Topic: NWR Round-Table 1: The Future of Gaming Retail

[BlackNMild2k1]

Digital distribution is too risky a venture.

I suggest to cut cost, do what the book industry has done and allow people to go to a kiosk, pick the game the want, then have it written and packaged right there on the spot.

Right now, you would have to order your game about 1hour to 1day ahead of time just to make sure it's ready for you to pick up, like the old photo mats.

How do you know this? Where is this technology present?

Well, how long do you think it takes to burn a DL-DVD? how about a 10-32GB BRD? and light scribe the top of the disc with the official image and print out a DVD slip cover, manual with other documentation, then package it all up and seal it on a game by game basis?

you will need a minimum of 1 hour and in some cases need to pre-order a day ahead of time to use a kiosk like you are suggesting. And I still assume it will still need employee attention for putting it all together and sealing it.

[Stogi]

Not at all. Your talking about present day techniques and not the future. In just the short future, write speeds will be at least reasonably quick for blu-ray. The packaging itself will take no time either. The kiosk that prints books takes about 20 minutes and that includes bounding it, gluing it and cutting it; and those are present today.

[BlackNMild2k1]

Not at all. Your talking about present day techniques and not the future. In just the short future, write speeds will be at least reasonably quick for blu-ray. The packaging itself will take no time either. The kiosk that prints books takes about 20 minutes and that includes bounding it, gluing it and cutting it; and those are present today.

My original response in it's entirety

Digital distribution is too risky a venture.

I suggest to cut cost, do what the book industry has done and allow people to go to a kiosk, pick the game the want, then have it written and packaged right there on the spot.

This would be a great idea, especially for more niche games that are hard to find, but you would need a much faster way to write data on disc than what we are currently using. Right now, you would have to order your game about 1hour to 1day ahead of time just to make sure it's ready for you to pick up, like the old photo mats.

So unless we move to holographic storage, every system better have a SDcard delivery system. BYOSDCard kiosk.

I mentioned now and in the future.
BRD write speeds are much slower than the read speeds, and last I checked the read speeds weren't exactly the greatest right now. Even today it takes 45 minutes to burn a 2hr movie to a DVD and that's not even the HD DL version. I doubt BRD would be much faster.

The only way to get in-store burn on demand without having to wait around for about an hour minimum would be holographic disc or SD card/Solid State transfer.

[yoshi1001]

One thing that occured to me is that the device could have a series of burners that work even when the system is not in use (i.e., at night) on the most popular games so those are ready right away. Then, people would only have to wait for more obscure titles or during high-demand times.

I would have liked to have seen more of a comparison between portable vs. console. Each platform type has its advantages and disadvangages.

[oohhboy]

While I like digital distribution, I dislike not being able to sell the game if I wish to. While I rarely sell my games, I buy most of my games on the second hand market, primary through trading sites and the like.

Losing that market means I de facto lose that source competition to drive prices down.

CD and MP3s are a broken analogue since neither contain DRM or DRM of insignificant nature and are now relatively small. Audio also has effectively reached the perception limit so there is no real technological gains to be had other than better compression. Also because they are non platform specific renders any comparison utterly pointless and a waste of time.

We will never see a universal console. There are two factors driving this and they cannot be resolved with current methods.

One is control. While manufacturing the consoles themselves contains significant risks and burden upon the big three it provides a useful natural barrier to entry to the market for the manufactures. It also provides an acceptable from of DRM for 99.9% customers that still allow for a secondary market.

Two is limits. There is currently no limit as to how real or unreal one can make games other than technology and time. We haven't reached the point where 99.99% of people are happy with amount of eye candy/open world/asshole physics/control that technology can offer at a reasonable price that can developed in a reasonable time. I also don't see us reaching that point in the foreseeable future let alone be brazen enough to put a number to it.

The discussion of digital distribution without examining the problems we already have with half released games and horse armor is half ass. Having your games on disc does give the developers some impulse (especially consoles) to get it right the first time or suffer penalties. It is unacceptable to make the final consumers beta testers. It is also unacceptable to forgo the rights we currently enjoy with disc based games just because it is "convenient". Games should be a good, not a service. Turning it in to a service would be a detriment to us all.

[that Baby guy]

Anyone remember when Nintendo and Panasonic teamed up for an iteration of their GameCube hardware built to play DVD movies?

I'm not saying the universal console is right around the corner, but I do believe it's approaching.  Essentially, pretty soon, one of these hardware makers are going to realize that they can no longer sustain the cost of creating hardware that enables the vast girth of features they want to support.  They'll license out their platform, and that'll be a start to console conglomeration.

[oohhboy]

That has almost nothing to do with a universal console. Even if the console makers outsourced manufacturing to other companies to be made to their specs. The specs would still be different between the makers and it would still cost the "same", if not more as if they made it themselves as these companies have no wish to subsidize the hardware.

A true universal console would be like a DVD player where everyone agrees to a set of specs and outside manufactures make the hardware, who then sell this at a profit. The big three would become what we have now with the movie studios and everyone would become "third party". As I stated earlier, it would be unacceptable and currently technologically impossible.

[Halbred]

I'll just toss in here that a ton of PSP games hit the PSN today because the PSPGo launched (right?). Most of the games are at or near full retail price. This is BULLSHIT.

[BlackNMild2k1]

That's why it will fail.

[Mop it up]

I like this idea. I can't really listen to the podcasts for various reasons and it sounds like I'm really missing out on some good discussions, so I hope to see more of these in the future. I guess this is also the last we'll hear from Nick DiMola as well...

It is unacceptable to make the final consumers beta testers. It is also unacceptable to forgo the rights we currently enjoy with disc based games just because it is "convenient". Games should be a good, not a service. Turning it in to a service would be a detriment to us all.

How does it feel to be quoted in someone's signature?

[ShyGuy]

OOhboy makes a good point eloquently. Although I dislike the use of the term rights, because it cheapens the meaning.

[that Baby guy]

That has almost nothing to do with a universal console. Even if the console makers outsourced manufacturing to other companies to be made to their specs. The specs would still be different between the makers and it would still cost the "same", if not more as if they made it themselves as these companies have no wish to subsidize the hardware.

A true universal console would be like a DVD player where everyone agrees to a set of specs and outside manufactures make the hardware, who then sell this at a profit. The big three would become what we have now with the movie studios and everyone would become "third party". As I stated earlier, it would be unacceptable and currently technologically impossible.

It doesn't seem to, but it easily grows into one standard of playing capability.  If hardware becomes too expensive for a company to make money by selling the hardware at a loss, using the razor and blade model, then the concepts, abilities, and construction of said hardware will be licensed out to other manufacturers, right?

Well, what happens to the other guys, since we've got three big hardware manufacturers in the game now, and one is licensing things, how do they compete?  They can either create cheaper hardware or follow the same suit as the first hardware maker, who licensed out the manufacturing.  The former is possible, but unlikely, since the manufacturer would be better off not even creating a new console unless they've got something new to market it with, and feasible options for innovation tend to be mimicked and duplicated on a faster basis as time goes by.  Don't forget, with an open platform, manufacturers could easily match any control-based input available on a "less powerful" console, too.

That would mean that the other console manufacturers would likely have to resort to what the first one chose to do -- License out the hardware to other manufacturers.  Once we reach this point, we have a format war, like HD-DVDs and Blu Rays, all over again, but with games.  From there, it'll be in the publisher's hands:  Whichever platform they choose to produce the most content, and provide the most AAA content on will be the winner.  Because the platforms are licensed out, manufacturers won't wont to compete with their own product lines, they'll all gain contracts with the "best" platform, and eliminate/neglect to renew their contracts with the other platform makers, and we'll have a single platform.

The good news?  To continue licensing out their platform to the big electronics manufacturers, this single platform would have to be more open.  You wouldn't want to lose a brand-name manufacturer because they get upset that you wouldn't allow a specific type of content to be created, would you?  Neither would anyone else.  So in the end, it's likely that the consumer would benefit from this, content-wise.

[oohhboy]

I am honored to be quoted in a signature. I used the word "Rights" as here in New Zealand, the consumers here enjoy far stronger laws than those in the US, which leans quite strongly in favor of corporations through the general lack of laws. That leads to the US system of suing corporations and formation of class action suits. We also didn't have to go through then entire Civil Rights movement that the US had to go through so there is no "cheapening" of using the word rights here when it is, quite frankly a right we enjoy.

I think we have gotten our wires crossed a little. None of the big three "Manufacture" their own hardware, save Sony who make a significant number of parts for their own console. They design the hardware and then send it off to the lowest bidder. They then receive the finished consoles and the manufacture pretty much wipes it's hands clean. What your proposing is that the B3 start by releasing a set of specs, but order no hardware and let other manufactures create hardware from specs (Al la GFX cards) and it's implementation/variations would be up to them. It would also be up to the outside manufactures to sell the console as B3 would no longer receive the hardware to on sell.

In such a system, hardware would cost more as the console must be sold at a profit. It's cost would also be higher initially as order numbers would be far lower for each variation.

No outside manufacture would take such risks by throwing their hat in a console war based on what the B3 would say. Just look at Sony and how utterly insane their marketing was. How poorly MS dealt with continual hardware failures. Nintendo need for control.

Under such a system assuming it worked would allow any sufficiently large publisher to release a set of specs for their own console and make games for it only. There would be an EA Madden console. Activation would have it's World War XXX shooter machine. Blizzard would have it's WOW box.

B3 would lose control and the connected royalties. It would be chaos.

It would be a cross between consoles and PC with none of the strengths and all the weaknesses.

The very hardware is the format war and a war that resets every 5 so years. It resets every 5 years as technology catches up and allows new games to develop. This will continue and the cycles will get longer until technology no longer offers any significant improvements. Once the "cycle" lengthens out long enough, then we will have our universal console. That is until display technology changes which would then require more computational power.