Most Console Gamers Still Prefer Physical Media 232
arcticstoat writes "Despite the advent of online game stores on all three major consoles, most console gamers apparently still prefer hoarding collections of gaming discs to downloading games. A recent survey conducted by Ipsos in the UK revealed that 64 per cent of the 1,000 users polled would rather have games on physical discs, while only 25 per cent would prefer digital copies. In the survey, 55 per cent of those polled said price was the key factor in determining their interest in downloading games, while 27 per cent said they wanted games available online before they were in the shops. Ipsos' director Ian Bramley explained, 'Interest absolutely drops away when you get to the types of pricing that you might charge for a new physical disc. People's perceptions are that they're not prepared to pay as much for digital content — they make the connection that it's not a physical disc and therefore it should be cheaper.'"
Why I prefer physical media (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I can trade it in when I'm done.
Re:Why I prefer physical media (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why I prefer physical media (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Why I prefer physical media (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why I prefer physical media (Score:5, Insightful)
Or buy used. Both the core of "they make the connection that it's not a physical disc and therefore it should be cheaper" - people have control over what happens to physical media.
Re:Why I prefer physical media (Score:5, Interesting)
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You can lend and sell Steam games as long as you create a different account per game - at least that's what people tell me.
Re:Why I prefer physical media (Score:5, Insightful)
You can lend and sell Steam games as long as you create a different account per game - at least that's what people tell me.
That's not what the Steam Subscriber Agreement [steampowered.com] says:
You are entitled to use the Steam Software for your own use, but you are not entitled to: (i) sell, grant a security interest in or transfer reproductions of the Steam Software to other parties in any way, nor to rent, lease or license the Steam Software to others without the prior written consent of Valve
and also:
When you complete Steam's registration process, you create a Steam account ("Account"). Your Account may also include billing information you provide to us for the purchase of Subscriptions. You are solely responsible for all activity on your Account and for the security of your computer system. You may not reveal, share or otherwise allow others to use your password or Account. You agree that you are personally responsible for the use of your password and Account and for all of the communication and activity on Steam that results from use of your login name and password. You may not sell or charge others for the right to use your Account, or otherwise transfer your Account.
(emphasis added by me)
I know illegal doesn't mean impossible, but that's another discussion.
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Yeah, except Steam doesn't sell games. They get around that nasty doctrine called "first sale" by selling subscriptions to game. Subscriptions that basically last forever, but regardless.
As the brother post says, its all in the licensing agreement - although if someone did sue and a court forced Valve to allow first sale of that nature things would be pretty topsy turvey in the digital gaming world.
Re:Why I prefer downloads (Score:2, Insightful)
Steam.
I have re-purchased games after losing the disc, scratching the disc, loaning it to a friend (who lost it/forgot to return it/damaged it), losing the installation code, etc.
So far Valve has done a good job in my opinion. I will continue to buy my games via Steam and play them on my desktop at home, my media center PC, my laptop, and occasionally even my desktop at work -all with a single purchase.
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There's your problem. You think that it's acceptable to have to repurchase games simply because of a small problem like scratching the disc. Used to be that game companies would actually mail you a new disc if you sent in the old one. Not anymore.
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Agreed, I've found the risk analysis for my habits to come down in favor of Steam for the most part, too. The risk of Steam disappearing forever or having a temporary outage is less than my risk of harming my disk or temporarily misplacing it. The fact that my most-played Steam games are also multiplayer (and thus require an internet connection anyway) helps, too.
I still prefer physical media for consoles, though. I chalk it up to a combination of the planned obsolescence of the platform, smaller HDD, v
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I totally agree with you. In slashdot there is this stigma about trading a physical good for a digital one. Don't get me wrong i love buying music CD's but when i do it i get a personal satisfaction feeling and nostalgia that is not really connected to the end product which is music. The music is equal to the flac or high quality mp3 counterpart.
But i also find that steam is a good platform for a games library that is both versatile and convenient.
Some users replied that they can't sell their games or that
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Steamworks is coming to the PS3, as per VALVe [gamespot.com] themselves, so there's hope. And Portal 2 will be playable across platforms, meaning you can play on your PS3 and then fire it up on your PC or Mac and start right where you left off.
And that's exactly why. (Score:2)
On a console, I prefer a physical disc, because at least that way, if I lose/break the console, I don't lose ALL my games.
With Steam, or anything similar, or anything actually DRM-free, I would much rather have a digital download. It's far more convenient, so long as I can actually, legitimately, easily make backups -- or, in the case of Steam, Valve has it backed up for me.
Re:Why I prefer physical media (Score:5, Insightful)
This is also why I don't think a book an ebook is worth more than $10, as long as it is released on the day of the hardback, and on $4 if it is more than a year old. With a physical book there is some inherent value. It can be sold, lent, given away. Many people can read it, and the cost of the book has to include that a certain number of sales are lost due to this. But an e-book kils the secondary market, so it does not have the value. This may mean that some people make less. So be it. There is no inherent right to profit.
Re:Why I prefer physical media (Score:5, Informative)
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Also, if your hard drive becomes corrupted, or whoever you bought it from loses the records of your purchase you can still play your game.
Actually, this is the main advantage of the downloaded game over the disc. If your hard drive dies, you can always re-download the game you purchased via download. If you scratch or otherwise break your disc copy, you're fucked.
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Digital downloads of software automatically get categorized as "ephemeral" or "rental" in my head. Great for the yearly purchase of Turbo Tax. Seriously, I have 15 year old games I occasionally play from companies that have been out of business for ages. Annoying enough to try and track down some fan site that may have some
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It even comes with a piggyback Ni-Cd Battery adapter, so that you can carry it around with your laptop.
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I have a zip250 usb I keep around...
Just in case.
Re:Why I prefer physical media (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, I can't sell them but they're only a fiver. I loss far more money selling a brand new game after a couple of months.
AND (Score:2)
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Yup. I put 50 hours into Red Dead Redemption for the 360, then Amazon paid me $40 for my used copy (they are currently offering $32.50), they even paid for the shipping.
And yes, it's an Amazon gift card, not cash, but I spend so much at Amazon that to me it is the same as cash.
That's 50 hours of entertainment for a little over $20. I would not be able to do this if I bought a full game download for the console. At least in the 360, you would only be able to play it in the original console that was used to b
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Ok... no way to compare it with a PS3 or XBOX, but I wonder if 20+ years from now, and just for fun, one will be able to just plug in the console and play a game based on digitally distributed media.
I know the XBox 360 DRM licenses itself to the console you download it on (and can be relicensed once a year, if you get a new one), so as long as your original hardware works it should work even if MS burns the servers. So you're trading the inability to lose individual games for the unfortunate fact that if the console goes, so do all the games.
DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
We're so used to getting dicked around with the inability to format shift digital media that the only thing that seems safe is physical media.
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Yeah because they don't put DRM on the physical media....
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It's fairly transperent in comparison to some of the DRM the world has seen; carried over (say, to new owner) directly by the physical media itself.
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They do but it's easily cracked and once that happens there's nothing the company can do to put the genie back in the bottle.
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PS. "Transparent" in the context of the story at least, console physical media.
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Re:DRM (Score:4, Interesting)
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Just download a No CD crack. There's no reason to have the CD in for most games (well there may be music on there but for stuff like GTA you can copy it to the game directory).
Re:DRM (Score:5, Funny)
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True, but that's what virus scanners are for (and Firefox/noscript etc).
I only ever downloaded No CD cracks for the GTA III series and maybe a couple of other games. I was pretty wary of them at first and obviously scanned for viruses, but they were fine.
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True, but that's what virus scanners are for (and Firefox/noscript etc).
And virtual machine sandboxes.
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Don't forget backwards game companies, Nintendo the main culprit, who fail at letting legitimate owners of their stupid products migrate our games to the next device. I call shenanigans!!1! I buy a Wii, would love to buy a black one, but can't because of special MarioDRM which makes me purchase the downloaded content all over again. I buy a DSi, would love to buy a DSxl, but can't because of MarioDRM. Nice work, Nintendo! You are teh suck! You just made me walk away from two new system purchases. Tha
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That's funny, because I'd say Nintendo generally has _more_ backward compatibility... or at least did in the past.
GameBoy games worked all the way through the Game Boy Advance, correct? So that's July 31, 1989 (in NA) through Feb 2003 (release of Game Boy Advance SP). Of course, I'm talking about the original games, and I'm not sure if you are or not.. But that's pretty long backward compatibility.
Can't trade a download (Score:5, Insightful)
The only download game I bought was GTAIV-TLAD and almost as soon as I bought it they brought out the physical copy Episodes from Liberty City with that and the Ballad of Gay Tony on it. It was twice the price of the download but didn't require a large chunk of the disc space on my Xbox (20GB launch system) so I waited until one came up pre-owned cheap and picked that up. So, I've bought TLAD twice now. If I had bought a real disc I could sell it and get some money back but I can't. Great from the game publishers but crap for buyers. I won't do it again and in fact the vast majority of games I buy are preowned or discounted substantially such as Bioshock 2 bought brand new for half price. In 6 months or so I'll pick up Red Dead Redemption once all the fuss has died down and pre-owned copies hit the market at a decent price.
For me, if I had to buy games at full price I think I would stop buying them pretty much all together so none of my money would go into the industry - download games are just bad news.
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Your main issue here seems to be lack of hard drive space.. though the Xbox does have a really weird system there so I maybe can't advise you to upgrade it. I bought a 40GB PS3 and shoved a 320GB HDD in there, I'm very happy to buy stuff online if it's cheaper. No having to wait days for delivery or go shopping, just download the game in a few minutes and go.
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Well it does depend on the size of the game, but at those speeds you should be able to download a whole DVD in the time it would take you to walk a marathon!
Downloading overnight is always an option, and depending on how close the shops are and available methods of transport, may still be more convenient for a lot of people. When the online version is actually cheaper (as it should be) then it's an easy choice to make IMO.
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Steam is a great model but it doesn't work that way for console games. For example, when I bought HL2 for the PC originally, I had to register with Steam to get the game to install and after that I didn't ever had to put the disc in the machine again. Recently I set up Steam on my Mac and it listed all the games I'd installed on that long gone PC and it downloaded the compatible games again for me. Sure, I can't really sell the game on but the benefit of redownloading for nothing is a decent trade. With
We're in it for the long haul (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally, if I have a physical copy of the game, I can expect to still run it 20 years later, long after their authentication servers have bit the dust. I still play Alpha Centauri and Civ3 fairly often, and occasionally dig out the old N16 games.
Re:We're in it for the long haul (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally, if I have a physical copy of the game, I can expect to still run it 20 years later, long after their authentication servers have bit the dust.
That may have been true in the past, but these days, games purchased on physical media are just as DRM encumbered as their digital download brethren. It doesn't matter if you purchase Assassin's Creed 2 on a physical disk or as a digital download. It'll still communicate with its DRM servers as you play. These days, all you're paying for is a license key. The physical copy of the game is just a convenience, as you can generally install more quickly from a physical disk rather than a network connection.
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All of my ps3 games work without network connectivity. My PC games work with the community provided patches.
The PS3 games will work with an emulator one day too, just like my ps1 and 2 games do now.
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You have a lot of faith in the emulator scene. Todays consoles are much more complicated, and much harder to emulate. If that weren't enough, they're encumbered by all sorts of DRM emulator authors will have to crack. I don't think we'll be seeing PS3/360 emulators for a long, long time.
Of course they have to be cheaper digitally (Score:5, Insightful)
No resources are wasted on materials, packaging, shipping or handling. Just electricity.
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eh.... (Score:2)
If I had the ability to move my downloaded games easily between one console and another, then I wouldn't mind download-only games. As it stands, unless a game is of OMFGMUSTPLAYNAO quality (I'm looking at you, 'Splosion Man, Shadow Complex, Cuboid, and others), I generally stay away from them.
Ironically (or not), unless there is a killer special edition, I exclusively buy PC games on Steam now.
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It's kind of strange, isn't it? Sure, with Steam you can move your games from PC to PC, but it really doesn't solve the whole "what if the servers are not around in 10 years" issue. Yet, Steam is such a convenient package that I use it. Good execution, I guess.
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Remember, you don't need to buy this stuff, you don't need to purchase or pirate music or videos or games. You can just sto
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If a game with Draconian DRM comes around, and is multiplatform, I'll just get it on a console. Publishers are usually the ones who dictate DRM, and I wouldn't want to punish developers due to a business decision beyond their control.
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With the insane price cuts this week, I've found myself buying games from Steam for Euro rather than ordering a boxed version for Polish Zloty because it's cheaper after the -75% cut. It's crazy.
Umm.....it SHOULD be cheaper! (Score:5, Funny)
Gee...imagine that. Introduce a method that eliminates the need of ALL packaging costs, ware house storage, shipping costs, duplicating hardware, the initial cost of the physical media, the cost of printed manuals, and customers expect the price to go DOWN? Plus we have get the added benefit of DRM lock in! Who do they think they are? Don't they understand we need to profit at all costs?! The audacity.
Re:Umm.....it SHOULD be cheaper! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a major consumer misconception. While I'm the first person on the "give me reliable physical media that you can't revise post-purchase a la 1984" bandwagon, I've spent a long time dealing with smaller publishers in switching to digital distribution models (and all the while explaining why DRM is evil), and I was surprised as anyone to learn that packaging costs, storage, shipping, hardware, printing, and media costs are an infintesimal part of the production cost. More than that, digital distribution comes with its own set of incredibly high costs that actually outpaces traditional distribution: data servers, drive platters, support staff, server storage location... not to mention all of the costs that remain the same - graphic design, advertising, product placement, and even physical-copy game-cards so people without/uncomfortable with using credit cards online can purchase too -- which all has to incur traditional packaging costs, warehouse storage, shipping costs, duplicating hardware, physical media, package printing, etc.
Not to mention online advertising is a total b*tch to do right. With a physical product, it has the added benefit of advertising itself (forgetting for a moment retailer practice of charging for shelf-space placement). With digital, no one knows it's there unless you're paying someone to advertise it for you, or giving them a substantial chunk of the pie. So yes, digital distribution is not only going to NOT cost less, it's probably going to cost a whole lot more. Just look at e-book pricing arguments, because the same amount of work is going into them, and that work usually costs a lot more. Web developers get paid $75-$125 / hr. industry rate; truckers get a touch over minimum wage. Why bother with digital downloads, then, if it's going to cost more? Perishability and tracking. Not only can you ensure a 1-1 purchase / use rate by destroying the secondary market, you can also research market variables by looking at the profiles of who is downloading your media and what other kinds of media they are purchasing. Hence, this is why DRM has become so attractive to publishers, because in everyone's cry for digital distribution, what everyone REALLY wanted was cheaper IP, and publishers as for-profit organizations were compelled to recoup on profits lost by the shift to digital distribution.
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Further Misconception (Score:2)
There is a bout 30 feet of shelf space in most non specialty stores that sell computer games. That might be room for all the titles in 1982, but that isn't going to cut it now.
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No, digital distribution is more convenient, by their reckoning it MUST be more expensive.
wtf? (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite the advent of online game stores on all three major consoles, most console gamers apparently still prefer hoarding collections of gaming discs to downloading games
You know, that might have a lot to do with the fact that most titles are never available for download until they're 5 years of age or older. It's like saying "more people prefer chocolate to vanilla" in a store that only sells chocolate.
Because I can Keep it (Score:2)
There are some games that will never, EVER get a re-release so the only way I can ensure I enjoy something for years to come is to actually buy the damn thing and keep it.
So far the only thing that has foiled this is theft...
Duh, a no brainer (Score:5, Insightful)
Physical media will always be far superior to digital.
1) Can buy the game used. Instead of paying $60 for a game, you can wait a few weeks and get it for $35-40. Within a few months, it's available for $20-30 while Steam still sells it for $60.
2) It can be resold. After you spend 10 hours finishing that game, you can turn it around and resell it for 80% of its buying price. You can then apply that money towards #1 and buy another game for cheap.
3) You're not stuck with it. How many games, honestly, do you still play after a year? Maybe one or two. Why be permanently stuck with a game that you'll never play again? And why be stuck with a game that sucks? How about those poor saps that paid $60 for Terminator Salvation, discovered the game could be beaten in 5 hours, and had absolutely no replay value?
4) You can trade games. The ultimate barter. Tired of a game and need a break? Trade with a friend for a month. Want to see if a game is really fun? Borrow it from a friend. Downloadable demos do not compare.
5) A visual reminder. Having a physical boxed item is a visual reminder that you have a game that you can play. I compare this to the Humble Games bundle I bought a few weeks back. I honestly keep forgetting that I have these games to play, since they're just icons on my desktop along with dozens of others. It's different than being bored and walking to a bookcase to view through a physical collection.
Re:Duh, a no brainer (Score:4, Insightful)
Physical media will always be far superior to digital.
Single-user registration keys are gradually eroding all the benefits save not having to download.
The visual reminder thing is silly. That's why we have icons. Make sure your games have 'em.
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Physical media will always be far superior to digital.
Not really no. Physical media takes up space.
1) Can buy the game used. Instead of paying $60 for a game, you can wait a few weeks and get it for $35-40. Within a few months, it's available for $20-30 while Steam still sells it for $60.
You can still theoretically sell a non-DRM digitial copy, and delete the original, though you'd have to be honest about it. You used the word 'always' initially which implies that at no future point will humanity be honest in this way.
2) It can be resold. After you spend 10 hours finishing that game, you can turn it around and resell it for 80% of its buying price. You can then apply that money towards #1 and buy another game for cheap.
See 1.
3) You're not stuck with it. How many games, honestly, do you still play after a year? Maybe one or two. Why be permanently stuck with a game that you'll never play again? And why be stuck with a game that sucks? How about those poor saps that paid $60 for Terminator Salvation, discovered the game could be beaten in 5 hours, and had absolutely no replay value?
Er, there's always the delete/uninstall button...?
4) You can trade games. The ultimate barter. Tired of a game and need a break? Trade with a friend for a month. Want to see if a game is really fun? Borrow it from a friend. Downloadable demos do not compare.
Swap (non-drm) digital copies, and both parties can delete their initial originals. Problem solved.
5) A visual reminder. Having a physical boxed item is a visual reminder that you have a game that you can play.
Get a nicer presentation system then. In the future, we'll have 200" OLED mon
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The grandparent post deals with the realities of DRM, you are living in a fantasy land where the games are not DRM. So while it's true that in theory digital media is better, in practice DRM makes it so that it is not.
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Physical media will always be far superior to digital.
That must explain why you wrote this on paper as a letter to the editor of a newspaper, rather than on an internet forum. Oh, wait.
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I'm sorry for your loss.
The real complaint... (Score:2)
Their real complaint is that consumers are not willing to pay full price for something they cannot turn around and sell when they are done with it.
Also, it is cheaper for the publishers to distribute downloads then it is for physical media. Why shouldn't we get some of that discount passed on to us? This sounds like the RIAA model: Distribution is cheaper, so we get a bigger profit margin. Screw the customers for thinking they should get what they pay for!
Mr. Bramley just doesn't get it...
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Distribution of physical media is so cheap anyway, how much do you think it costs to press cd/dvd media in bulk?
The cost of distribution has been getting cheaper and cheaper for years, while the cost of prerecorded media has steadily gone up... Downloads are simply the next step to further gouge the customers.
Uhm, disk space also a factor. (Score:4, Informative)
I've got somewhere around 20 or so PS3 games and only a 40GB HDD.
Even if you assumed I had upgraded to a 500 gig disk, at about ~10 to upwards of ~40gigs per game, usually 10, my drive starts to fill up. Fast. And I still need to store saves, music, video and everything else.
Screw that.
Just give me discs.
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at about ~10 to upwards of ~40gigs per game
How is the PS3 so inefficient? Downloadable games on the Wii are only 10 to 40 megs.
Mkay Mr. Troll. Here's how the PS3 is so "inefficient": It has games that offer dozens (perhaps hundreds) of hours of visually rich, unique content. Oddly enough, you need gigs and gigs of textures and sounds and movies to achieve this. Not everyone has game tastes that stop at Wii Tennis, with its grand total of 2 textures.
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yes, if i wanted to play Strider or Super Mario Bros or Final Fantasy IV the After Years.
However, if I wanted to play Mario Galaxy 2?
The ISO is roughly 4 gigs big. You fit more than 5 games on a 16 gig SD card.
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Hmm...
I think I'd generally go with the 10 meg version.
No suprise (Score:2)
Also, physical media can be sold on, downloads.... not so much
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if i pay for it, i want it in a shiny container that i can put with the rest of my collection.
That's just vanity. You're contributing to waste and environmental damage just to stroke your ego. Quite outdated thinking.
Also, physical media can be sold on, downloads.... not so much
Now that's a decent reason to buy the physical media. Just wanting a shiny package... not so much.
sony ps3 otheros and blocking access to PSN (Score:2)
With many games retailing for a lot more than $10, I refuse to buy without a resale option, so I nearly always buy physical media... usually 2nd hand off ebay, since I'm late to the PS3 so even old games are still new to me. That said, I've downloaded lots of demos from the PSN, and did buy one game off it (lemmings) because it was quite cheap and not being able to trade it in or swap with friends doesn't matter too much.
Another reason is that I've got an old firmware, as I'm still holding on to OtherOs/
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Along with what you said:
People's perceptions are that they're not prepared to pay as much for digital content -- they make the connection that it's not a physical disc and therefore it should be cheaper.
I have this problem with eBooks, too... many paperbacks cost nearly just as much as the physical versions, but you have no right to resale.
I feel we're saving the manufacturers a pretty significant amount by buying electronic only versions, they ought to make it worthwhile for us... that is, unless they wan
People aren't all dumb (Score:2)
They know that being able to resell the physical disk is worse something.
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Cost... (Score:2)
People assume that a download is worth less than a physical copy because they can't physically hold it, however if you consider the actual cost of a dvd the difference in cost will be a couple of cents at most.
There is also the worry that downloads will be tied to something arbitrary like an account or a single piece of hardware, which you may lose access to and thus lose your games.
Personally i prefer downloaded games that i can store on an HD to the hassles of physical media, then again the only game down
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People assume that a download is worth less than a physical copy because they can't physically hold it, however if you consider the actual cost of a dvd the difference in cost will be a couple of cents at most.
Let's not forget about the printed booklet (which is vastly expensive if you listen to ubisoft), the box it's held in, the plastic wrap around that box, the cost of loading it onto a truck, moving said truck halfway across the US, unloading it from the truck again, and getting some highschool monkey to put it on the shelves. The shelf space itself may cost money too.
It's still bullshit that physical games cost so much, but that doesn't mean there are no costs involved with producing them.
Plays4sure (Score:2)
As of August 31, 2008, we will no longer be able to support the retrieval of license keys for the songs you purchased from MSN Music or the authorization of additional computers. You will need to obtain a license key for each of your songs downloaded from MSN Music on any new computer, and you must do so before August 31, 2008. If you attempt to transfer your songs to additional computers after August 31, 2008, those songs will not successfully play.
IIRC they did allow a short time for people to quickly burn their purchases onto audio CD.
A music collection is usually supposed to survive sitting in a corner mostly undisturbed for years. You shouldn't have to periodically "maintain" it to keep stuff from not playing anymore. You shouldn't have to watch your email for announcements. You should be able to wake up from a coma and pull out any arbitrary album, despite how long it's been there, and assume that it will play.
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People assume that a download is worth less than a physical copy because they can't physically hold it, however if you consider the actual cost of a dvd the difference in cost will be a couple of cents at most...
About 5 years ago the cost breakdown for a CD sold in a store included 80 cents for packaging/manufacturing, 90 cents for distribution, 80 cents for retail proft, and $3.89 for retail overhead. So if we are talking about retail price in a store selling the game, the cost of making and distributing that disk added up (then) to $6.39. See: http://wizbangblog.com/content/2004/10/14/does-a-cd-have.php [wizbangblog.com]
Even the taking retailing costs entirely out of the picture it is $1.70. Do the game makers only sell their di
Really? (Score:2)
No shit sherlock. Fer real?
it's the licensing that kills ya (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate physical media. It's a pain in the ass. I'll tolerate getting DVD's from netflix but I'd prefer if everything streamed. I'm damn well never buying another DVD again. Of course, life is made easier by being able to torrent what I can't get through netflix. I'm also very happy reading my books electronically. Sometimes reference hardcopy is nice but for novels and the like, electronic is the way to go. But they dick you too hard through the online stores. And that's the weakness with the games.
As far as games go, they're screwing you six ways from Sunday. You have to buy from the official store. I know on itunes for iphone apps you have to back it up yourself since they won't let you download it again if you lose it. I don't know how Xbox handles that sort of thing. I know people are complaining about trying to migrate downloads from console to console so I guess they're handling it poorly. And then there's the issue on getting discounted used games, trade-ins, borrowing a game from a friend, etc. Can't do any of that with downloads. And the hard drives on the consoles are so limited. 20gb for an Xbox? please. Oh, they came out with a 250gb. Whooptie fucking doo. You run out of space real quick and they sure as hell won't let you hook up an external drive via usb.
So given the current state of the industry, I'm stuck preferring physical game media to downloads, but that's only due to the legal constraints. If not for that, downloads would be the way to go, same as it is with PC.
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You have to buy from the official store. I know on itunes for iphone apps you have to back it up yourself since they won't let you download it again if you lose it.
That is completely untrue. [yahoo.com] Your iTunes apps are saved to your account, so if you accidentally or intentionally delete something, you can download it again.
I don't know how Xbox handles that sort of thing.
The exact same way. All purchases are tied to your account. Sure, if the servers go down then you're boned, but then you could have just backed up your data in the first place.
[A]nd they sure as hell won't let you hook up an external drive via usb
You can set up 16 Gb partitions for use with USB media [xbox.com] to back up all of your game content and saves, minus disk images of physical disks (downloads work fine) and user data, wh
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What's more, when you buy stuff on an XBox, you effectively get two licenses to the content. One belongs to your gamer-tag, and one is a transferrable copy that you can migrate between your 'home' console. If you're not logged in, anyone using that 'home' console can also use the content. and if you're at a friends place, you can use it on their console while you're logged in (but can't as soon as you log out).
Transferring the license between consoles is a little bit annoying, since you can only do it every
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>Of course, life is made easier by being able to torrent what I can't get through netflix.
BUT some of us don't mind supporting the company/artists for good/great work and could care less if its available for free as a torrent. We just want easy access and a price that reflects the digital version vs packaged hard medium. The reason I rarely buy any music/movie in digital format is that there are very few option in Canada and I WILL not pay $5 less for a digital copy when a hard copy costs $20. I'll do wi
Wii games don't move... (Score:4, Informative)
Downloaded Wii games live on the console, and can't get moved off to a new one. So while the Wii will play old Game Cube games, all your downloaded content will not be forward compatible to the Wii 2 (or whatever they come out with next). Physical media likely will have some sort of path forward if history is any lesson.
So yeah, disc please!
EA is why I'm soured on digital media (Score:3, Informative)
So a friend made (convinced) me to get BattleField 2142 right... So after a format or 3 (hardware issue) I wasn't able to play because I've hit the max install limits. I was very upset
So I hit the EA forums, and literally, a "mod" said to send him PM's with info and they'd help out. Although people were helped at first, that was the end of it. The "mod" said that EA people weren't going to "fix" those problems. That's when the outrage started!
So after hearing NOTHING back from EA directly, the "mod" was actually more helpful even though they didn't work for EA, I did what everyone else was doing (and suggested everyone else to do) which was reporting EA to the BBB. Big whoop right?
EA actually answered, once, and never again lol. So I said f this and forgot about it. Months later I tried it and sure enough it installed, with no surprise. I had found out that after a certain amount of time (I think weeks) the installs "get cleared" from their system and allow it to be installed once again on a "different" PC. What was different was the install, as the hardware (except one stick of RAM!), case, software and programs were all exactly the same! So since then I go out of my way to keep people from buying their games.
So yeah, whenever possible, I try to stick to physical media. Sure, it could have the same exact thing built into it, but I am not forced to install a downloader which downloads a game several GB's fat each and every time you want to reinstall. I backed up all my files and installers and it just didn't like that. It thought I was trying to trick it! So yeah, I played by their rules once, and they lost a customer and hopefully countless others as well.
How about a physical media that doesn't wear? (Score:2)
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Well of course I prefer physical media. (Score:2)
As said by many other people here, physical media isn't going away any time soon as long as they don't radically change how the system works. Games on physical media works so well that I can't imagine a console that only uses downloadable games to thrive. Lets take a look at the reasons why, shall we?
Pros for using physical media:
1) Buy it once and it's yours forever.
2) You can re-sell it when you'd like a little extra cash and you don't want it anymore.
3) You can back them up using various methods. (Ever s
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The mark up of the store combined with all the intermediaries is not negligible.
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I definitely agree, and that's the main reason I don't buy downloaded (GoG being the exception on PC. XBLA / PSN games I almost never consider).
I was just addressing the cost issue, not the value issue.
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Most importantly, digital distribution cuts out a couple layers of middle men.
If you are buying directly from the developer, or through a single intermediary then the asking price should be no higher than "wholesale".
Every time a physical product changes hands, someone needs to get their cut. It's no different for shiny discs with "content" on them.
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Even the initial day one prices are similar
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