Rogue Keeper on 21/11/2008 at 15:35
Games will never go 100% download. There is something very enjoyable in petting the game disc, smelling the manual pages, toying with limited edition figurines in collector's editions and simply seducing opposite sex with pretty original DVD cases on display in your home.
mothra on 21/11/2008 at 15:43
blue ray will take more time to replace DVD. much longer than DVD did for VHS.
but it will be there and since drives for PC are already cheap I don't care on what medium it comes, for the first game doing so (RAGE anyone?) I will buy the drive. right now I don't need it.
don't care about HD-Movies though since they managed to introduce a new copy-protection scheme which makes it obligatory to exchange EVERY single part of your AV-connections to make them compatible with HDMI. stupid morons. btw, blue ray has region code as well. AGAIN. I mean, come on, didn't they learn anything from DVD ? copy-protection and region code are annoying, they don't protect you from anything.
Renzatic on 21/11/2008 at 15:46
Quote Posted by BR796164
...and simply seducing opposite sex with pretty original DVD cases on display in your home.
Me: As you can see here, I have seasons 1-9 of the X-Files on display next to my Shadowrun figurines. I'm quite eclectic.
Her: Ooh.
Me: And on the shelf below that...BOOTLEG STAR TREK TNG EPISODES!
Her: DO ME DO ME PLOW ME NOW! PULL MY HAIR WHILE YOU DO IT!
It really does work like that.
WingedKagouti on 21/11/2008 at 15:47
Quote Posted by Digital Nightfall
Games will go 100% download before Blueray drives are common enough for a publisher to produce a boxed shelf copy.
Actual broadband, and not the 128kbit lines that are also called broadband around here, needs a much higher user base before games will go 100% dl. It will take quite some years to ensure that broadband is available to most consumers, as many places don't have the infrastructure to handle the bandwidth requirements and upgrading it won't be cheap.
Even then there are plenty of people who still prefer to have a physical media for something they "own". And then there's the added exposure and impulse purchases that follow a shiny box in a physical store. Sure, the boxes could just contain an access code and manual, but adding a physical media doesn't increase the cost that much with a decently large volume (50k+).
I estimate that it will take quite a while before downloads surpass physical media for games.
Bjossi on 21/11/2008 at 15:49
100% downloads will never happen because 100% of gamers do not have internet access. Though I don't know which is cheaper in the long run; publishing costs for physical copies or the loss of a decent chunk of PC gamers. I do have a fast internet connection, but I'd pick the physical copies over downloads any day.
Digital Nightfall on 21/11/2008 at 16:07
The reason why I say this is because the fear of piracy has and will drive publishers of both games and movies to do potentially foolish things. Things will get worse.
Renzatic on 21/11/2008 at 16:49
Quote Posted by WingedKagouti
Actual broadband, and not the 128kbit lines that are also called broadband around here, needs a much higher user base before games will go 100% dl. It will take quite some years to ensure that broadband is available to most consumers, as many places don't have the infrastructure to handle the bandwidth requirements and upgrading it won't be cheap.
That's exactly what I'm thinking. Games and movies are only getting bigger, and you're gonna need that much more bandwidth to push them into your home in a reasonable amount of time.
It'll become a more mainstream alternative. We're already seeing that happen. But won't replace physical copies completely for years yet. Not until everyone in the country has a fiber line run to their door
EZ-52 on 21/11/2008 at 21:03
Also stupid usage caps on broadband that some ISP's still have means you'll download 1/20th of the game per month.
Bjossi on 21/11/2008 at 21:19
Those caps come from hell. I used to have a 100 MB cap per month few years ago, almost had to plan every website visit throughout the month. . .
But thankfully that cap is no more.
NamelessPlayer on 22/11/2008 at 22:55
No, simply because I don't have a Blu-ray drive and won't buy one until the burners (not just mere readers) drop to 100 US$ or less.
As for any "games" that would NEED the capacity of Blu-ray, I can think of one already: X-Plane with Global Scenery. It spans a whopping SIX dual-layer DVDs and takes up around 60 GB of hard drive space after you install it all! (Admitted, most of that is scenery for practically the entire Earth and the base sim doesn't take anywhere near that much, but it would still be something that benefits from Blu-ray's massive storage capacity.)
Tthat's just one title, though, and it's obviously being sold only on a multi-DVD set right now. PC game developers going exclusively Blu-ray would be total financial suicide at this point; they could offer it as an alternative to a DVD release for people who have the drives (much like having CD and DVD versions of games like Unreal Tournament 2004 back in the day), but that would have to be brought to market much later on in order to have a good shot at just breaking even with the cost it would take just to ship the game on Blu-ray, when the market is large enough to sell a reasonable amount of Blu-ray copies.
However, if the DVD version has a good head start, many of those potential Blu-ray owners could have bought that DVD release, and will probably be unwilling to re-purchase the same damn game on less discs.
All in all, I don't expect to see any PC games officially released on Blu-ray for at least another year or two.
