us fat.
See you on overgrown.
Digital distribution will replace most physical methods for the simple reason that there is more money for publishers and developers that way.
Consoles always tend to lag behind the PC market in terms of technology by a year or two (ie CDROMs, internet gaming etc) and you can see by success of Steam, D2D and GoG that it's not going to take long before consoles catch up.
Personally I love digital platforms, I haven't bought a physical game in about a year thanks to my Steam addiction (just bought company of heroes gold for 8 quid, yay ) and it's great being able to use my steam account anywhere in the world and have access to my games.
The other pro is it gives a medium for the "little guy" who has a really good idea but no medium to send it across. The success of Xbox arcarde, steam and even wiiware to a certain extent show that more and more small developers will favour this over shipping a CD out across the world.
As always, Nintendo will be the last to join the party (like how the N64 still used carts rather than CD's ) but it will get there eventually.
Personally, I'm all for not stacking my room up with games and faff around with CD keys etc
Long live Steam
You say that now, but I'd like to know how many people would still prefer cartridges.
Cartridges made gaming more fun because you never had to wait for loading.
As time has progressed, gaming has become more complicated and cumbersome. Along with digital downloads, came patches. Patches only came through developers rushing games to retailers.
Now every game gets updated, tweaked and poked to within an inch of it's life.
My take on it all? Well, changes don't happen for the benefit of the consumer, that's for sure.
Before digital media, we never had to pay for DLC because every game was complete We never had to wait for patches and updates and 99% of the time received a thoroughly play-tested game.
Horray for digital downloads!!! _________________ PSN ID: MarkyUK
360 ID: BobozeTheBear
I love Mary Hinge.
Thing is, that the Point Of Sale in the High street drives sales and why companies spend big amounts to have their product at eye level and so on. HDD�s size will continue to grow, but so will games. The average person doesn�t wan to download things and wants the physical product.
Its hard to give someone a present digitally too. Based on the fact the biggest part of the industry is the run up to Christmas and now just after too.
Not mentioning download speeds and averages.
Yes the Publisher has an interest to do it digitally, but they would still have to pay the likes of Steam, MS, Nintendo or Sony distribution costs.
"We really don't see the future of video games being merely confined to digital distribution,"
Didn't he once say that online gaming wouldn't work that great with consoles as well? But I hope his right about digital distribution.
Weren't Nintendo also the last to cling on to the cartridge and embrace optical technology
Good lord the whole gaming landscpae would be a hell of a lot different if they hadn't.
Cost em big that one did.
However here i think Miyamoto has a point. If Gaming went digital download only, it'd destroy a large part of said industry, _________________ The only thing we know is that we know nothing.
I can see myself getting behind downloads 100%, as I don't sell my games or lend them out. Waiting for a game to download doesn't bother me either, as I could do plenty of other things during that time (Football Manager or Reason 4!).
But I still believe we need hard copies due to reasons you guys have stated.
I think digital only gaming will happen, but not in the next 5 years at least.
Plus the biggest reason I don't use it that often is the cost. At times (especially with Steam in my experience) it's cheaper to buy a boxed copy than via Steam. when the cost comes down a bit, I'll embrace it, until then I'll just stick with my DVD sized box. _________________ bebo | eBay | twitter | 360: minignaz | steam: minignaz
Digital distribution will replace most physical methods for the simple reason that there is more money for publishers and developers that way.
Consoles always tend to lag behind the PC market in terms of technology by a year or two (ie CDROMs, internet gaming etc) and you can see by success of Steam, D2D and GoG that it's not going to take long before consoles catch up.
Personally I love digital platforms, I haven't bought a physical game in about a year thanks to my Steam addiction (just bought company of heroes gold for 8 quid, yay ) and it's great being able to use my steam account anywhere in the world and have access to my games.
The other pro is it gives a medium for the "little guy" who has a really good idea but no medium to send it across. The success of Xbox arcarde, steam and even wiiware to a certain extent show that more and more small developers will favour this over shipping a CD out across the world.
As always, Nintendo will be the last to join the party (like how the N64 still used carts rather than CD's ) but it will get there eventually.
Personally, I'm all for not stacking my room up with games and faff around with CD keys etc
Long live Steam
You say that now, but I'd like to know how many people would still prefer cartridges.
Cartridges made gaming more fun because you never had to wait for loading.
As time has progressed, gaming has become more complicated and cumbersome. Along with digital downloads, came patches. Patches only came through developers rushing games to retailers.
Now every game gets updated, tweaked and poked to within an inch of it's life.
My take on it all? Well, changes don't happen for the benefit of the consumer, that's for sure.
Before digital media, we never had to pay for DLC because every game was complete We never had to wait for patches and updates and 99% of the time received a thoroughly play-tested game.
Horray for digital downloads!!!
completely agree with you there. _________________ Sweet Bobby
You say that now, but I'd like to know how many people would still prefer cartridges.
Cartridges made gaming more fun because you never had to wait for loading.
As time has progressed, gaming has become more complicated and cumbersome. Along with digital downloads, came patches. Patches only came through developers rushing games to retailers.
Now every game gets updated, tweaked and poked to within an inch of it's life.
My take on it all? Well, changes don't happen for the benefit of the consumer, that's for sure.
Before digital media, we never had to pay for DLC because every game was complete We never had to wait for patches and updates and 99% of the time received a thoroughly play-tested game.
Horray for digital downloads!!!
who is to say back in the day of cartridges the games were thoroughly play tested? no software is bug free and there is no hope of any game being 100% tested, it just isnt possible.
games these days are a lot more complicated than the 80's or even 90's so i'd expect more issues. having said that i cant think of that many buggy games i own.
dlc is a funny topic as some dlc is legit but some is blatantly held back from the full release. i think the fallout 3 and gta 4 dlc is legit but i'm not sure about map packs for mutliplayer and extra models or skins.
for me the biggest decision is cost, if the cheapest way to get a game is digital download via steam i'll do that or if i want it early. if the high street or internet is cheaper i'll use that to get a physical copy. _________________ Live: pishpashposh
I'm really interested to see just how far Nintendo take games on SD memory cards,if they could squeeze enough memory on them at a cheap enough price i think they would make excellent alternatives to disc based games.(i know i'm mad )
Well, I'm perfectly fine with CDs and Cartridges, but do feel there will be a time where all videogames are downloaded from the internet (which, is quite discriminatory against those who can't get their consoles connected to the internet - I know many). You can see it starting already with things like WiiWare, XBox Arcade and PSN, how long before everything is downloaded off of them? Mind you, I like DLC, it saves the hefty release of expansion packages, or trying to bundle it all into a new game- I reckon that'll become an even bigger feature of gaming in the future too _________________ Nobody is perfect, I am a nobody, therefore I'm perfect
I was very reluctant to change from carts as well, because of the load times, but if you look at stuff like the bigger DS games, you find that load times aren't actually that much faster than DVDs anyway.
But I do prefer physical media over downloads. We have a really good 16Mb connection which is reliable and we get at least 12Mb most of the time, so I can get stuff fast. The problem is when something breaks and you need to download it all again. Even on my connection I can install a handful of games from DVD in the time it takes to download a single title. I'd hate to have to do that to my entire collection. _________________ Xfire | Xbox Live | PSN: Dajmin
The Ranting Scotsman | Get a Free iPhone!
There is a theory that has been around for a while that it could go full circle. I.E. Flash SD cards at about 8GB can be picked up at retail now for about �6-7, (I got mine for �4.99 from ebuyer the other week) which after vat retail margins etc are taken off its almost cheap enough to use them as a storage medium (8GB is just a little less than a DD DVD can take 8.7GB). This would provide quick loading times again and would also be writable for saves & updates/dlc etc. And as times passes big capacity would become available at affordable prices allow more space for bigger better games. IT probably won't happen but interesting thought though.
People will always want to wrap things up at Christmas and birthdays. _________________ "Legends are fiction, kid. Someone tells it, someone else remembers, everyone passes it on"
any game i care abt i will buy the physical copy. you know, a special edition of shadow of the colossus doesnt really feel special when its all just 1's and 0's.
digital dl will really take off on consoles but i dont think it will overtake retail sales for a very, very long time, if ever. _________________ Some cheerleader at school or hot secretary at the office may not think you are cool�..........
But let�s be real, those very same bitches don�t love bacon and still use IE to explore the web.
People will always want to wrap things up at Christmas and birthdays.
You can wrap up a gift card with a download code on it. Not much to look at though. _________________ bebo | eBay | twitter | 360: minignaz | steam: minignaz
@Osiris25
SD cards would mean been able to have a multi media based games console (minus the DVD disc player) built into all LCD teles.
Games been delivered through a simple card reader and DLC or even streaming them via a "onlive "style cloud based server.
You only have to look at the slimness of solid state laptops to see how easily once the price comes down this tech will just be another circuit board in the belly of a standard 40in LCD/OLED tale .
Yep i think that backs up my post even more. I have to say i'm suprised that console companies (Sony in particluar) Haven't built there hardware in to TV's yet. What better way to get games consoles into people's houses without having to convince them to buy one. With wireless pad and so on reducing clutter and as you say Slimline technology(like the new range of plasma, LCD,LED's, SED's etc. it would all make sense. Maybe we should patent the idea wait til one of them does and sue them when they do use it like all these tech companies do rofl!!
Before digital media, we never had to pay for DLC because every game was complete We never had to wait for patches and updates and 99% of the time received a thoroughly play-tested game.
There have always been buggy, incomplete games; just there was no way of patching them. But I do like the rose-tinted spectacles. They're very you. _________________ Gaming since 1892.
XBL: GhostCoops
People will always want to wrap things up at Christmas and birthdays.
You can wrap up a gift card with a download code on it. Not much to look at though.
The average gamer, yes, a member of my family (and 85% of others family probably as well) .....NO.
There are many things that will stop 100% digital media, ISP's coverage/Speeds, Retail costs, Presents, People losing data, Backup funcionality, people wanting hard copy and so on.
Id rather have the DVD, Blu ray than digital anyway. Okay some smaller cheaper games not so fussed about, but GTA IV download only? No thanks
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
) and it's great being able to use my steam account anywhere in the world and have access to my games.
) but it will get there eventually.
)
