I could see it.
elephants are the new SSD
Animal storage has been around for a while guys, but it’s still rather limited the things you can store inside them.
The latest in animal storage technologies
should have signed out of youtube before I clicked on that
now some day I will log in and it will say videos suggested for you: dirty nasty animal porn fucking
Digital Distribution will take off very soon, i believe the next generation of consoles will have most of their sales be from the direct DL of games.
I think direct DL is a bad idea due to destroying the competition for sales and prices. We will all be a slave to the prices all the greedy publishers place on their games, prices will always be charged at full retail and stay the same despite it being a lot cheaper to distribute and the publishers/devs cut being a lot bigger. Unless Xbox, Sony and Nintendo allow for various other stores to sell unlock codes online, which I think is unlikely as they will want to push their own marketplaces.
At the moment if you shop around you can save money on newer games, particularly big blockbuster games like COD as very often supermarkets get in on the action meaning you can pick it up with your weekly shop for 50% of RRP.
Just look at onlive for prices, they are all full price if you want a full pass which only guarantees access to the games for 3 years, after which they may take it off their servers if few people play it.
I hope cartridges make a comeback. I like them. I grew up with them.
And besides, no matter what the format, I like hard copies. having a box and a physical manual is nice.
I agree with that. I have recently gotten into retro gaming, and i love the the old cartidges.
Did you…miss the entire month of December? Steam had massive sales. MASSIVE. I picked up a dozen games for about $50, each of which cost twice that at release.
There is no reason why digital distribution cannot have competition, so long as there are enough platforms with enough products to make the sales competitive. Which, of course, there are. Steam is one, but there are numerous others. Once digital distributions overtake physical sales, so many outlets will set up the competition to keep prices down will be as good (most likely much better because of the reduced running costs of digital marketplaces) as it is at the moment.
That said, the complete takeover of digital distribution is still a while away. Most people don’t have the internet capacity to download every game they play, and since size requirements of games are far-outstripping the ability of gamers to download them, it’ll be a while before the two equalise. I, for one, have Arkham Asylum, Killing Floor, Splinter Cell Double Agent, Dead Space and Serious Sam, and I can download none of them because I’d go over my cap.
Oh and back on topic, Nintendo handhelds have always used solid state memory, and the new 3DS cartridges will be able to hold over 8Gb, which is on par with the PSP’s UMD (lol) media.
lol
There was something Lister said about why, in the future, they use cassette tapes instead of DVDs.
Small discs are easier to lose than bulky cassettes.
I say go back to cartridge gaming!
I buy all of my games pre-owned, so I have zero interest in digital retailing. You can’t lend games to people or take them around a mate’s house without pissing around with internet connections or portable storage. Take a game on a disc, bang it in the console, job done. Publishers are desperate to gain absolute control over the price that their games sell for, and coming from companies that think £50 is a fair price for a game, that’s not a good thing.
Anyway I remember cartridges being a bit of a pain, if you knocked the console the game would glitch, and the cartridges and slot would always fill with dust and stop the things working. Only had a Sega Megadrive as a kid though (Genesis for most of you)
@loony636 - Yes the digital distribution marketplace on PC is good however my comment was more in general, taking into account the consoles.
Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all have their own online stores which you can access via their consoles or on a computer. It stands to reason that if direct download ever does become the distribution of choice then anybody using a console has to use the manufacturers store exclusively, kind of like the PSP Go.
I much prefer my solid copies.
The N64 (old, but probably the newest console to use carts) as well as the GBA and DS usually just work, and can be knocked around a bit without problems. I say usually because a couple times I’ve had to clean the dust out of an N64 or GBA cart, but nowhere near as often as an NES cart. It’d be easy enough to have the system surround the cart like the DS does, which should do a decent job of making sure it doesn’t get knocked loose.
you couldnt move in the same room as my megadrive w.o freezing it. in retrospect it added a lot to the experience
@op I think the hole in the cartridge idea is cartridge using consoles would have to have a cartridge and a disc drive so that people could play dvds and possibly older games in their console. You couldn’t change the DvD market to run off cartridges as that would make all DvD players obsolete and no one would want to switch to a new system. Also, DvDs are much easier to store than cartridges. I’m sure there are also technical reasons for not using cartridges too.
Also, IMO, consoles will never switch to downloadable games. First current console hard drives wouldn’t fit very many games. Next, game retailers like Gamestop thrive off the physical copy market. I’m sure they’d try to do something if consoles tried switching to electronic copies. And finally, one of the very few nice things about consoles, any game can be played on any console simply by putting the disc in a different console. I don’t see console fags wanting to give that up.
If USB or eSATA flash memory sticks replace DVDs and BRs I have no problem with that.
Garth, you make good points there, but for the love of fuck, take your console hating attitude out of here. I’m not trying to convince you to like consoles, it’s just that everytime you say “console fags” or make subtle or not-so-subtle jabs at consoles, it basically diminishes whatever good points you make in your opinions.
Console fag sympathizer
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Not at all. He just has an annoying tendency to bring console hate even when it’s not justified to do so. It distracts from whatever good points he might make and paints him in a bad light.