EA sports boss Peter Moore predicted that the disc based games don't have ten more years of life left in them.
"Look at the platform we're on, it's a burning platform," Moore said at the 5th play Digital Media Conference, according to IGN, "as a concept, do you stay on the platform and face certain death, or do you jump in the water and face probable death? Most of you would choose probable death, so you start moving toward a hybrid model of digital distribution."
"As an industry, I still think we may be as many a decade away from saying goodbye to physical discs," Moore continued. "The important question is what does the next console look like? Does it actually have a hard disk drive?"
I don't know about you Mr. Moore, but I sure do hope the next wave of consoles have hard disk drives, I'm a collector, I like to touch and feel stuff. I like to see Uncharted 2, and Halo 3: ODST sitting on my shelf, as I ever so often dust them off and go for a "spin."
Do you think it's a good idea to do away with discs altogether? Share your thoughts.
10/21/09 Ernice Gilbert
This is a bad idea on many fronts...
ReplyDelete1) What if I want to sell my game? You can't because its now useless as a re-sellable product.
2) What if I want to loan it to a friend? You can't because protection rights will prevent it if they haven't already done that. So you're game is basically locked to your console. If your friend doesn't have the game you want to play, you'll have to bring your hard drive, re-download it, or something similar... from the way these guys are talking you might have to walk to your friends home with your console too.
3) Not having a physical product is nice to revisit those retro games that weren't originally released on your modern console (i.e. XBox's San Andreas ported to XBox360 as a download). But like Ernice said, I want to see my collection if I'm collector of great games.
4) I like the option to download a game, but I'm not interested in a DOWNLOAD ONLY world of games. Look at the new PSP GO, it represents the direction that Executives are thinking. Unfortunately for them, I can predict that the PSP GO will FLIP FLOP & FIZZLE. Personally, a hybrid device (which SONY already has in the original PSP) that can handle physical media and downloads is a much better option.
Lastly...
5) I truly despise the planned prostitution of the gaming community by console designers. If PSP GO gains traction (which I expect it won't) that will be the green light for other consoles to jump off the fence and pimp the remaining gamers.
What do I mean?
We already subscribe to electricity, internet, and an online-gaming account. But with their proposed intentions we're suppose to go buy a console that requires games we can't touch, can't sell, and can't loan to or from a friend.
What should that mean to you? Well in business terms, what it's saying is this...
BUSINESS MAN #1: We need a way to fight the economic crunch the increase sales to get that Christmas bonus looking right.
BUSINESS MAN #2: Hmmm, I know. Let's pimp the gaming community! We'll be digital pimps!
BUSINESS MAN #1: Digital pimps, is that legal?
BUSINESS MAN #2: Sure is, check this out! First, we remove legacy compatibility for older games and accessories so gamers have to buy games for or latest console. Booyah!
BUSINESS MAN #1: Yeah, yeah! Sounding good.
BUSINESS MAN #2: But wait, that's not all! Next, we phase out the physical disc and go all digital-download!
BUSINESS MAN #1: hmmm, but won't the gamers be pissed they can't get their hands on the game?
BUSINESS MAN #2: Dude, they're already downloading them these days, and since we control what the console can do we just make it all digital and the gamers don't have a choice but to get the download instead of the disc. Mo Money, Mo Money!
BUSINESS MAN #1: Music to my ears because you know we'll cut out the fees to distribute DISC's and save money while maintaining the same cost to the gamers. YES! And you already heard about that mail man stealing all our stuff the other day so we won't be seeing that either. SWEET!
BUSINESS MAN #2: I know, I got the best ideas. Sony's PSP GO ripped off my idea big time. But a least we got the name, we're "Digital Pimps" and we're here to prostitute all gamers.
BUSINESS MAN #1: And if anyone asks, we'll say we're doing it for security purposes and for our ease of use... like how the government does with us when they want to make drastic changes we don't necessarily need or want.
(ouch)
Erskin