With in 5 years, 90% of what atari release will be in the downloadable area. This is understandable, as the company has been struggling for quite a while. The company was bought for a measly 21 million, wasn't it?
I imagine the only real games it will be keeping is perhaps the DBZ series, that's what's driving their profit right. I hope they'll fork over the Godzilla license to someone else, as the games have taken such a hit quality wise.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly of all its retail games.
Post by: Morari on September 19, 2008, 12:53:16 PM
I didn't realize the Godzilla games were ever decent enough to have taken a hit quality wise...
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly of all its retail games.
Post by: Spinnzilla on September 19, 2008, 01:00:52 PM
I didn't realize the Godzilla games were ever decent enough to have taken a hit quality wise...
Godzilla: Destroy All Monster Melee was really fun. Save the Earth turned into a button masher and Unleashed give it unresponsive controls.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly of all its retail games.
Post by: UltimatePartyBear on September 19, 2008, 02:18:48 PM
This is funny news to read right after ordering my first Atari-published game in a long time (N+, the most search-confusingest game title ever conceived).
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly of all its retail games.
Post by: NWR_Lindy on September 19, 2008, 03:12:54 PM
But wait, the Gamestop CEO says:
"Aside from the games, the bandwidth, etc., our studies have concluded that the network won't be in place to do digital distribution of full games until 2020 to 2025."
Bwahahaha what a moron.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly of all its retail games.
Post by: KDR_11k on September 19, 2008, 03:39:24 PM
Depends on how the term "full games" evolves. A 3 BRD spanning epic RPG? Sure, that'll be problematic. A game designed to be downloaded? Well, that's easy.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly of all its retail games.
Post by: NWR_Lindy on September 19, 2008, 09:36:12 PM
You can already download Warhawk, Gran Turismo Prologue, and Burnout Paradise off of PSN. Those are full, retail games.
Furthermore, look at Steam. All full games.
Yeah, maybe not FFXIII, but that's an exception.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: ShyGuy on September 19, 2008, 10:21:33 PM
Phil is changing the paradigms!
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: NWR_Lindy on September 20, 2008, 12:12:04 AM
More like "Atari has nothing left to lose!"
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: KDR_11k on September 20, 2008, 02:24:32 AM
With in 5 years, 90% of what atari release will be in the downloadable area.
Where they'll make even less money! Hurray!
Seriously, just bloody die Atari; stop dragging it out. It was funny years ago, now it's just awkward.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: animecyberrat on September 20, 2008, 11:33:49 AM
If they would bring back Asteroids, and Pong they wouldn't be in this mess.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: NWR_Lindy on September 20, 2008, 12:01:26 PM
Not yet, no. But that GameStop guy is saying 12-17 years before it's viable? Come on. Some of these XBLA and PSN games are selling thousands of copies. I think Bionic Commando has already sold 140K or something, and that's money that's going straight to the console maker and publisher.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: Bill Aurion on September 20, 2008, 12:40:36 PM
Not yet, no. But that GameStop guy is saying 12-17 years before it's viable? Come on. Some of these XBLA and PSN games are selling thousands of copies. I think Bionic Commando has already sold 140K or something, and that's money that's going straight to the console maker and publisher.
Haha, well, 35% of that money is going to the actual developer/publisher themselves on XBLA...Not sure what the royalty rates on PSN are...
Back on the subject, small games distributed online is a great idea for small independent developers, but I do NOT want to see FULL RETAIL GAMES...Why anyone would want to pay the same price for a game when you don't have a hard copy is beyond me...
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: NWR_Lindy on September 20, 2008, 04:58:07 PM
If you're allowed to just download another copy if your hard drive dies, what's the difference? I wouldn't mind having less game cases/discs lying around my house. Once you get a big collection that stuff starts to take up a lot of space, and when you move it's a pain in the butt to bring your whole game catalog with you. On top of that, game discs can get scratched.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: NWR_insanolord on September 20, 2008, 05:02:18 PM
Digital distribution's not going to be a major factor until about then. Console after next for Sony and Microsoft will probably have more or less every game available via digital distribution but discs will still be the majority for a while after that.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: Bill Aurion on September 20, 2008, 05:48:21 PM
If you're allowed to just download another copy if your hard drive dies, what's the difference? I wouldn't mind having less game cases/discs lying around my house. Once you get a big collection that stuff starts to take up a lot of space, and when you move it's a pain in the butt to bring your whole game catalog with you. On top of that, game discs can get scratched.
The thing is, what happens to those games when the company stops distributing it? (say, 10 years or so down the line when you want to go back and play an old game) Sure you could say the same risk applies to discs in that they could break/get scratched, but I have more faith in my ability to take care of my belongings than I do in a hard drive functioning properly a lengthy amount of time...
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: animecyberrat on September 20, 2008, 07:09:27 PM
It's the same old endless debate on if digital distribution is going to take over the world, this is Atari people,nobody cares what they do and nobody is going to follow suit.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: NWR_Lindy on September 20, 2008, 07:30:51 PM
As more stable and reliable non-volatile memory types (like SD Cards) become cheaper and cheaper, hard drives are going to disappear completely. I was reading that the new BlackBerry Bold accepts memory cards up to 16GB in size, meaning that there are 16GB Mini-SD cards on the horizon (and they're the size of a fingernail). That's enough room to contain some retail PS3 games, I'd bet.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: nickmitch on September 20, 2008, 08:03:42 PM
But will you wait while they download?
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: NWR_Lindy on September 20, 2008, 08:17:44 PM
I don't buy that argument. People don't seem to have a problem with waiting days for pirated games to download off of BitTorrent. Those are free games, but with a dedicated server you could serve people games in a few hours.
I've always wondered why game companies don't have client/server setups that let people pre-order games for digital download. The download could automatically start at midnight of the game's release date (according to your time zone), and you'd have it when you woke up in the morning. As long as you get the game on release day, what's the difference? There seems to be some perception that anything more than a 10-minute download is a total failure.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: animecyberrat on September 20, 2008, 09:42:50 PM
not if they start charging for usage they some states are now requiring. If you have to pay for your time online you won't be wanting to spend it downloading games.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: KDR_11k on September 21, 2008, 02:27:01 AM
I don't buy that argument. People don't seem to have a problem with waiting days for pirated games to download off of BitTorrent. Those are free games, but with a dedicated server you could serve people games in a few hours.
In my experience professional download services are much slower than amateur jobs.
Also flash memory is still slow as molasses.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: Infernal Monkey on September 21, 2008, 09:20:08 AM
Back on the subject, small games distributed online is a great idea for small independent developers, but I do NOT want to see FULL RETAIL GAMES...Why anyone would want to pay the same price for a game when you don't have a hard copy is beyond me...
The previously download-only Ratchet and Clank: Quest For Booty game for PS3 was given a physical retail release in PAL regions the other day due to the pathetic state of broadband. I don't know what it's like elsewhere, but with store sales here, it's cheaper to buy the game on disc than to download it. :D
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: Flames_of_chaos on September 21, 2008, 09:46:10 AM
Well Digital Distribution is still a long ways to be viable as the only form of purchasing like ferny said not every country has broadband internet widely available hell even some parts of America doesn't have it available.
A few years down the line I suspect each console will have a harddrive similar to Wii's which is a solid state hard drive by the next console cycle 32 - 64GB solid state harddrive should be cheap enough for mass production. They are attractive because they are less prone to breakdown. Hopefully Microsoft wont be anal with proprietary memory cards considering that Nintendo and Sony went with standardized memory cards.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: animecyberrat on September 21, 2008, 12:18:10 PM
I wouldn't use Nintendo as a shining example here.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: NWR_Lindy on September 21, 2008, 04:49:49 PM
Solid state is definitely the way things are going. Broadband is pretty "slow" now, but what's slow now will be blazing in five, ten years. I also don't think that a lot of companies are trying to optimize the digital download arena either, since most of them can still hedge their bets with retail.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: ShyGuy on September 21, 2008, 08:01:43 PM
I don't think going digital will completely kill the retail game market, due to the demgraphics. Download has killed most of the PC software market, but there are still certain applications that people purchase at the store. Nintendo has aged the overall market which means a greater portion of these new older gamers prefer to buy games brick and mortar, plus little kids still go to the store to get games. Ten years from now, it will be another story. Gamestops will change or die or get bought out, just like they swallowed up Babbages and Software ETC, who used to sell as much retail software as they did games.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: Flames_of_chaos on September 21, 2008, 08:09:28 PM
I also don't think that a lot of companies are trying to optimize the digital download arena either, since most of them can still hedge their bets with retail.
I disagree with that, digital distribution allows companies to cut their expenses that they have to pay for retail to stock their product. So that means console maker makes more money, game publisher makes more money it's a win/win for them. Publishers won't have to worry about distribution channels. Or to sum it up nicely less overhead and more profit.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: NWR_Lindy on September 21, 2008, 08:56:52 PM
I'm saying that they can still make money in retail, therefore they aren't putting all their efforts into setting up really good digital distribution because they don't have to rely on it 100%. If a company only sold their games online, you can bet that their digital distribution setup would be pretty slick. It would have to be.
Retail won't completely go away for a long time, because there's a lot of people out there that simply can't afford broadband internet (or internet at all, for that matter). But once it becomes as ubiquitous as cable TV, watch out. That's when retail distribution may become nearly extinct.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: NinGurl69 *huggles on September 21, 2008, 09:06:39 PM
Here's a thought: how does the Used Game market influence retail vs. digital distro?
Digital distro won't let people get cash/credit back for all their last-generation junk.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: animecyberrat on September 22, 2008, 01:37:50 AM
Good point there. What I wonder is if it really is cheaper to go digital, I mean sure there is no shipping or manufacturing cost, but there are server and bandwidth costs and you'd think those would be higher than the cost of going retail.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: King of Twitch on September 22, 2008, 01:43:56 AM
OK, what about letting people download games they've already bought at retail for greatly discounted prices, by sending in the proof of purchase or something. Win-win.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: Deguello on September 22, 2008, 01:57:50 AM
Bill's got the best point here.
I have NES games and an NES that still work perfectly to this day. 23 years after the fact.
Can I trust MS, Sony, or even Nintendo, to still even be in the games business, much less have a game be on their servers, after 23 years? I think not.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: KDR_11k on September 22, 2008, 02:48:29 AM
Can I trust MS, Sony, or even Nintendo, to still even be in the games business, much less have a game be on their servers, after 23 years? I think not.
Agreed, but somebody will own the rights to those games, and they'll put them up somewhere to make money off of them. Look at Steam's id Super Pack. Some of those games are 18 years old, but there they are, available for download. Granted you have to pay for them, but they're available. And then there's also the Virtual Console...some of those games are 20+ years old as well.
As "retro gaming" has risen in popularity, companies have finally realized the value of their back catalogs. I don't think games will fade away like they have in the past. They'll either be re-released or repackaged, because the market has shown that there's a demand there.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: KDR_11k on September 23, 2008, 08:34:04 AM
Yeah, I can get games from id Software but they're still in business, where could I buy Descent or Wizball?
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: NWR_Lindy on September 23, 2008, 12:26:22 PM
If somebody's smart, they'll buy the rights to those games and put them up somewhere. As digital distribution matures, I'm sure we'll see that.
Title: Re: Atari to drop nearly all of its retail games.
Post by: UltimatePartyBear on September 23, 2008, 12:30:34 PM
That depends on whether it's even discernible who owns the rights. With all the mergers, acquisitions, and bankruptcies, details like that can get very muddy.
