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21Jul 09

Digital Distribution Topic Conclusion (Random Topics 1)

Good morning/afternoon/evening, it's Tuesday night and I'm here wearing out my Mac after a long day at work, so whether or not this will be long depends on my energy. I also wish to close this topic because I have a REALLY good one for this weekend that EVERYONE will want to participate in. Anyway to start:

I've posed a question in my last post in which I asked my fellow Gamespot bloggers regarding the growing trend of utilizing digital distribution services rather than continuing to travel to brick-and-mortar stores for their games. I also asked my fellow gamers to list what digital distribution services they use (if any) and if not to list a reason why. Now I admit that I posted it pretty late on a Friday night (you know, when everyone besides me is usually having lives) so I didn't expect many responses. I have gotten some very well-thought-out answers so without further ado I would like to give shortened versions and address them in length.

YukoAsho: "I'm not sure if DD's the way to go, really. People outside of the gaming elite have mostly experienced DD via mobile phones and especially the iPhone. I can't imagine those people being willing to pay more than a few bucks for a game...for DD to outright replace (rather than compliment) physical distribution, prices have to go down. Way down".

That's true, and before I reply to the above Yuko also gave a good example of Apple and other content providers setting the standard regarding pricing for downloadable media onto phones and other hardware which you can view on my previous post. Now to emphasize: content providers such as Verizon and especially Apple have truly spoiled not only casual media consumers but the hardcore as well with low-cost apps. Case in point: it's certainly easy for a gamer interested in the latest Crystal Defenders release to pay $8.00 USD for a full package directly to a phone or even a device like the iPod touch than for others to pay $8.00 USD for each piece on Nintendo's WiiWare service. Or to take it further: to today's consumer, $4.99-$9.99 USD for a game such a Puzzle Quest Galactrix or Asphalt 5 will be a more reasonable price than if a shrunken version of a modern hardcore game such as Halo, Call of Duty or a Final Fantasy game was offered for a $29.99 USD price tag. With current prices staying the way they are I can see a negative trend occurring - mainly that hardcore game developers may scale back on their visions as well as funds for future titles in order to compete against the casual developers for attention with low-priced but stripped-down software. Is this really what hardcore gamers want, or maybe we're getting too old to care?

Let's turn next to 6h05tly who emphasized on the age-old hobby of collecting physical media:

"...I much prefer in my gaming experience to own a physical copy either as a reminder of my gaming passion or as a new entry for my gaming collection...As for other media such as music and movies, I'm more comfortable buying the discs/DVDs/etc. since my philosophy in this matter is that you are at ease when you finally found the one thing that made you whole, rather than the fear of losing your DLC via storage/memory corruption. This in fact has worried me since I do have downloadable games from my Wii and Xbox 360...all that hard work of storing your media and later it vanishes, just like that."

Well thank you for reminding me about my first loss of legally purchased Napster music back in early 2004 ($160.00 USD of LEGAL music that I'll never see again...) . In any case, I have to agree that there are some games that come with beautiful cases and/or instruction booklets that not only look great on the shelf but also instill the "pride-of-ownership" mentality (some examples include the Final Fantasy remakes for the DS, the upcoming Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and several others). Of course the issue of space comes to mind eventually as collections expand, but for hardcore gamers it never seems to be a problem.I'll add that it's true that actually owning a physical copy gives you a greater license of utilization than being "granted" a license to own groups of intangible, fragile and some times irreplaceable code (Steam games, Xbox Live, PSN, WiiWare). It's hard to be able to re-download your purchased software should there be any hardware malfunctions; even your WiiWare/Virtual Console purchases aren't guaranteed to be returned to you should your Wii suffer a permanent malfunction. With Xbox Live and PSN there are better plans in place should your hardware "brick" but I'm not exactly sure. If someone knows more than please send a PM.

I will admit though that while I do enjoy having my DSi filled with fun downloaded quick games for my commute, there's certainly benefits to having a large collection of games to flip through and admire now and then - not unlike admiring a stamp collection, because of the memories and owner's pride. However, what can we do if there's little else to physically collect? Will it be time to start a new hobby?

Last but not least we have Templetriowho briefly discloses his best experiences with the most established distribution client we have:

"My best experiences with digital download invole the use of Steam. I was with Steam since the bad 'ol days when it first launched, it was actually the reason I stopped playing Counterstrike back in 20012002 (yes, that bad). Steam eventually made something of itself and it is very user friendly now, I am very happy with how the service works these days. Steam keeps all my games up to date, although it's not fun when you first install a game and it takes hours and hours of updating before you can play, but after that it is pretty smooth sailing."

I have to say that so far Steam proven to be one of the most reasonable of all of the distribution services available. As Templetrio stated in his comment in my previous post, Steam has grown from a buggy, infuriating, headache-inducing online store/distribution service (Half-Life 2, anyone?) into a model that console manufacturers should attempt to emulate. The weekend deals, packaged software (for example, every game in the Orange Box plus the original Half Life 2 for only $29.99 USD...looks like my Mac will get a break this weekend while my Vista PC can shake off some dust) definitely make Steam the leader in content distribution, but there are some issues with most games requiring an open internet connection in order for the service to update before a user can play a game offline. In my case, it was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, but the game refused to let me play the game with my wireless antenna turned off until I found the option buried in the Steam client to enable offline mode. From reading entries in Wikipedia and other sites, Steam usually doesn't offer this luxury, especially if the game that the user wnats to play is built mainly to be played online and be updated regularly.

To conclude: PC gamers and Xbox 360 owners seems to have little to fear if the vast majority of developers decide to take the digital-only plunge as they have backup strategies in place for when gamers lose their media. Retail stores will attempted to slow this trend, and some of them have (read Gamasutra's Joe Ludwig's article entitled Gamestop vs. Digital Distribution) for one of the many roadblocks developers and distributors have to contend with in attempting to realize their future goals. Whether we're ready or not to relinquish our physical media for the sake of convenience or lesser distribution costs depends on sound pricing structures, quality of the distribution service (as stated above, even Steam has it's flaws) and most of all, the overall quality and variety of the games. For the moment at least, it seems like gamers are a whole must "go along for the ride" and take a wait-and-see approach as to which services fail and which will be the true standard for the next generation of consoles. Will Sony and Microsoft duplicate Valve's Steam model or will they still rely on proprietary services with their own flaws?

That's it for the topic of digital distribution. Now if you excuse me, I want to watch "A Day in the Life of A Turret" again and get my older computer ready for the Orange Box. Thanks for your participation and see you this weekend.

James


  • Posted Jul 21, 2009 6:17 pm PT
  • Category: Games
  • 10 Comments

10 Comments

  • houtx1836

    Posted Jul 21, 2009 8:22 pm PT

    Steam is solid and actually my favorite of the distribution software I've used. Direct to Drive is fair. DD is fine for PC's (until you run low on hdd space) Until console hdds get much higher in capacity - I don't see the brick and motor (physical disc) games going anywhere for quite a while.

  • drummer131

    Posted Jul 22, 2009 6:13 am PT

    I am totally with you on this. When it comes to ANYTHING really, be it a video game or a music CD, I want a physical copy of the item. I like seeing the cases, I like having the instruction booklets, and I like treating them as "collector's items" simply because I loved the content to death. I don't use iTunes to buy music for the simple reason that those files are only usable on iTunes and I can't do anything else with them. Granted, when you try to think what else you would want to do with them, I can't think of anything, but it's the idea that you can't that bothers me. With a physical disc, you can do whatever you want. Plus, hello!, you know you want that album art.

  • 6h05tly

    Posted Jul 22, 2009 5:15 pm PT

    I have to admit that I have several versions of Zelda Ocarina of Time (N64 cart, Collector's Edition GCN disc $45 USD (hard find), and VC download) and Castlevania SotN (PS1 at $50 USD (hard find as well), XBLA, and Dracula X Chronicles for PSP) in any case one of them malfunctions and have another for backup. But games like Doom 3 Collector's Edition for Xbox ($85-90 USD), Metroid 2 for Game Boy (very hard to find), and Conker's Bad Fur Day for the Nintendo 64 ($50 USD) are just some of the games I'm proud to keep in my gaming library. This is indeed an interesting concept you've made (and yes, thanks to me for such inspiration, I think I need to get back to making Miis, been a while though) and I can't wait to see what you have in store for the next topic

  • YukoAsho

    Posted Jul 22, 2009 9:28 pm PT

    Actually, there is no backup option for the 360. If your HDD gets corrupt, you need to pray your content is still on XBL. The Nintendo Wii lets you back up to SD cards, but it's locked to the individual hardware, meaning you better hope you can get it repaired when Nintendo stops offering the service. Then there's Sony. Their backup system is part of the overall system restore process on the platform. However, since you can't pick items for individual backup, I've had to delete any unneccessary data (music, install data, etc), and I still don't have enough space in my 4GB USB flash card. I'm looking at either the daunting task of trying to find an extermal hard drive that can be formatted in FAT32, or the stupidly expensive proposition of buying a $100+ 30 Gig Compact Flash card. At least with the PC, hard drive space is cheap nowadays. Still, space becomes an issue. As hard as it is to keep boxes of discs and cartridges stored, imagine having to handle rows and rows of hard drives. Not fun.

  • YukoAsho

    Posted Jul 22, 2009 9:42 pm PT

    @Drummer - iTunes switched to DRM free music some time back. You can now use iTunes files on any device that supports AAC files, including the Zune

  • jwallace

    Posted Jul 23, 2009 3:45 am PT

    Houtx: Steam is the only experience that works for me as well so far - my laptop is the third device that I've had Steam enabled on and the service just works. Updates are a chore and sometimes having to beg the service to let me play games offline is a joke, but I honestly have no fear whatsoever of giving them my money tonight for The Orange Box set.

    Drummer: As much as I like physical media, it becomes an issue when your media is taking up too much space. As for iTunes, they have the reasonable methods regarding copy protection. YukoAsho mentioned iTunes Plus in her comment in which you can purchase DRM-free tracks for $0.30 more, but even if you purchase the original DRM-encumbered music, just make a playlist, burn a CD and then re-rip the music as any format that you want. As soon as you burn the disc, the DRM is stripped off. The music is yours.

    6h05tly: Thank you for the inspiration. This format allows me to blog about serious topics yet allow for more participation. Plus, people like seeing their names mentioned. Regarding ownership pride, I have a whole stack of Sega Saturn games and a console plugged in and ready to play. C1assic systems and games such as the original Playstation, Saturn, and others SHOULD be displayed - a museum of sorts.

  • jwallace

    Posted Jul 23, 2009 3:46 am PT

    *SCREW GAMESPOT AND THEIR 1500 CHARACTER LIMIT!!!

    Yuko: Microsoft will let you re-download your content for free in case of corruption, right? I certainly didn't know that Sony allows backups by the user, that's pretty awesome. Having to maintain multiple drives is a new issue, but there are solutions like Newertech's external cases which can house two HDDs at once with RAID configs or other solutions.

    I had a more thoughtful response for you, but GS cut in about the size of response and I have to pack up and go to work...

  • houtx1836

    Posted Jul 23, 2009 10:32 am PT

    @jwallace

    btw: If you use the "@" symbol directly in front of the user name with no spaces and then "enter" down (like yours above) GS will kindly generate a message in your inbox with a link to the comment directed toward you. Kind of twitter-ish.

    That way I won't miss your responses.

  • Platyphyllum

    Posted Jul 28, 2009 4:09 am PT

    Very interesting read you have here James! I agree partially with almost all the arguments brought up here.

    The first one brings up a good point. Prices are going to have to go way down if they're going to put all games on a digital download service. This will undoubtedly affect the quality of the games that come out though. Major game developers will have to put their prices to $30 or less when they put it out at $70+ prices on consoles like the PS3. This results in less funding for the game developer and that will definitely affect quality.

    The one I can most relate to is the second one. I don't know why, but when it comes to movies, video games, books, anything, I just seem to have this obsessive collector's impulse. I look at my collection and I just seem content that my collection has grown this large and I keep wanting to build it up more. I can also relate to the whole file corruption deal there. I always worry about that sort of stuff seeing as how I'm not very experienced with computers and the like. I don't worry about it 24/7 and almost get cardiac arrest about it () but it's definitely a constant worry in the back of my head that something might happen or the digital distributor might get sued and my games that I legally downloaded will go down the drain and I can do nothing about it.

  • Platyphyllum

    Posted Jul 28, 2009 4:09 am PT

    The third one is also something that I can relate to somewhat. My only experience downloading from Steam happened recently which was The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. I was honestly kind of disappointed that it didn't come in a physical copy but I wanted to experience the so-called "classic" enough that I decided to download it (and I'm sure glad I did, I liked the game). I was very satisfied with how it went. The game was payed for, it started downloading which took a little less than an hour, and I could easily access it from the Steam account. The price was also very reasonable at $10. After this, I think I'm much more comfortable with downloading. I still prefer physical copies but for short enjoyable games in the style of The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, I have no issues if I must download it from a service like Steam.

    Thanks for bringing up this topic and encouraging readers to participate, it was certainly an interesting and enjoyable read!

My Recent Ratings

Title Score
The Orange Box 9.0
Suikoden Tierkreis 8.0
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars 9.0
Yoshi's Island DS 9.0
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 9.0
Planet Puzzle League 8.0
Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition 8.5
Bust-A-Move 3 7.0
Magic Knight Rayearth 7.5
MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat Arcade Combat Edition 8.0
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