Sony Computer Entertainment Europe President Predicts End of Disc Delivery

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
Messages
4,646
The president of Sony’s Computer Entertainment business in Europe believes that the disc-based delivery system will be supplanted by digital delivery “as the power of the network base rises.” PSM3 magazine doesn’t agree.

"For consoles, digital distribution is a novelty. The PlayStation Store still feels like a testing ground and, with a few exceptions, its downloadable content consists entirely of videos and simple arcade games. Don't expect to see anything to match the likes of PC's Steam for some time. Until more people take their consoles online - hundreds of thousands of PS3 owners still haven't - boxed, disc-based games will still be peoples' first choice."
Click to expand...
 
how inexpensive is it again to press out some discs and put them in dvd boxes? im all for digital downloads, but there are disadvantages to those too. furthermore if its cheaper to do online downloads then why do they charge more for the game online then you can usually find it for at a B&M store?
 
This is funny considering how poorly PSN performs. Disc delivery will go extinct when it takes less time to download than it does to go out and buy the disc.
 
krupted said:
how inexpensive is it again to press out some discs and put them in dvd boxes? im all for digital downloads, but there are disadvantages to those too. furthermore if its cheaper to do online downloads then why do they charge more for the game online then you can usually find it for at a B&M store?
Click to expand...


Because if your digital download store undercuts the price of the B&M stores, they will not put your game on the shelf. If the large B&M stores become irrelevant, which I think will eventually happen as far as game media goes, the pricing will not be so arbitrary. It will start following more standard economic rules.
 
With all isp's starting to meter downloads now i dont see this happening in the future.
 
Except that ISPs are probably going to start throttling the distribution method to save bandwidth and "increase customer satisfaction" :rolleyes:
 
Won't ever happen there are just too many problems. First no rentals, only demos. That is a huge disadvantage that will never go away. Don't forget there will be no way to let friends or relatives borrow your game. With ISPs wanting to put caps on people, the service will never take off with games already hitting over 9GB. Time to download will vary from user to user and this IMO can never take off till a minimum of 10Mbps unlimited (ie no caps or throttling) is standard to every home. And fixed pricing will really kill it off. You will never see prices ever drop under MSRP. You can only hope that they platinum/gold discount it.
 
Hopefully, the entertainment companies and the media companies will band together to take on the ISPs. :)
 
ImperfectLink said:
This is funny considering how poorly PSN performs. Disc delivery will go extinct when it takes less time to download than it does to go out and buy the disc.
Click to expand...


Poor how ? as it works perfect for me, I might even add that it works much much better than XBL ever did, I have yet to be kicked from games like I was constantly being kicked on XBL, all downloads are fast, connection never seems to drop as compared with XBL.

I am not saying one is better than the other, but I have had far less problems with PSN than XBL, so when you say psn performs poorly, what exactly do you mean ? cuz I have little to no problems with it.
 
djBon2112 said:
Except that ISPs are probably going to start throttling the distribution method to save bandwidth and "increase customer satisfaction" :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Agreed :mad:

I'd really like to know who is bitching about poor service that isn't a power user. I don't believe average users really care or understand their systems.

In the end everyone knows the cable companies are just saving themselves money as always and don't really give two shits about their customers.
 
djBon2112 said:
Except that ISPs are probably going to start throttling the distribution method to save bandwidth and "increase customer satisfaction" :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
First thing that came to my mind sir!

You have one side, talking about how great digital distribution of everything will be tv, movies, games, then you have the other side we "need" to increase the backbone, blah blah blah, over 20gigs of downloads and we start charging...
 
this is stupid, download games?! imo as long as harddrives crash, there is always going to be a need for something "stable".
 
IMHO I'd spend more money to buy a CD/DVD instead of buying it online. CDs are a great form of back-up (with the exceptions of scratching them) and you don't have to worry about forgetting passwords and usernames, or the risk of lossing everything if it is a pay per download.
 
I doubt we'll see the end of physical media any time soon.
 
Download anything from PSN and watch how long it takes. Then go ahead and download something from another server on your pc, I dont know a linux distro or something. Compare times. Yeah its slow on PSN. I'm not saying that XBL or Nintendo's offering is faster/better. We live in an instant gratification culture here and Sony still isnt meeting the reqs.
 
It's funny to see someone at Sony saying that, since it's what Microsoft started claiming as soon as BD buried HD-DVD.
 
Digital distribution? With games becoming 10-50+ gbs, that is going to fill up a hard drive pretty quickly. I doubt that game companies would put in a very large HD (relative to the time). I mean currently we have 80 gig 2.5" drives as the max without putting a new one in ourselves. There are much bigger sized drives on the market now.

In the future, say they give us a 500 or 750 gb drive for ConsoleX. Then you factor in downloadable content, movie clips, reserved space, updates, and more because they want the system to be more integrated into the living room. Hopefully, they'll let the user upgrade the HD without voiding the warranty like with the PS3.

They should look to Steam as an example for digital distribution. The only difference is that a PC can be easily upgraded and hold more than 1 hard drive (something that console designers would fear to do)

Unfortunately, digital dist. prices would not decrease. Money is needed to create the network and maintain it. Companies wouldn't want to lower it either. I like the fact that I can go to a store and find a game on sale (if I look for a little) or get some kind of promotional item. I like the idea of having both digital dist & hard copies like Valve.

Although if it means Gamestop losing revenue, that will be a small perk for me.
 
That entire article was him agree'ing with him except he disagreed with the "soon" part and said it won't happen for a long time ...

Man magazines are getting desperate for fillers.
 
I think somebody needs to point this Soney Exec to some reading materials about dl usage caps. Digital media transfer growth is going to take a huge nip in the ass with the new cap policies that the broadband distribution companies plan on making.
 
..but but but the might of Blu-Ray and how we all were to tremble before it and how it would revolutionize our lives and find itself in every home within a year of introduction?

The other SCE* presidents around the world must be freaking out over what SCEE's just said.
 
LurkerLito said:
too many problems. First no rentals, only demos.
Click to expand...

I see no reason why they couldn't have system that requires you to pay a fee for x days of use.

If they can have a monthly fee for WOW, there's no reason they couldn't do something similar for regular games.

Of course the software houses might consider games rentals bad for business.
 
Can't believe Sony is saying this. Love my PS3 hate the Sony store. Buying a game then waiting for it on their network is sometimes insane. Steam is a much much faster delivery system than Sony's store. I have a feeling if they did go this route it would kill them off completely.
 
Evil, if they went that route, it would only be after online sales made up the majority of sales. They're not going to suddenly kill Disk sales if the online sales aren't going well.

My guess is they'd eventually go the same route as Steam, and let you download the game before it goes on sale, but not activate it till tuesday rolls around.
 
JVC said:
this is stupid, download games?! imo as long as harddrives crash, there is always going to be a need for something "stable".
Click to expand...

hahhahaha.... hdd's can evolve to raid setups.. maybe not yet in consoles... but how many scratched cd-dvd's have you seen? 1? 2? 3?
 
Steam works because of the distributed (like bittorrent) nature of the upload/download.

Also, the PS3/360 can't do a steam like system until they start shipping with much larger hard drives.

PS3 lets you put whatever size drive you can afford in its box. 360 stupidly requires you buy an overly expensive module.

Both will have to change and provide extremely large (250gb or more) drives to accommodate a no disc model.

However, as others have stated, there's the bandwidth issue as well. With ISP's looking to add usage charges (ridiculous) who's going to want to pay even more to download a game?

On top of that, will you be able to re download if something happens to your HD, or if you run out of space and have to temp. remove some games to make room for others?

Disc will remain for a while because most of the companies in the middle will see this as an opportunity to make more money and drive up the overall cost well beyond the current cost of a boxed disc.
 
RGFrog said:
Both will have to change and provide extremely large (250gb or more) drives to accommodate a no disc model.
Click to expand...

250gb is a small HD. 750GB drives are <$100 retail, with purchase contracts of 1,000,000+ That price is probably closer to $50. On top of that, it would be next-generation consoles that support this, so you're talking 1TB-2TB drives for $50-$60 on bulk orders.
RGFrog said:
However, as others have stated, there's the bandwidth issue as well. With ISP's looking to add usage charges (ridiculous) who's going to want to pay even more to download a game?
Click to expand...
Sure, the US will probably be left in the dust because of the abusive cartels, that won't stop the rest of the world from moving forward.
RGFrog said:
On top of that, will you be able to re download if something happens to your HD, or if you run out of space and have to temp. remove some games to make room for others?
Click to expand...
You download them again... I'm sure they could figure out soem account system that allows you to download anything you've paid for.
 
Here's what I think consoles should do...
Let us burn our own games (tied to our account of course). USB DVD-RW attachment on 360 (BD-RW on PS3) and boom! Problem solved for companies. Media creation cost is now passed on to customers.
 
Nemesis999 said:
250gb is a small HD. 750GB drives are <$100 retail, with purchase contracts of 1,000,000+ That price is probably closer to $50. On top of that, it would be next-generation consoles that support this, so you're talking 1TB-2TB drives for $50-$60 on bulk orders.

Sure, the US will probably be left in the dust because of the abusive cartels, that won't stop the rest of the world from moving forward.
Click to expand...

You're correct that they're dirt cheap. However, when you consider that these consoles are frequently sold below cost, keeping costs down has to be a priority for Sony/MS.

Of course if they can get everyone to D/L directly from them, then they can justify it, because they'll cut Best Buy out of the equation.

The biggest downside is that it's much harder to have an impulse buy if it takes hours to download the game. It won't affect diehards who preorder games, as they can preload them.

Of course all of that assumes that ISPs don't switch caps. If they do, then entire model goes down the tubes.

You download them again... I'm sure they could figure out soem account system that allows you to download anything you've paid for.[/QUOTE]
 
The only thing stopping this is internet speed. If you could download an HD quality movie or full game in under a minute would you really go to the store?

Demos will become extremely important(how many games on steam get DL'ed because of good demos/free weekends?)

Saying it isn't going to happen is just ridiculous. "It won't happen anytime soon."
What does that even mean? I guess in tech soon="like 6 months bro"

It will happen and it is going to happen in a timeframe that in any other area of life(non-tech) would be considered "soon".
 
The problem I see here is disk space.
Right now the larges storage on a PS3 is only 80gigs
Xbox 120gigs
Now a lot of the games that are coming out are way over 6-10 gigs easy
compile that with the O/S software add ons and whatever else
How long before you run out of space? :rolleyes:

Really he needs to rethink that.

Granted it's an idea I like but I don't want to have to remove a game then spend 1-3 hours redownloading it if I want to play it again.

Though if they are going that route I really wish they'd give us a break on the price.
I hate paying full retail price for a download *hint xbox 360 need to suck up their shit*
 
don't consoles use blue-rays drives? aren't they like 50gbs??
 
TheCAD said:
The only thing stopping this is internet speed. If you could download an HD quality movie or full game in under a minute would you really go to the store?

Demos will become extremely important(how many games on steam get DL'ed because of good demos/free weekends?)

Saying it isn't going to happen is just ridiculous. "It won't happen anytime soon."
What does that even mean? I guess in tech soon="like 6 months bro"

It will happen and it is going to happen in a timeframe that in any other area of life(non-tech) would be considered "soon".
Click to expand...

Is it the same size as a BD movie, or is this an internet HD movie? Does it come with all of the extras? Is it significantly cheaper than buying the disk?

If the answer is yes to all of those questions, I might download. Games are different, because for the most part, you're just buying the game. As it stands, HD downloads (and even DVD quality downloads) are a poor substitute for most physical media.
 
forcefed said:
With all isp's starting to meter downloads now i dont see this happening in the future.
Click to expand...

thats exactly what i was thinking. i think the bandwidth wars are just beginning... isp's know they hold the future of media by the balls and i am sure they will exploit it...even when the bandwidth issues are no longer there
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top