Next Generation Storage Media

As games and film get bigger, ISP will struggle to find new ways of moving large amounts of data in a timely manner without clogging their servers. Regardless of how fast that industry moves, it will almost always be two, three or four steps behind companies like Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and major movie distributors, when looking for the quickest and most cost effective way in getting media out to the consumer. In the future I'm certain the industry standard will be a 3 or 4 terabyte HDD on newer consoles and PCs, but with some games in the current market reaching has high as 40Gb, I don't think it's unreasonable to say in the next 5 or 10 years we'll see games as large or larger than 100Gb plus. With the internet growing at a snail's pace, only having just recently moved over to IPv6 over the 20 year standard of IPv4, how long would we have to wait for the next major overhaul in the internet protocol to keep up with our ever growing transfer and usage of data?

I think it begs the question, will digital download ever alleviate our dependency on physical and optical media?

Call me old fashioned, but I will -always- want the option to buy a physical product. When I buy something I want to own it. That's the premise. Screw it if I'm forced into only being able to have the option of a "limited license agreement".

If you want the physical media, stay away from EA then.

Example:

Coy loves The Sims and always wants to buy the physical discs. She won't download it from Steam or from the EA store. So she recently bought the Late Night and Barnacle Bay expansions. Both came wrapped, brand new and in a DVD case.

Opened up Barnacle Bay. Lo and behold it was a normal case, had the peg in the middle (or whatever it's called) that holds the DVD, with box art and everything, but inside was a tiny piece of cardboard with instructions on how to log online and download it from EA's store and NO DISC.

/facepalm

Why even sell it in a store then? WTF

Opened up Barnacle Bay. Lo and behold it was a normal case, had the peg in the middle (or whatever it's called) that holds the DVD, with box art and everything, but inside was a tiny piece of cardboard with instructions on how to log online and download it from EA's store and NO DISC.

WHAT?!?!?! Oooookay... The Capt'n stays away from EA then.. >_>

Seriously, that's a total waste of resources and IMHO misrepresentation. Hell, if you -really- want to get a products liability lawyer involved you may even have a class action suit basis there.

Meh.. don't mind me. It's Friday and I'm grumpy from lack of sleep.

If you want the physical media, stay away from EA then.

Example:

Coy loves The Sims and always wants to buy the physical discs. She won't download it from Steam or from the EA store. So she recently bought the Late Night and Barnacle Bay expansions. Both came wrapped, brand new and in a DVD case.

Opened up Barnacle Bay. Lo and behold it was a normal case, had the peg in the middle (or whatever it's called) that holds the DVD, with box art and everything, but inside was a tiny piece of cardboard with instructions on how to log online and download it from EA's store and NO DISC.

EA is notorious for crap like that, Capcom to a degree. In the Xbox gold edition of RE5, all the bonus content was only accessible with a redeem code. What good does that do someone without Live?

Yeah, but that was additional stuff for a disc that was in there. This was a WHOLE CASE, specifically for that ONE piece of content, and inside was a small piece of cardboard with directions and a code. Coy was P.ISSED.

I will never purchase anything from the EA Store again....N.E.V.E.R. All it took was one bad experience and they can shove it.

I like to have a physical copy of my games now (thanks to EA) and I am dreading the day when physical copies are gone altogether.

Yeah, but that was additional stuff for a disc that was in there. This was a WHOLE CASE, specifically for that ONE piece of content, and inside was a small piece of cardboard with directions and a code. Coy was P.ISSED.

I agree, that is far worse. Saving a few cents on production cost by cheating your customers is completely unacceptable and something I'll never understand.

I don't mind digital media... Just look at my Steam collection of 100+ games.

I would however be upset if I thought that I was buying physical media and it was not what I got.

I would however be upset if I thought that I was buying physical media and it was not what I got.

That's exactly the reason that we were upset. We saw it online on the Sims homepage (how we found out about it) and saw we could buy it there. Coy however, as previously stated, wants the physical discs so I went out to buy the expansion along with the Late Night expansion at Target. Got home and bam. No disc.

Not much different then Valve games. You can buy most of them in store, but they all require connection to steam to decrypt the files. So, if steam ever went under you still lose what you have.

On topic though, I don't think it's an issue of handling the required speed. It's a bandwidth issue. The protocol change was addressing only. Because IPv4 ran out of numbers. Where IPv6 has a umm. well, it's a lot. 340 undecillion or something like that. I can see bandwidth becoming an issue, and if not monthly caps becoming a standard than daily ones. Either way, I'm not really sure how much game size will continue to increase. It should plateau at some point. Aside from very large number of HD cut-scenes the biggest contributing factor in game size is high resolution textures.

As an example there is a Half Life 2 mod that adds somewhere around 25GB of textures to the game. But there will still be trade offs and tech improvements to change that. A good example of what we will see in the future will be the game Rage. It procedurally generates insanely large textures. Won't know until it gets here what size it will weigh in at. The best example I can come up with for textures plateauing is digital cameras. At first the improvements in pixels and resolution caused an ever growing increase in file size. However, it has reached a point where, though we do see, larger Mega Pixel cameras every year, who needs them? The images are being taking at resolutions that are capable of printing out wall sized prints with no blurring or enhancement. So, it's leveling out to where the average consumer has no need for more pixel resolution.

Not much different then Valve games. You can buy most of them in store, but they all require connection to steam to decrypt the files. So, if steam ever went under you still lose what you have.

I can't find the exact quote but Steam has stated that if they ever went out of business, they would do something to remove the requirement for you to use Steam or something along those lines. It's highly unlikely that they'll go out of business, but if they did they might keep some servers up for downloading the games you've bought, though they may be a bit slower than they are now.

I don't mind digital media at all. I buy most of my games for 20 dollars or less these days and only play through them once or twice then move on to the next, since I have so much of a backlog at the moment. I honestly probably wouldn't miss most of my games since I get them so cheap, so long as I've completed them all. Getting games from Steam sales is practically cheaper than renting. lol

I don't like digital downloads for games as here in Australia our download limits are too small to handle that.

Not much different then Valve games. You can buy most of them in store, but they all require connection to steam to decrypt the files. So, if steam ever went under you still lose what you have.

On topic though, I don't think it's an issue of handling the required speed. It's a bandwidth issue. The protocol change was addressing only. Because IPv4 ran out of numbers. Where IPv6 has a umm. well, it's a lot. 340 undecillion or something like that. I can see bandwidth becoming an issue, and if not monthly caps becoming a standard than daily ones. Either way, I'm not really sure how much game size will continue to increase. It should plateau at some point. Aside from very large number of HD cut-scenes the biggest contributing factor in game size is high resolution textures.

As an example there is a Half Life 2 mod that adds somewhere around 25GB of textures to the game. But there will still be trade offs and tech improvements to change that. A good example of what we will see in the future will be the game Rage. It procedurally generates insanely large textures. Won't know until it gets here what size it will weigh in at. The best example I can come up with for textures plateauing is digital cameras. At first the improvements in pixels and resolution caused an ever growing increase in file size. However, it has reached a point where, though we do see, larger Mega Pixel cameras every year, who needs them? The images are being taking at resolutions that are capable of printing out wall sized prints with no blurring or enhancement. So, it's leveling out to where the average consumer has no need for more pixel resolution.

One of the bigger problems I have with digital download is the media you purchase today, may not necessarily be the media you own tomorrow. Especially when outfits such as OnLive may not be around in the future to even support those products. I may be completely off base, but I don't see services such as this taking any considerable chunk of the market, when ISP's will almost certainly charge people more for higher bandwidth usage or at least put some limitations on how much data can be transferred in say, a months time. However I fully believe services such as that would thrive, in selling products like games the equivalent to Ipod apps with some online functionality or emulations of classic games far smaller in size.

I think Valve is a rare exception in this case. They have huge name recognition, an in touch marketing approach that knows what their consumers want and expect of them and a tremendously loyal fan base. I believe they'll almost always have a good working relationship with the console manufacturers and because of that, will always in some large capacity support physical media, even with their growing usership with the Steam service. I think where will see the real shift, in relation to the consoles and optical/physical media, is they'll become more like PCs, were we'll be able to upgrade the hardware to increase it's life cycle

Also, don't get me wrong guys. I don't hate digital downloads, I have something like 70 XBLA games. I just don't think it's ever going to surpass physical and optical media as the industry standard. I can only speak from experience, but I've only downloaded one full retail game on my Xbox and I hated having 6+ Gb of space taken up on my Hard Drive. Also, you've got to look at pricing, download retail games have the same price point as there physical counterparts, with no manual, no case and no disc. And you can pretty much forget about special or limited edition anything, aside from DLC. At what point will we start feeling cheated?

I think in the natural progression of technology, digital media will always lag behind physical media. That's just the way the industry advances: landlines before cellular networks, wired broadband before wifi. Of course there will always be simpler media that goes straight to digital form like XBLA games; but blockbuster titles like Crysis 2, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 are just far too large for the average computer to download. Ten years from now, I don't see this changing much. I think physical media will always give better data storage capability than bandwidth limitations will allow for download.

Also, don't get me wrong guys. I don't hate digital downloads, I have something like 70 XBLA games. I just don't think it's ever going to surpass physical and optical media as the industry standard. I can only speak from experience, but I've only downloaded one full retail game on my Xbox and I hated having 6+ Gb of space taken up on my Hard Drive. Also, you've got to look at pricing, download retail games have the same price point as there physical counterparts, with no manual, no case and no disc. And you can pretty much forget about special or limited edition anything, aside from DLC. At what point will we start feeling cheated?

I completely agree with the point of getting less for the same price. That is exactly the problem with console downloadable titles at the moment. Most of them are available after the game has been released on disc for some time, and then they release them for the same damn price point like they were new. Not to mention the fact you're getting less. Valve through Steam has it right in the aspect of price and availability. There is something to be said that I can go pretty much anywhere with an internet connection and take my games with me. Visiting a friend and want to show him my new game just hop on steam and download it. The other selling point is the price. Not even to mention the ridiculously low price point sale specials, there are the pre purchase discounts they often have. I don't get a box or DVD, but I do get an online manual I can download, and a very easy backup system so I can have the physical game stored locally so I don't have to download it everytime. Consoles are way behind on this, and we all know the pain of trying to play your games on a new or different console.

I agree the digital realm will lag behind, and I do prefer to own a physical copy of my games. However, with a vast majority of games requiring not only the disc to play, but online activation, when I see a digital download for 10% off, it's worth it to me to go that route.