Death of the Disc?
By Chris on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 9:25 AM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Games, Games Industry, Microsoft, Microsoft, Nintendo, Nintendo, Sony, Sony
As a proponent of digital distribution, I love what Sony has done in terms of pushing large, retail-style games out through the PlayStation Store. Xbox Live Arcade is a great service, but with a cap on size limits, there’s no chance that you’re ever going to see something like Warhawk available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. PSN, on the other hand, has a multitude of full size games that go well beyond the scope of old school ports and small indie games like Everyday Shooter.
This movement begs the question: are discs and physical media doomed as a format for deliver games? Steam has become the definitive place to purchase games for many PC gamers (myself included), so what’s to stop consoles from following the trend? Michael Donahoe explored this possibility and took a look at how the three respective platform holders are handling digital distribution.
Downloadable games are really clicking this generation. It’s easy to see why, too — it’s the lazy way to play. Hell, all you have to do is hop online, push a button, and boom, you’re minutes away from getting your game on. Right now, all three of the major consoles are vying for your virtual bucks. Each one offers easy-to-play classics and smaller titles designed to quickly kill time. Of course, not all of these attractive appetizers will fill your gaming belly like a meaty retail game. Or at least that’s the case now, though Sony might be changing the way the menu is written with upcoming main-course titles like Gran Turismo 5: Prologue and SOCOM: Confrontation.
The full article can be read at 1UP.
image via Coding Horror
No, I don’t think its the death of the disc. They will continue to be around for a while. Yes some gamers are lazy and just wanna push buttons instead of putting a disc in. Companies are also lazy and just pushing out a digital game instead of a physical copy like a disc.
I prefer the physical copy.
Are you forgetting Xbox originals? some of them are 4-8 gb in size!! So why cant you see MS doing it?
i enjoy both, really, it’s nice to be able to just download a game, what I really like, is when I buy a game, and only have to put in the key to download it, while still having a hard copy sitting on my shelf.
“main-course titles like Gran Turismo 5: Prologue”?
since when is a demo a main course?
gt5 prologue is not a demo dude.