The Future of Gaming

[MartyG]

Maybe we could merge this thread with one I made before:

http://www.bordersdown.net/showthrea...ture-Of-Gaming

Good call. But you didn't have a poll ( which is what I'm interested in )

[Skull Commander]

We could put merge threads and stick your poll on top (fnarr fnarr).

[PaTaito]

A game with great artwork and lovely book etc really isnt always the way things are nowadays though.

Personally i love the days of proper cardboard boxes and full colour beatifully illustrated manuals. Now for an increasing number of games we get an insert, and for many games a crappy 2 page manual which isnt always colour and some games have no manual at all lately.

EA are prime suspects for this, and with mario 3d i am guessing this will be more and more common.

In which case the neccessity for a physical copy other than sellable value alone is not there for me personally. I like a box on the shelf yes, but not something generic and unimaganitive.

When it comes down to the single point of being able to sell the game on, then that alone doesnt beat out the convenience factor in many downloadable games. For me anyways.

Then there is the bonus of not having to switch discs/carts etc, which is feeling more and more out of place for me these days.

If games were released with the quality of super famicom, jap gamecube, jap gameboy advance games, or even just plain old pal n64 quality boxes/manuals....then my view probably would be drastically different.

As it stands for me, at least in pal land...i embrace digital downloads.

[sj33]

As much as I support the existance of physical games, and share all the concerns that people have about the shift towards digital, there are contexts where it has it's place. One example being the EU release of Lunar on the PSP, which only received a release in Europe because of the ability to release it digitally. Digital has become a bit of a godsend for niche games.

[mr_sockochris]

I don't have much of a problem buying downloadable games if they're under ?20. But spending ?40 on something I can't sell on if it doesn't live up to my expectations? No thanks.

[charlesr]

I love having the choice.

However something that needs to be MASSIVELY improved is the interface for digital purchases.
Take for example my music collection. Super easy to navigate by genre/year/artist/album or search for trackname etc. (on squeezebox server). I presume equally as simple on iTunes. The whole thing is just a bunch of text lists too.

Looking for purchased games on the Xbox is pita, and looking for games to buy. It needs to be user modifiable I reckon. It's just so unwieldy with slow moving lists that you can only see 5 or 6 of at any time - I guess because of the need to work with kinect Massive artwork and stuff. Just show me a text list that I can swiftly go up and down with the pad, with useful filters in columns e.g. genre, age rating, year. See Battlefield 3's awesome server list filters. All the info at your fingertips FAST.

Similarly the LoveFilm streaming service on the Xbox is a pile of turd in terms of looking for stuff. There are no filters, so I have to trawl through vast quantities of TV episodes each of which has its own title, while searching for a film. It doesn't even keep a list of films started but not finished, so you have to find the damn thing again. Even a recently watched area would help - I couldn't even remember the name of the film I had started watching, so couldn't even use the quick search - had to try and retrace my steps back through genre.

[sadat]

Only four people, myself included, want solid copies of games? REALLY?

Look at what happened to GTI Club + on the PS3, or the Outrun online updates, which are now gone forever because of some random licensing issue. I want to be able to buy games, and own them, and keep them on my shelf to play whenever I want to -- and not have Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo or whoever else out there might want to have some say in the matter. If we're moving predominantly to a download only situation, then I want the prices to be massively lower to compensate for this -- and deep down, that still won't be good enough.

What's the point of having shelves if I can't fill them with crap?

['Press Start']

I want the physical game for current gen with the option of Digital downloads for games that cannot be played on current consoles i.e. PS1 games/SNES etc.

Digital download for xbox live arcade games is all good, but I can't get my head around purchasing a full priced game on digital download, unless it was something like Tale of Symphonia which costs less then it's hard copy.

I guess that puts me in the middle! Opps I voted solid copy all the way!

[Colin]

But spending ?40 on something I can't sell on if it doesn't live up to my expectations? No thanks.

And that pretty much sums it up. You pay ?40 for a retail game and you hate it, at least you can recoup most/some of your money and sell it straight on, not an option with a download. I don't have any problem with people wanting the download option, but i'll always prefer a physical copy. If we ever go download only at full retail prices, that'll be me done with new games.

[ETC]

Retail only for me I need something to go in my shelves, I do buy from psn but if the option of physical media is there I will always take it if they stop that I second ikobo I'll be done if its dl only


The fact that this still sits on my shelf and wasn't sold when I could have got a dl copy for ?20 pretty much sums up my views on it

[Decider-VT]

The future is precisely what concerns me. Digital distribution relies on the survival of the service delivering the content, and I don't like the idea of there being a possibility that games will be lost if a service like Xbox Live eventually disappears and there's no way to re-download them onto a compatible console. Backwards compatibility in new machines becomes more important than ever in that scenario, yet nobody seems to have an acceptable long-term commitment outlined for this sort of thing yet. At least physical media allows for easy archiving.

Edit: ah, thread merge means that these points have been made in the new OP. Gah!

['Press Start']

The fact that this still sits on my shelf and wasn't sold when I could have got a dl copy for ?20 pretty much sums up my views on it

Yeah but what if you hadn't purchased it yet and would you pay ?55 on ebay or ?20 on download?

[J0e Musashi]

Digital download only is gonna happen. They've just been testing us with this PSN and Live thing. No manufacturing costs and complete eradication of used games. Only gonna be one winner here and it isn't us, but given that we have no other choice, we'll do what they say.

OnLive must be a thorn in a few sides I reckon.

[Neon Ignition]

It will happen... but not for a very, very, very long time

[ETC]

Yeah but what if you hadn't purchased it yet and would you pay ?55 on ebay or ?20 on download?

Nope I'd pay ?38 at Cex I don't want a game with a 3 year time limit (sure I heard that somewhere)