Why I Think Game-on-Demand is the Next Big Thing

My buddy steve told me last week his cousin was "practically" trowing away (as in "20 bucks for everything") his entire collection of Genesis and Snes carts. I remember back in the day Steve's cousin was the coolest kid in my neighbourhood thanks to his big amount of games and consoles. In fact he was the first collector I ever meet.

Well that was 15 years ago, now he's off from gaming, already waiting for his second son and with a mortgage. He basically told me "I dont have any room left for this stuff, plus I dont like this anymore". Leaving the personal opinions behind, I went inside his basement to check the collection.

Now while I was expecting the holy grail of gaming, it was far away from that. The consoles were almost broken: the Snes had a huge crack in the base, the genesis has this nasty scratches everywere while the megaCD was all dirty and didnt seem to work.

But the carts, man that was the horror, THE HORROR!. I only found Virtua Racing with a case and manuals, then like one third of them had the case half broken with missing manuals or other stuff. 50% of the carts were without any case or documentation and had some damage to the labels.

It was very dissapointing to see how one of the biggest collections I could remember was destroyed due to owner's negligence...

But as a matter of fact, this seems to be common bussiness with the casual sector. My friend steve also worked in a new&used gamestore, and he was always telling us how abysmal was the crap people used to bring there. They had the usual cockroach infested Nes, brought by some granny whose grandson was already in college and didnt want it anymore. Then there was the games: CD's are the worst, since people seem to have them laying around most of the time instead of keeping them in the cases. As a result the discs have scratchs everywhere, and sometimes they wont work.

I remember back in 1999 my other friend John was trowing away his Saturn cases and placing the discs in one of those 500CDs things. He sold me the cases and manuals for a buck to piece, which was a good oportunity to me since I was able to replace all my broken saturn and segaCD cases (man are those fragile) but he didnt seem to care about the damage it was making to his collection. A stand-alone CDs is almost worthless...

Now, back to the topic: why I think game-on-demand (GoD) may end up being the only way to play games?. I've had this conversation (and discussion) many times with other users here. Most of them bring the "I like cases and manuals" point to the table, and is a valid one since I too prefer to have a game on its case with all the documentation ratter than a .iso archive in some HDD.

But the reality is people dont care about having those. If they did things like the iPod would be a utter failure for the simple reason people would like to have music in CDs and not .mp3s. You think average joe's dont take care of their games? you should see their music CDs....

On the other side you got publishers eating their fingers in anger due to the big bussiness that is selling used games. For them GoD is the final solution to that problem, and many others like distribution issues and manufacturing costs.

As I said before, we're a minority in the gaming universe. Some of us have stuff older that ourselves (my 2600 for example) while most people sells their console and games when the nextgen arrives. We're a very strange breed among the gaming population, and the GoD is a menace to our way of life since it terminates what it makes us: real gamers and collectors.

But so did sony with their MTV ads that brought us the stupid PSX generation, and MS with Live which practically gave every idiot-racist kid in the world a way to insult without any risks to his fisical self. Every time a company deploys another market plan our gaming world changes, most of the time for the worst.

If the casual market picks up in the GoD initiative that may be the our ultimate loss, our grace blow, the atomic wedgie to our way of life.

Dunno, maybe some companies may keep launching printed versions of their games just like we still see CDs and even vinyl records of the newest songs, but at the same time there's way more people that likes music, compared to people who likes gaming...

The point is, GoD is approaching and the heavy corporate thinking thats going through the VG industry just cares about one thing: profit.

GoD is and will always be more cost-effective than printed games....

 

I'd give it at least 10-20 years until a majority on-demand-games become available. There is already GameTap and they provide some of the games I grew up with but I don't know how their business model works and how exactly they are making money off of it, but I like their idea. Distribution of games via the Internet (or multi-tiered internet if net-nuetrality is abolished) will ultimately take over, but not within the next few console generations. When high capacity HDDs are super cheap and 10MBps internet connections are more common for the average American to get a hold of, then we will start seeing more and more companies, especially start-ups and conglomerates like EA, switch to online distribution for the majority of their line-up.

Still. Collectors will be around. Flea Markets, Garage Sales, etc. will still be around where such people will still find a classic system with some nice classic games still in great condition, and still playable. A lot of the vintage collectors, even myself (although I don't consider myself a vintage VG collector) hardly play the current games out there, because most of them would say that it is playing the same game over and over again, just different graphics, different characters, etc.

What is a major concern for most people is innovation, where will it come from? How can that happen in an age where the mainstream consumer's attention span is decreasing more after each console generation? Graphic capabilities is about to reach a plateau where a lot of more games will start looking a like either cell-shaded, or realistic looking. Pretty soon, the process of creating high-quality graphics in a quick amount of time is also catching up as well and pretty soon development budgets will start to decrease by as much as 50%-80% thanks to middle-ware technology. When those two plateaus meet, consumers will start noticing the similarities in the games they play on their new Xbox or PS# and will start demanding new and different games if companies want to stay afloat. I doubt a massive boycott or market crash will occur.

Such instances are already happening. Analysts are starting to see a drop in videogame sales but this is most likely due to the current state of the economy than it being that most games are just the same games but with better graphics.

The world is due for a massive technological make over as demand for goods is about to increase exponentially in the next 10 years. Such changes will start to occur in the next 10-20years. When such changes occur then we will start seeing a difference on how games are sold and how other goods are distributed as well.

 

This will be a LOOONG time. Internet speeds in North America have gone almost nowhere since their inception. 3MB is considered fast, and is about all you can get here in Hawaii. I dare say the mainland isn't that much better. WTF happened? The US started it off and then did fuck all. I hear the UK (all of Europe?) is even worse. Asia, forget about it. Last ones to the ballgame, and blow everyone else away. There is something to be said for living on top of each other (eg - cheap infrastructure overhead).

Remember how everyone said the internet would replace newspapers? It'll happen, but not for a while, as the hatter said. Companies will always make a retail version while people will buy them. On demand -- perhaps 10% of their target audience could participate at this point.

 

Whoa! dude 10 years ago we were still using carts in most consoles. If you compare what we had then and what we got now we're lightyears away...

In this nextgen every console has a game dowload service for old and arcade games. If we got that now you can bet the next generation will be download-only for every console. A big factor is that Apple-Disney are about to close a deal with most hollywood studios to release movies trought iTunes.

I say printed games have, as a maximun, 5 years. Anything after that is GoD era...

Dont think so: my contact in spain told me they have 20MBs for 40 euros or something, and that's not even the top. I know southamerica is worst than us, but hell compared to the rest of the developed world our bandwidth sucks bad....

About internet replacing newspapers, well most newspapers got up to 60% of sales reduced due to the internet, the problem was that that only covered people reading news at home, cuz as of today no company has released a portable device good enough to replace the newspaper. But that could change with the arrival of e-paper...

 

My 2 cents...

Seems like one hurdle that you didn't mention was the lack of a disc. What if you sell your console? What if your console crashes? That's one problem that the game markers have to figure out before anything can really be done.

Also, I can't imagine the consumer will be willing to pay the same prices for a downloaded copy. Same with eBooks. Much cheaper, but it's stuck on your PC and it isn't portable. You also have the problem of owning a useless piece of software on your console hard drive after you complete the game. No residual value... Development costs might fall but the prices of the games would have to fall as well.

 

I was just about to add that. The "what if you sell your console, or it breaks" part. I'm not a huge fan of downloads. In fact, I don't like them at all. I would never buy a legal mp3 file to listen to it in my mp3 player. I would go get the CD and make an mp3 file by myself. I still buy vinyls though [whenever I get the chance], and converting those into mp3's is too much of a bother anyway.

As for games, I too know alot of people who don't care whether their games have CD cases or not. They don't care about the manuals and don't even get me started on spine cards. Every time I say "there ought to be a spine card with this" I get lauged at.

My wife consideres me a weirdo, since she doesn't really care about games and she's one of those who would probably want to watch a DivX shot with a camera from the movie screen, rather than pay for the movie and see it the way it's supposed to be watched, just to save some money. I always tease her that she will end up old, laying on her bags of cash that she kept "just in case".

I know people who buy games off eBay, copy them, and pass them on. I know people who buy a console, mod it, play some CD / DVD r's, and when they're done with it, and it's time to move onto another platform, they just sell it "100+ games included".

A while back I bought Sky Force game for my S60 Symbian phone, and there's no other way to get it, but to download it. You get a *.pdf manual and a *.sis Epoch installation file. Based on your IMEI, a code is sent to you, so you can activate the thing. So that's basically one game per one phone. No box, no printed manual. It's a kind of prelude of things to come I think.

Still, if games are getting bigger, and currently consoles start using media like BluRay discs, I can't imagine how would you be able to download souch a thing.

 

I want the physical media so that I don't have to depend on an active internet connection and corporate servers/services just to play a damn game. This will too easily turn into a pay-per-play model, since you will have absolutely no control over the software.

 

I disagree. So far you're only seeing "disposable" content downloadable through Live and not "real" games. This will change, but it won't go from all games being pressed to no games being pressed in 5 years.

EA and such are exactly the kind of corporation to push pressed copies for as long as possible, I think. They are a publisher first and a developer second, meaning they take a cut on the profits between the developer and the store. I'm not sure that EA would let that profit slip without kicking up a fuss. I'd imagine they're pretty happy with the store model, compared to the online distribution one - if they thought they could be making more money doing a Steam-alike, they would have by now. That said, there are obvious risks associated with physical inventory I'm sure EA etc would be glad to see the back of, so at some point they probably will offer a full game download service.

Which raises the most important point - why not both? There's no way that in 5 years every single person wanting to play modern videogames in the world will have an internet connection adequate for streaming 10's of GB of data in a reasonable amount of time, and those who can't/don't want to will be waiting with their wallets open. Businesses generally pay attention to that kind of demand.

 

I don't like the general idea anyways. It always bothered me when someone forces you to connect to the internet when you want to play a game. I don't have internet at home [yea, believe it] and imagine how I felt when I missed the fine print on my Half Life 2: Collector's Edition. For those unfamiliar with how Valve operates, you need to activate all their software through Steam. If you don't have the internet access, you're screwed. You paid, you have the product, and yet it is incomplete untill the game downloads some additional data and confirms your code. Idiots!

 

I'm kind of torn. I like the idea of the developer getting a larger cut of the money, but obviously I prefer hard copies. The fact that the developer has to undercut the physical equivalent, largely negates the former advantage.

I sympathise with your frustration with Steam, but I'm sure there workarounds once you've legitimately acquired the data. I have no qualms with making personal backups of data I've paid for (can't imagine many people do, for that matter).

 

That's the thing. You can't do anything by yourself with an original Steam game. You can either activate it online, or download a cracked version that runs without Steam. There are no "cracks" that make your own copy work. But since you might aswell activate the damn thing if you're able to download a cracked version, the problem doesn't exist. For those with internet.

I even mailed Valve about it, telling them I'll gladly supply the proof of purchase and my legitimate unlock code, if they can give me a solution to my problem. I got no reply. I posted the problem on various forums asking if there is any way to unlock the game, but usually it was either a stupid comment like "register online" or just a plain "no" plus *topic closed*.

When I was researching the subject I found out that people really complain about Steam services and updates. That it can actually screw up, rather than fix the game at times, and so on.

I've purchased both Half Life 2: Episode 1 and Sin: Episodes - Emergence, and I still haven't played them because I had no way of activating the games. I owned Episode 1 about a week before its Steam launch. This sucks, because I was one of the first people to get it, and I still haven't played it.

 

I'd vaguely been aware of this but not really believed it. As far as I'm concerned that's a fundamentally useless distribution method. What happens if Valve/Vivendi go out of business next week? How about 8 years from now, given that I'm still playing Half-life every now and again? What happens if I'm stuck without a viable internet connection? If Steam uses UDP packets I'd be screwed at uni since my network provider doesn't allow the protocol. What if, 5 years down the line, Valve get tired of hosting some of the stuff I've paid for? At what point does the innevitable "sales lost due to pissed off customers vs. money we'll save on hosting" equation come into effect (if at all, I suppose hosting costs will keep reducing)?

If I pay for a download, I do not expect DRM-esque nonsense. One of the reasons I buy CDs instead of using iTunes (and will continue to buy DVDs instead of using whichever dominant video download store emerges) is because I value the ability to make proper backups of data I own. In ten year's time some of my shop bought CDs will probably be disintegrating and there's no way in hell I'm re-buying my entire music collection. At that stage I will certainly not want to be fiddling around with some archaic copy protection. I do not want to be told I don't have the right to use what I have bought, at any stage. Thumbs down to Valve for such a restrictive system.

 

There are two things that I can think of that might get in the way of a GoD takeover.

Internet connections are getting quicker, but at the same time games are getting larger. And getting a good connection is hard, which leaves you stuck in the situation of never being able to find the fast connection you need, because although connections are getting faster games are getting larger, and as you live in an area that always gets upgraded too late games have got larger again (sorry if that's a bit of a muddle).
The thought of downloading a PS3 game with an average UK connection is a scary one indeed. I have 2MB, but I'm lucky. A lot of my friends are still stuck with low end broadband speeds or even (shudder) dial up. "8MB Broadband" is a huge false promise.

The other thing is actually paying for these downloads. As much as I try my £10 notes refuse to be magically sucked into my floppy drive to pay for downloads. If you don't have a credit card you don't stand a hope in hell of buying a download. And as a good deal of gamers don't have cards, access to cards (as kids with tight parents will know), or are just unwilling to use their cards that is going to be a major problem. There are alternatives, such as pre-paid cards, but how often do you honestly come across these? The only ones I have found so far are the Xbox Live cards, and those are often tucked under a stack of returns at the back of the counter. Unless a widely used alternative method of payment appears, companies could risk cutting out a good deal of their customers.

Myself, I don't do the download thing. An mp3 is a bunch of electric jiggery, it's not a thing you buy. It's also electric jiggery that can be taken away from you at any time thanks to carefully worded small print. When I buy music I buy the CD. When I buy games, I go to Gamestation or Play.com. Apart from 1 or 2 bits from the Live Marketplace I steer well clear of it all. If gaming does go GoD only, I'd likely stop buying new games. There are already more retro games than I'll ever have time to play, so I wouldn't exactly be stuck for choice. Perhaps I'd get round to playing some of the stack of unopened games sitting on my desk then.

 

To get a reliable cable 10MB connection in the UK costs at least £35. Also its not available everywhere and if most people did want to sign up then they wont be able to cope with the demand for 10MB connections being used all the time. Also most ISPs now put a limit on how much you can download in a month. Downloading DVD sized games would kill that limit pretty fast.

 

OK first I want to make something clear: I'm not a GoD PR guy, k? I'm not like that guy concorda or whatever his name was. I dont like GoD either but the reality is Valve right now is reaping the benefits, they are literally shoving money into buckets, all thanks to their GoD system, Steam.

Obviously Steam is exagerated due to the extreme piracy that Valve had to stand against in titles like the ever popular counter strike. Other companies may go into a lesser strict layout, like the iTunes.

Your console is broke? then you're screwed, simple as that. Maybe they will offer some kind of backup option, like a online register that says what games you owned so you can download those again, who knows...

Is GoD good for gamers like us? no, it sucks, but the reality is both developers and publishers are facing increasing costs issues and this system could solve all of them.

Now (and here's when it gets weird) this could lead to a paradox: if they go GoD on the market they may get rejected, and the industry would crash. BUT, if they dont the costs may hit the critical point and the industry would crash anyways. And even that, if the industry crashed I dont see a better way to jump-start it than a GoD service of sorts. After all, if VGs crash, by the time the industry is back on track most people may be downloading both music, TV and movies.

About PS3, I already said the system is going to be like the Saturn, but now I want to add that BR games will be like SegaCD games. Remember those? the genesis games that only got a new soundtrack and FMV scenes? Well that's what you can expect from PS3 multiconsole games. Look at GTASA, is HUGE yet its barely 5GBs. Most games fit in a 4.7 DVD, how you fill up a 25GB BR disc? or a 50GB one? Easy, you just shove FMVs, stupid options and shit. Is obvious they are going to do that, some dude at Squeenix just said the problem with X360 using DVDs is that they wouldnt be able to fit all the FMVs from the PS3 games...

 

The only way we will see On Demand purchases, is if have a download license, which will alleviate the burden of the busted console. No company is stupid enough to offer a model in which your investment of X dollars per game ($30? $40? $50?) will be completely lost when your most likely shoddily built console breaks. It won't happen. While the public probably IS stupid enough to fall for such tactics, I think there's a large enough band of smart people which will cry foul, preventing it from happening.

And you said crash way too much in your post. Everyone on the internet has been saying the games market will crash for a long time. The one thing they all have in common is that none of them knows dick about economics.

 

A market or even an economy (as in a country) crashes when deficit (costs and loss) is higher than the superavit (profit). Is not rocket science you know...

On the other hand, the only way I think GoD may end up replacing printed games is by a Tivo-like system, were you download a certain number of games using a monthly subscription, and then the archives deletes themselves after some time. For many people it would be cheaper than normal gaming, plus I dont see most gamers are happy with Steam layout anyways.

BTW, remember this: is not what gamers want, but what publishers and corporations want to do.....

 

One company that would stricly use games on demand was infinium's phantom. I was there in the unveiling. The way the distribution worked was that you sign up for certain plans or just pay per game. You then download the game but you dont have to wait for the game to finish downloading before playing because the games would be programmed in a way that you can start playing part of the game after a certain amount of it has been downloaded. If you run out of space, you can 'archive' it onto the master server. Which was basically the server kept reciepts of purchases/downloads. You can go ahead and delete the old game from the HDD to d/l more games but if you ever want to play it again, you dont ahve to purchase it again, just download it again.

As long as the whole games on demand is redundant does not have a lot of licensing strings attached to it, it will take off very well. Of course, high bandwith is required, but the VG industry can't embark on a new medium if there won't be enough support to sustain it. So until there is a majority, great majority of console owners who have high-bandwith internet access, then we will start to see companies transition from physical distribution to digital. A market crash won't make it happen, and I doubt one will happen anytime soon if at all.

Certain things need to happen first before such major changes can occur. If infinium wasn't the crook it was, and they were legit and released a console, the whole games on demand concept would have been executed very well but would've been short lived due to its limited market share while requiring profits as if it were a main contender in order to stay afloat. The console would've been short lived.

 

So what happens when the deficit, or debt hits 3 trillion dollars?

Despite what Sony and M$ think, consumers decide what publishers do. If people buy it, they will make it. Twas always thus, and always thus will be. The real issue is, there's a new generation of gamers, and unfortunately, they are made up of basic every day people that aren't always the brightest. In fact, most are complete blockheads.

 

Which is why the pendulum might swing their way. It kinda is already, just take a look at the DMCA.