News Atari: Next gen will eschew physical media

I think there will be a physical element of pop media culture for a while. Kids may buy the album or movie in mp3 and avi and never own a physical product but I wonder if they will get pdfs with the purchases and print them out to stick on their walls. I guess if wall computers ever become common place, maybe they'll just stick gifs up around their room

I wonder what a teenage bedroom will look like when it doesnt have the physical dvd, cd, book and videogame 'collections'.

 

There are 2 ideas that i have towards the downloading of games:

1) Due to internet caps etc they could just have self serving Vending Machines in supermarkets or the like were you just pay an extra couple of quid to get a game burnt onto a DVD in minutes.

2) The likes of Steam and Microsoft Xbox Live should introduce a Market Place for people to sell off there old games that they no longer want. This could be a very good idea due to you would have to buy credits first to purchase a 2nd hand game, and the seller wouldnt actually get money but get credits instead - hence forcing them to buy another game. I cant see that anyone would loose out.

I used steam since Half Life 2 came out and i think it is a great way to get games, i also like to have game boxes on my shelf, but they gather dust and to play a single player game you always have to go and get the bloody disc to stick into your drive to prove you own the game, not with a downloaded version

.

 

disk space: we're talking at least four year away, people. by then you'll be picking up 2TB laptop drives for £50.

internet speeds: downloaded games don't need to be delivered in one massive chunk. the technology is there to enable you to download parts of games as you need, spreading the download over a much longer period of time, yet letting you play sooner. combine this with techniques such as the ones virgin media are using for iPlayer (locally hosting content on their own backbone to limit the impact on their links to the WWW, which is where the bulk of the stress lies), and it's more than feasible.

DRM: as long as they take a leaf from Steam things should be fine.

those of you complaining about terrible internet in the UK need to wake up. we're one of the leading countries in the _world_ for network infrastructure development. Seriously, there are about 2 countries that are better.

 

how about streaming games? you could download the first two gigabyte for example and while you play the rest is downloaded..could work?!

 

i see the tradition of reading a thread before posting has become unfashionable

 

yes i see that too

 

I think it is quite accurate.
I havnt bought any physical media for a long time, the few albums I do get are from itunes and my last few games, GTA4, HL2 series, WoW expansions have all been digital downloads.
Same with movies too and tv shows too.
If you are looking for a job that you expect to be in for 2 or 3 years, I wouldnt look for one at an entertainment store.

 

In the future we will have OLED walls. A teenager's bedroom will have more animated gifs, pointless flash apps and emo self-photos than the whole of myspace and bebo put together. I pray the zombie apocalypse happens before this.

 

In which case the emo self-photos will be replaced with emo zombie-headshot gifs.

 

A better idea than the eventual reality.

Digital distribution will make pirating more inconvenient (but probably won't stop it) but more importantly, it will cripple the 2nd-hand market, which lots of publishers have already confessed to viewing along similar lines as piracy. I suspect we are going to need legislation to stop it, and personally, I think it is unlikely this will happen.

So I expect we can all look forward to gaming becoming ever more expensive...

 

I have also been downloading from steam for a long time with no problem until recently when I got Left4Dead on DVD delivered for cheaper than I could have got it from steam (the makers of the game).

Steam should have the accounts tailored to the location of the user then -
1) Use local currency
2) Remain competitive in price with the physical copy's of the games.