News Digital distribution to rule the market soon

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/03/04/digital-distribution-to-rule-the-market-soo/1

According to GamersGate CEO Theodore Bergquist digital games distribution could soon totally eclipse the retail market.

 

In five years time you'll be able to buy your loo roll on Steam I reckon.

 

Part of the problem is how relatively over-priced bricks-and-mortar stores are compared to online! Mirror's Edge PC in Game is still £34.99. Same game on Play.com: £26.99.

(part of the reason for using that specific example is so I can complain and moan again at how EA has gotten the price COMPLETELY wrong for that game - £35 for a PC game? Are they actually having a laugh? STILL no European/UK Steam release? £34.99 on EA's online store? WTF?)

 

I never buy in shops as its always a tenner cheaper online. Play is one of the best e-tailers out there. Anything you buy will be with you in about 2-3 days. Plus pre-orders are sometime delivered a day or two before retail release.

Steam system is also awesome although sometimes overpriced. They should sit inline with Play.coms prices or cheaper when they do sales.

High Street stores can never hope to compete with this.

I also wish they had a chart to factor in online sales as I think that the PC industry is in much better shape than most people give it credit for. I think that is why Valve are so secretive about it as they are making a shed load of ££££!

 

Brick and mortar stores can sometimes provide very very good bargains - you just need to be lucky. Generally, however, e-tailers are priced significantly lower - I've lost count of the number of games I've pre-ordered from play.com for £18 that were sitting on the shelves at HMV, Zavvi, Game (wherever) for £35.

However, Digital Distribution is a different beast - I can see retail stores struggling because they already are - but I do prefer to have a physical product in my hands rather than a purely electronic copy. I put up with Steam for the Valve games, but I don't really like it all that much... and other digital distribution methods I just avoid.

 

If Steam and the likes were cheaper than the average store they'd grow even faster I guess. But paying the same or even more for a game on Steam when I don't even get a box doesn't really make sense. Still, it's the future, agreed.

 

I find some places like Asda make undercuts on some of the latest games, I got stalker clear sky from my local Asda for a good few £ less than I could find anywhere else.

I buy a load of my games from steam though, unless there's a large price difference in which case I'll get it from game or online, which ever is better. Despite game being overpriced I find they do a lot of specials on games which often makes it cheaper than buying from online stores.

As for mirror's edge being £35, in my local stores it's been £25 for months now across all platforms.

 

i would buy everything on Steam if they sorted their pricing out! I got DoWII about £15 cheaper from Amazon and it arrived next day...

 

Welcome to Earth, 2009, the Humans have now discovered that they can be more efficient by simply storing products on servers.

 

I like Physical copies, getting a digital copie feels like paying for nothing IMO, i guess is because i like to feel that im getting something in exchange for my money, and having all the lil boxes aranged looks much better that a huge 5 GB file throwed in your HD :S.

 

If you buy hard copies you're still safe if a DD company goes out of business or a HDD dies. Steam happens to be lucky because it's backed by Valve.

The low tech pop still controls the market so retail shops will still be around. The last retail (factory build) item I bought was a laptop because I can't just order the parts like I do my PC.

 

I totally understand what you mean, but in my opinion I would so much rather have that nice big 5GB file than a load of disks. When I buy a game on disk I always feel “damn it, time to back it up because I hate CDs and I feel like it’s gonna snap or gradually degrade”, so there I am with my backups, which I will probably use rather than the physical disk anyway (thanks PowerISO) and I see that nice big EA advertisement filling up my shelves haha. I love Steam, infact I worship it in the way I have my games everywhere I go with no need for a carrier bag full of CDs. All of that was my PERSONAL OPPINION so please don’t flame me, you little Pyros lol

 

I just bought the trifecta of Guild Wars off newegg for $30 total. Now if I slip down to the nearest center of capitalist communism (Wal*Mart) and pick up those titles i'll pay $20 for the GoTY edition of GW and $30 for Factions, and $40 for nightfall. Totalling at $90.

Personally, the only thing i've ever received through online distribution was CS 1.6, Source, and Wrath of the Lich King. I wanted to play and didn't want to bother with the stores or waiting, so I bought the online copy and downloaded it, and I had no real problem.

Despite the convenience of getting the software online, it's a pain in my ass to have to download the crap every time i re-format. So i'm left with having to burn the install to a dvd and tuck away my pirate-esque looking disc. If I could download the game immediately, get the product key to my email and receive a disc Netflix-style to my home (so that I have a disc, but cutting the man's packaging costs) then to me, that would be the ideal medium of online distribution.

Short story long, it's fine and dandy, but i'd like to have my discs. If retailers want to slash costs to compete, the time/cost/benefit equation that drives consumerism will keep the market competetive and justify my 10 minute drive to EB Games to pick up a hard copy for a marginal price difference.

It's also nice to have the documentation that comes with a game, sometimes the little booklets of game adds have some cool stuff in them, and things like quick-reference guides and the like are nice to have when you first pick up a game.

^^

 

Also, with ISP's like Comcast still having ridiculous low bandwidth limitations (ie. a 250GB transfer cap on a 50Mbit line) the question would rise "is it worth my bandwidth?"

I know a lot of ISP's out there are particularly lame with their transfer rates, offering blazing speeds but basically ensuring that you can't use them to their potential. If you're lucky enough to have an un-capped ISP then I think it's much more viable.

 

I think for something like this to be really viable, is to really create an ISP service that is blazing fast or faster then what the ISP's are giving now. The speeds in the states are prolly beating out the folks over the lake (or no quota limits etc). I guess it could come down to the speeds at which content is delivered, but it wont derail it by any means.

Personally I like having discs. And in the case of Steam I really like how they handle both. (Activate the app on the computer and it shows up in steam for either install from disc OR to download it, very handy if that particular app disc has gone away).

 

I can see stores that specialize in PC games going out of business, but retailers such as Best Buy in the states which offers games, music, movies, pcs, tvs, etc etc will likely continue to carry games for a long time yet. I also prefer to have the physical CD/DVD for the game. No one can guarantee me that Steam will be around 5 years from now. This is also why I am against having to authenticate a game online against some server that may not be running 3-5 years from now. I do own games that require the online authentication, but my only other choice wouldve been to pirate the games (do not condone pirating, but in such a case, I understand).

Companies come and go... especially game development/distribution companies. Give me games that don't need to depend on some company's server to run or install. As nice as the concept of downloading games straight to your pc is, we are getting screwed in the long run when these servers/companies go offline or are bought out.

 

I hope all you people know that Steam do already infact have a product de-activation protocol incase Steam did ever happen to shut down.

 

Does that mean 'deactivation' in the sense "once Steam is gone as a platform the games are still usable" or "once Steam is gone as a platform that's it the games are useless"?