Video Games Will Be “100% Digital” by 2022

Megalith

Megalith

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According to analysts with investment banking company PiperJaffray, “video games will be approximately 100% digital in the coming years,” with 2022 being a ”realistic expectation.” They also predicted that developers would transition toward streaming games from the cloud.

“Our expectation is that major publishers will increasingly test and commercially develop streaming game offerings over the next 3-5 years, […]Streaming games from the cloud, without need for dedicated hardware or massive downloads, would materially grow the total addressable market for high end console-style titles.”
 
100% streaming is my worst nightmare as a gamer. No way to back it up, you can never play it again once the parent company decides it's not profitable to keep the server running, we'll have an entire generation of games no one can ever play again.

Now if it's just digital and you can back it up like GOG, sure, but I'm guessing that's not the road they're going to go down.
 
Games have been 100% digital for me for well over a decade on PC, not counting the unopened "collectors" boxes of games I worked on.

I think the last physical game I bought was Mass Effect 1, the same day as the console I bought to play it, and oddly, those were my final console-related purchases since then, hardware or software.
 
only good thing about this is it would be FAR easier to remove cheaters/hackers from a game
 
I have no interest in streaming games, but I am already 100% digital with my games. Whether PC or consoles, I won't buy physical copies. I don't give a shit about being able to buy or sell used games and digital is so much more convenient.

The only thing I still use physical media for is movies, and that is only because unlike other forms of digital entertainment, there is a drastic quality difference between physical media and streaming video. If there was a video service that offered 1:1 copies of physical media and the option to download for storage as opposed to streaming, I'd dump physical media completely in a heartbeat.
 
100% digital is fine with me. I've been 100% digital on PC since about 2007 and I switched over to 100% digital on my PS4 and Switch for this generation.

Nothing better than just downloading a game in 10 minutes and playing it whenever you want with a simple click of a button.

But I refuse to stream games with the current internet infrastructure.
 
I can't remember the last time I bought a physical PC game? I'd say it's been well over 10 years. Same with software like Windows/Office - just download the ISO and put it in a flash drive to install (obviously depends on what/how you are installing it.)

I've tried a few of the streaming services. They were not as bad as I thought they would be, but not great. I'm referring to the service Sony offers for the PS4 (Play Now?). We tried it for a while during the free period and canceled it.
 
JosiahBradley said:
Hell no to streaming from the cloud. You can take my PC from my cold dead hands.
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it's the future whether you believe it or not. All media will be digital and on a cloud and that is how it should be mainly because from a conservation standpoint it'll create less waste on the environment. It's bad enough enough we're plaguing the oceans with our plastic and god knows what else, but we need to transition as a species to a more environmentally conscious society and anything that can distributed or saved on a server or network should be mandatory.... That is until we start talking about Zuckerberg and Bezos pushing your date, which is an toooooooootally different conversation altogether.
 
They want as much as your money and property in the cloud as possible, so if you say something they don't like they can cut you off. They'll then say it was a "human error" or a "bug" and then say they are taking the matter serious if people fight back.
 
Pretty much streaming already. No local hosting of anything, even single player experiences are being played out on dev servers. They just use our systems to hold the bulk of the content, but they hold the .exe.
 
Kid was complaining about waiting 4 hours to download Fortnite on the Xbox One (64MB/s). Then he played it for maybe an hour. Digital is overrated.

I don't use consoles much, but those forced console updates on Xbox and PS4 are also ridiculous. So much faster to just plug in a cartridge or install from a DVD.

It also prevented developers from releasing beta products that require GB downloads to patch to make them useable. They had to get it right the first time.
 
The day gaming goes 100% streaming is the day I quit playing new games and go back and conquer my steam backlog. Fuck streaming.

As far as digital downloads go.. meh. As long as my internet is capable of downloading it overnight rather than days I dont care much.
 
Viability of mass streaming depends on the progress ISPs make on fiber. Latency has to be lower than it is now, especially if "everyone" starts streaming games.



And, given the state of current ISPs, mergers, laws etc, I don't see that happening by 2022. They've been dragging their feet for decades.
 
maxius said:
give me async 1g connection for under 100 a month sure ill buy this tlll then nope
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I still wouldn't because latency is a bigger problem than bandwidth and is seemingly impossible to solve. There is just some inherent lag built into the whole process between rendering, encoding, streaming video, waiting for inputs, display delays, etc. I've tried the Steam at home streaming stuff and even over a gigabit LAN (with <1ms latency between everything) the lag makes most games awkward or unplayable. And that's on a network with better pings than is physically possible to achieve over the internet/WAN.
 
No thanks, no streaming games for me. Hard drives are amazingly cheap, so why would I want to be locked into playing via the cloud when I can have the game on my own computer. I can play without any worries about lag, internet connection and the company providing the game deciding to close down the server. I know the companies providing the games want to do this for the control and the most likely required 'subscription'.
 
Whatever....what can you do?

I'm getting tired of computers in many ways and thinking of just getting rid of them from time to time.

I'm getting older and this shit is less important to me.
 
Gonna have to believe in corporate greed here and hope they don't intentionally alienate a massive quantity of their customer base who can't even get an internet connection fast enough, stable, and low enough latency to make streaming games viable.

I would have to think that upon purchase gain access to streaming the game on your TV, tablets, laptop or whatever and getting a digital copy for your console/PC to run the game on your hardware. That would reach the most possible consumers ergo yield the most profit. Heck they are gonna need a dedicated server to stream games obviously so it would cost them nothing extra to offer the digital download at the same time.
 
I would be a lot warmer with digital if I trusted all the stakeholders. As-is, especially with Sony.. nope.

Though I've generally been impressed with Geforce Now, streaming will just give me the opportunity to work on the backlog.
 
Minomine said:
I’m old-fashioned...I will ALWAYS prefer a physical copy over digital...
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Me too. I do miss the old days where you would get a nic color manual. Those days are gone. You only get leaflets that advertise other games in it. The cases are so flimsy and cheap also.
 
Collecting hard copy PC games is a booming business right now.

Almost all of my favorite bands have releases on vinyl now.

100% my butt, rebellious indy devs and spirited metal heads will release niche hard copies and make a fine profit doing it.
 
Maybe some companies should learn from blizzard. And have downloads go in the background. Streaming has another issue its going to make you hit your cap way faster. Unless you're forced to play at lower res to counter it. And most likely streaming will be locked at 1080p and have a monthly fee like netflix.
 
Uhhh.... Computer games have been 100% digital for a few decades....

Just sayin'.


P.S. It's the weekend. Saturdays always make me feel pedantic.
 
Ski said:
it's the future whether you believe it or not. All media will be digital and on a cloud and that is how it should be mainly because from a conservation standpoint it'll create less waste on the environment. It's bad enough enough we're plaguing the oceans with our plastic and god knows what else, but we need to transition as a species to a more environmentally conscious society and anything that can distributed or saved on a server or network should be mandatory.... That is until we start talking about Zuckerberg and Bezos pushing your date, which is an toooooooootally different conversation altogether.
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That's stretching it quite bit. The energy use to download a game once would be far less than streaming it for 100s of hours. This would only make sense for low use apps. Going digital has already saved nearly all of the waste, well minus the human waste plaguing the industry.
 
As far as the streaming only option, I wonder if any of those 'analysts' have played a streamed only game over an internet connection that represents the median speed and ping times in the US? I am guessing that if they would do that and then consider that 50% of the country would have a worse experience then they just did, they might reconsider their projections.

Even the digital only option probably screws the lower third or so of the US. A 5 gig update can take hours on a 6mb connection.

Easy to make these predictions when your office building probably has some of the best Internet connections in the world and you make enough to afford some of the best home connections.
 
If you don't have the net or worse case scenario can't pay the bills you can't even play the game on the Cloud that you payed for.
 
Dead Parrot said:
As far as the streaming only option, I wonder if any of those 'analysts' have played a streamed only game over an internet connection that represents the median speed and ping times in the US? I am guessing that if they would do that and then consider that 50% of the country would have a worse experience then they just did, they might reconsider their projections.

Even the digital only option probably screws the lower third or so of the US. A 5 gig update can take hours on a 6mb connection.

Easy to make these predictions when your office building probably has some of the best Internet connections in the world and you make enough to afford some of the best home connections.
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Imagine the server requirements. Take a game like CS:GO. You have people demanding 240 solid fps now at as high as 1080p and 144hz up to 4k for the nutty.

Ignoring the disgusting input lag that would cause me to quit instantly, lord Gaben would need to occupy half of the atlantic ocean with underwater counter-strike nuclear reactors.
 
Comixbooks said:
If you don't have the net or worse case scenario can't pay the bills you can't even play the game on the Cloud that you payed for.
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Nah, that's second worst case scenario. Worst case scenario, they take down the game you want to play and HAVE paid for.
 
tetris42 said:
Nah, that's second worst case scenario. Worst case scenario, they take down the game you want to play and HAVE paid for.
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Future games will be subscriptions instead of one-time purchases anyway, as you're also renting the hardware to play the game on.
 
tetris42 said:
Out of curiosity, what's the last physical PC game you bought that didn't also require an online account (Steam, Origin, etc.) to run?

PC gamers haven't really been given a choice of digital or physical for a long time now.
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Games on gog can be downloaded and played without DRM or beeing online or without the use of Galaxy if you want. Obviously there are not a lot of modern AAA game on there but still an option if you wanted.

I dont mind downloading a game if needs be but streaming, i'm not so sure, and I live in a country with some good internet, guess that's one advantage of living in a small country with a high population density., speeds would also need to be increased though for it to make more sense, especially if games are getting bigger.
 
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