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Is PC gaming going digital?
DevilXaphan
Member UncommonPosts: 1,144
Was strolling the web and listening to various vids on gaming and this popped up in a search:
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/37120/Boxed-PC-games-market-gone-by-2011
Basically i have seen some of what this report says is happening and wonder where this, if it does happen to come about on how people will decide if this will become the norm or not.
Boxed PC games market 'gone by 2011'
1C’s international publishing director Darryl Still has accused retail of failing to support boxed PC games.
The industry veteran says that by refusing to stock certain games and moving PC titles to the back of the store, retail is forcing publishers to head towards digital distribution. And that PC games software will be sold entirely through digital channels by next year.
“In the PC market at the moment the growth in digital is phenomenal,” said Still.
“If PC games manage to get listed at retail, then they’re rarely getting any exposure because they’re appearing at the back of the store.
“There is still demand, but retail is forcing PC games out. Digital is fantastic, and we’re very pleased with it. But it is not us as the developers and publishers driving products to digital – it is because the options for the PC at retail are so limited.
“You just have to head into a games store and look for their PC titles, and you’ll see there is no focus, listings or promotions for them.
“It is extra strange because there is a much better margin on PC games,” he continued. “The industry should be embracing PC more enthusiastically.
“Digital proves there is a consumer waiting for it. But these consumers are now more than happy to click the download button.
“Q1 2011 is my estimate as to when PC games will be sold completely via digital. I have seen the predictions that by 2013 more than 50 per cent of our revenues will be earned digitally. But if the PC games market has to wait until 2013 then we are all in trouble.”
Despite this, Still admits there are still some challenges in the digital market – partly caused by the sheer number of digital platforms out there, with publishers having to try and pick the right ones carefully.
“I feel like I am at the front of an express change, and every week we’re adding an extra carriage at the back, which is a digital distributor. We have contracts with 25 of them at the moment, and of that amount six or seven are producing decent revenue numbers.
“And this year I know more carriages will be added on and others will be coming off the rails. The issue is we don’t know which ones will succeed and which ones won’t.”
Comments
store like ebgame and similar in the world are on the process to have a prepaid system!
basicly you ll either buy their pre-paid or fill your personal ebgame card .then you ll go online say buy x.y.z game online
the main issue why it didnt work before was the fact you had to use your personal credit card or pre-paid credit card
or atm card .lot of place dont have pre-paid credit card and with id teft being an issue nobody is taking chance online anymore.so they came up with this pre-paid system avail in your local ebgame store(last i spoke to clerk they were getting it soon in canada!)when i heard about it i thot it was a great idea .
so when this solution is mainstream everywhere(some like nexon and other use card system,its a pretty similar system)
there will be no need for dvd or blueray game box set in the pc world!)
At first I was resilient to Steam, however, I have grown to love it. I am all for going digital as long as companies do it as well as the Steam platform (which isnt PERFECT< but its the closest thing I think)
I still like to go into a store and make a random buy when I feel really bored and the weather is bad. Steam just isn't the same thing.
I do like the feeling when you look on a real box and get a fine manual, at least for some games. But I do buy some games online too, but only when I know what to buy.
I can see PC game boxes going away. I find myself buying fewer and fewer PC games in the box these days. I personally love STEAM. It is by far the best and most comprehensive digital game site available. Impulse is pretty good too. Don't like many of t he others.
I actually prefer to by PC games on Steam as it maes it easy to keep up with patches and DLC.
I like the sense of actually owning property, too, though I mostly feel that way about single-player, offline games. I also don't like having my non-MMO games dependent on a third party. I want to turn my computer on, start the game and go. I tend to do clean installs of my operating system once a year, and having disks means I don't have to remember what site my game is located at, what my user name is, what my passord is, what email address I used, et cetera.
The only reason I've been moving away from PC games lately (and towards consoles) is that I really dislike DRMs, and most non-MMO software for the PC these days seems to come with some sort of root-kit and/or install limit that I just don't want to deal with. The last ten non-mmo games I've purchased have all been for the Xbox 360; it's a shame, really, because the PC is by far my preferred platform.
I never buy a digital game if I'm buying a game I want the box.
May take me longer to play it but at least I don't have to waste a whole hard disk with installations of games I purchased but I just need to pop in a dvd and install.
Problem with buying digital like steam, someone hacks your acount you loose everything you bought i know i had it done,
I lost over 200 british pounds of games due to being hacked.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/3845509852.png
Yeah, I buy the box. Hate downloading all of that which takes hours. There is a difference in downloading a patch and downloading gigabytes of material.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I prefer digital mainly because i hate having disks specially for single player games if i want to stop and play something else all i have to do is click on the shortcut and load it i dont have to file through a bunch of disks and find the right one to play. Downloads do not take that long if you have a decent internet connection. The downside to this is that i do browse through games in stores and the selection is usually confined to one crappy rack in the back corner with a piss poor collection of games on it and no advertising on whats there or whats popular or whats soon to release i have to go to the internet to browse for games and reviews and to find out what is comming soon. I much prefer PC gaming to console gaming i dont even have a PS3 or a xbox360 but it is getting harder to find good titles without doing a lot of searching.
Yeah but remember not everyone has a decent internet connection. And I have to agree, I sometimes like going to the store and browsing through stuff but that usually is, as you say,one small rack with some used boxes thrown in. I don't ever see myself being a console player because I just don't like the controller.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
There's a lot of variables for and against digital, such as connection speed, locality of game vendors and convenience. Take me for example, I live in a small town in Wales where the nearest game store is 30 odd miles away. My connection speed however is not all that bad. With steam I can muster 800/1.2MB a second and with most games being 6 - 11GB in size it roughly takes 3-4 hours of downloading.
However since I play console games too, I occasionally go to the store and look up rare PS2/GC games! I also look at the dark'n dank corner of the PC section which is limited to mass Sims games and the occasional console port such as BF2-BC2 and MW2 selling for £39.99......
With limited choice of PC games at stores I wholeheartedly endorse the digital move! You can also download real rare old school games such as Planescape, Icewind Dale, Sacrifice, System Shock, Freespace 2 and a whole host of other golden games!
I like digital downloads. I still buy a box occasionally when there's a game that is special enough for me to care about having the box, but that's rare these days.
I'm not concerned at all about my Steam account getting hacked. Even if someone hacks it and changes my password, I can contact customer support, prove that I am me and get my password reset. The person who said he lost a lot of games because of getting hacked couldn't have tried very hard to get his account back. I think my game collection is much safer online with Steam and Direct2Drive than if I had stacks of CDs lying around. I lost plenty of games because of a lost or scratched disk.
I think this article is kinda silly. Retail forcing games out? It's the other way around. The growth of digital downloading has significantly reduced retail sales of PC games. If PC games sold well at retail, the stores would push them. They don't push them because they don't sell as well anymore.
+1 for Steam.
I used to hate the hassle of getting games, given that I live in a rural area and the nearest vendors are a trip away (rather than a 5min drive to town and back). Either waiting for something I ordered to come in the mail, or taking a couple/few hours to go to a store, I can just get the games I want, when I want them via download. No more tacking on shipping to the cost, or gas for the drive if it's an inconvenient trip (ie. I wasn't going anyway).
Like others, I can understand the need to physically own a copy of the game, but to end up in such a position to not have what you want available digitally would be a hard one to find yourself in. At the folks who are concerned about the number of installs you get - with Steam you can download the client and your games on any PC, anywhere, via your account. As it is, I have multiples of my games on my PC and laptop, and I don't have to worry about having a disc in the drive, either. I can hardly think of a situation in which I'd rather own a box, its jewel case, and a manual. It's just not practical anymore. The only real downside is I can't return my digital downloads to the store, but in most cases I make informed enough decisions not to regret my buys, and due to the inconvenience of it I mentioned above, I never really bothered anyway.
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
George Bernard Shaw
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde
You could just install a no CD patch, they are not actually illegal as long as you own the game.
I do it on my laptop because I don't want to bring loads of CDs when I travel.
well i'm not going to own anymore games then in 2011, the reason is simple: i don't own a creditcard and i distrust internet paiments in general so you won't see me downloading any games which are not of the 'free' labeled kind
i also have a complete distrust in anything drm related, hate clogging my harddrive with games of the 'never uninstall' type and like 'owning' a cd/dvd -for some reason game publishers always seem to think you rent a copy- AND a full printed manual (yup i actually read that stuff the whole way through).
in the end it might not matter that much whether boxed versions would dissapear or not because nowadays you always seem to end up with a boring broken game which in a best case scenario has to be saved by numerous patches or mods and it's this kind of fast cash which automatically prevents me from paying the rather large amount of money i would actually be willing to pay for a finished good game so i'm actually checking the sales bins instead as a way to save myself from being duped too much by these publishers with their 'we'll patch it later' expensive crappy games lol.