The latest trend has been to eliminate the sale of physical software and to move everything to downloadable content. The recently announced PSP-4000 will no longer feature a UMD drive, with all games being solely downloaded off of the internet. This slightly disturbs me. Maybe I’m just old school, but a mere 8 GB or 16 GB for the hard drive will not hold all of the games and content that I like to carry on my system. In addition, there is always a concern that if my hard drive fails, an all too common occurrence, my games will be lost. Companies will need to ensure that purchases are tracked and allowed to be easily restored. However, will recent lawsuits regarding digital rights management, fair consumer treatment is not always the first priority of developers. In addition, backing up games to facilitate recovery as well as free up hard drive space would be necessary for me, another issue of digital rights management. Allowing this feature would, unfortunately, further facilitate file sharing for games.
On the other hand, consoles with large 80 GB hard drives are perfect for this setup. Not only do they have the space, and little other uses for this space, but digital distribution would severely cut down the time between purchase and play of a game. This setup also facilitates demos and other promotions with easy access to buying a full version of the game.
Between the two console giants, Microsoft and Sony, Sony seems well poised to make the jump into full digital distribution. With news of the PSP eliminating the UMD drive, a standard, large hard drive in the PS3, and free access to online content, moving to digitally distributed titles is incredibly easy. Microsoft, on the other hand, has the difficulty of their Live service. Although Live is well supported and maintained, the monthly membership system to gain access to Gold content and the ability to download from their servers could be a major barrier for some users. Charging a monthly fee for the ability to purchase games is not the best way to attract customers.
Now you have to wonder what will happen to video game stores if everything runs in this direction.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to cut in to secondhand sales. At least supply will always meet demand I suppose.