MS: shift away from discs will happen sooner than any of us think

[Antaris Veteran]

+1. It's just another thing for ISP's to complain about, especially if they are going to limit us

That's too true, where the industry wants to move in the direction of digital content downloads, ISPs are causing problems by throttling bandwidth, and transfer usage limitors.

Imagine if you will: "Hey, I just brought NFL 2010, but I can't play it until next month because <insert ISP here> won't let me download it yet."

Annoying.

[jamend]

I can see it happening. I don't have a TV or even a DVD drive for my computer, and downloading everything works out quite well for me. Of course having a good ISP is important...

[Smashing Pumpkin]

Actually I think it started with neowin. I was trying to create an account and was trying Neo007 but being used to my calculator at the time I typed 3 instead of 7. It was long time ago and I was a big fan of 007.

Sorry, I actually meant to say your sig!

[wst50]

The sad thing is that MBA users will benefit from this the most when the MBA has a bigger HDD. Maye Apple were spying on future MS press releases :shiftyninja:

[Neo003]

Sorry, I actually meant to say your sig!

Man that's like kicking my nuts. :turned: :pacifier:

The sad thing is that MBA users will benefit from this the most when the MBA has a bigger HDD. Maye Apple were spying on future MS press releases :shiftyninja:

I hate to ask but what's MBA? :huh:

[Ayepecks]

iTunes is second only to Wal-mart in music sales, and video sales are becoming increasingly popular. I think it's very plausible that the future will be downloaded media. Drive sizes are enormous now and the delivery systems are getting so fast and easy to use.

I personally haven't bought a DVD or CD in a very long time. It all comes from iTunes/Xbox Live for me now.

All due respect, you're in the extreme minority (of people who only gets their media digitally).

And just because iTunes is second to Walmart doesn't mean that digital sales are very big. They still only make up something like 20-30% of overall sales. I don't see that changing for a long time. And if iTunes and similar formats have had that much of a push behind them, imagine how long digital formats take to get hold of every media format.

[PL_ Veteran]

I hate to ask but what's MBA? :huh:

MacBook Air.

[ozgeek]

The ISP I am with, Bigpond, already provides Movie rental Downloads with the plus that they don't count towards usage of anyone that have a ISP account with Bigpond, despite the fact that Bigpond ISP provides 200MB ADSL plans lol.

http://downloads.bigpondmovies.com/

I can see this is a very bad step for any deaf movie watchers, me including. Which is why I opted to choose the DVD rental service since many movies DVD supports English subtitles. If movie downloads become more of the standard, people will forget or not bother to do subtitles and many of us will be left in the dark.

[Neo003]

Thanks PL, Just wondering where the hell did MBA :rolleyes: came from.

[spaceelf]

I'm going to throw in my last post in this thread probably and mention how ironic it is that Microsoft is the only big name publisher for PC games that has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING with digital distribution.

Irony, sweet irony...

[ShaneSparky_YYZ]

12-18 months, I doubt it.. lol

ISPs are just starting to put caps on the internet here in Canada (some ISPs already do) and I don't see people bothering with "digital downloads" when they only got 90GB per month to use and it's an extra $1.25/GB..

[Deaf Spacker]

I would like some of what Microsoft is smoking.

Most people in the UK use ISP's with download restrictions during peak times or with a "fair use" policy, I'm sure this is the same for America, Canada and most of Europe. So I doubt even in 5 years we'll be downloading films from movie studios rather then buying DVD's or Bluray unless ISP's sort themselves out (doubtful). Comparing digital music downloads to film downloads is like comparing apples to oranges, digital music files are a lot smaller in size for one. Not everyone has a few terabyte hard-drives sitting around that they can use for films.

And as people have already mentioned, what about DRM and subtitles etc?

[Skiver Veteran]

Ok i havent read everyones replies so forgive me if someone else has already pointed this out.

Everyone seems to be focusing on the Bandwidth capabilities of their ISPS... what about the actual Servers?

Wasn't it like 6 million people bought Halo 3 the day it came out... now lets say we make this switch an equally anticipated game is released.

Can you imagine what 6 million connections to the Xbox live Servers would do? 10 x 6,000,000 = 60,000,000GB even if the Servers could physically handle that load their bandwidth surely wouldnt! plus chances are the 6 million that would buy it... would wait till midnight till the game is released and then select to download it over night so chances are about 80% of those people would be connecting dead on release

I think the idea is a good one, disks are prone to being damaged etc but i just think their are too many hurdles in the way for this to actually work!

[Kushan]

Ok i havent read everyones replies so forgive me if someone else has already pointed this out.

Everyone seems to be focusing on the Bandwidth capabilities of their ISPS... what about the actual Servers?

Wasn't it like 6 million people bought Halo 3 the day it came out... now lets say we make this switch an equally anticipated game is released.

Can you imagine what 6 million connections to the Xbox live Servers would do? 10 x 6,000,000 = 60,000,000GB even if the Servers could physically handle that load their bandwidth surely wouldnt! plus chances are the 6 million that would buy it... would wait till midnight till the game is released and then select to download it over night so chances are about 80% of those people would be connecting dead on release

I think the idea is a good one, disks are prone to being damaged etc but i just think their are too many hurdles in the way for this to actually work!

Uhh...that wouldn't be a problem at all. Yeah, Live went down over christmas because that many people were logging on, but as far as I know at the time Live was running off a grand total of 3 servers. If this service really did take off, then Microsoft would certainly throw in a lot more servers to compensate. Also, since the marketplace content is different for every region, I dare say that they'd also have server clusters all around the globe to locally feed said content, which also reduces the load quite considerably.

Using my previous example, look at windows update, think of the amount of people that connect once a month and download updates, all at roughly the same time - it's a lot more than 6million.

[PL_ Veteran]

I'm going to throw in my last post in this thread probably and mention how ironic it is that Microsoft is the only big name publisher for PC games that has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING with digital distribution.

Irony, sweet irony...

I can see a few reasons for this. The first is possibly anti-competitive accusations, as it would make sense for them to integrate it into Windows, something they'd probably be unable to do.

Also, they're probably still refining their Games for Windows Live Arcade service (why does MS fail so badly with online services naming?)

It could also be for the same reason they haven't entered the handheld market: they haven't discovered that key missing element that they can provide (Windows? GUI. Xbox? HDD and decent online service. Zune? Wi-Fi.)

[Smigit]

I'd say 3 years not 1 - 1.5. It won't happen this year for the Xbox at least because too many places don't have the bandwidth and MS hasn't got the hardware in place in enough living rooms to support full game dloading. With kits with no HD's and then the 20GB having 14GB available, there just isnt the storage capacity in a typical HD for the sift away from disk to be practical. Same stories for digital movies services...I think MS shot themselves in the foot this generation with their choice of HD's and digital movies and full version current gen games will be hard sales because of it.

PC is another matter and Valves Steam is truely going to be a force to be reckoned with and to be honest if I was EA or Activision ect I'd be pretty worried as they are only gaining momentium and getting more and more A-grade developers, even those people thought wouldnt ever be there such as ID and Epic whose products they are competing with. I don't see valve cutting off retail any time soon but they certainly have established themselves as a pretty powerful entity distribution wise (and in a very small amount of time given it wasnt that long ago that the 1st non valve games hit steam)

[El-Diablo]

and not gonna happen unless fiber optic internet is more widespread :p

this is likely the case if you ask me. and the cost of broadband needs to be lowered big time.

digital downloads will still irk the normal consumer who wants a physical copy of their merchandise. I personally prefer having a disc and a case vs a digital download linked to an email account or something else that could be hacked and taken over.

[Kushan]

I think something that a lot of people need to remember is that ISP's will upgrade their service if there's real demand for it. Right now, you might think "well everyone here doesn't want caps or would like a faster service" but the vast, vast majority of broadband customers do little more than surf the net. That's why they can get away with such ludicrous restrictions - because most people don't notice.

In fact, the only reason Broadband overtook dialup (apart from the fact that the speed difference is a godsend, even to those people) is that it's actually CHEAPER to run than dialup, for everyone. Necessity breeds demand and if more people started demanding less caps and faster speeds, ISPs would have to cater for it. Right now they've got no need to. It's a bit of a chicken-egg thing, but this is a start.

[MaJoR]

As MS keeps pushing for more and more bandwidth, the telecoms keep pushing back. In a recent neowin article it said that they would label heavy bandwidth users has "hogs" and reduce their speed for a while! Why not just upgrade their networks and do what they advertise?

Anyway, the point of this rant: Physical mediums are going to be around for a long time. At least till the telecoms finally let us use what we pay for and why we pay for it.

[ryanmcv]

I really don't see any convenience in digital downloads. You pay, what, $5-$10 just to be able to watch the movie for 24 hours? Great bargain there. :wacko: 95% of computer users don't have their computers hooked up to a large television set, so they have to watch these downloaded movies on a 20" monitor sitting in an uncomfortable chair. Say you want to bring the movie to a friend's house to watch. Oh wait, you can't... it's digitally tethered to your computer and it won't play anywhere else... Sorry! Uh oh! Your hard drive crashed! There goes your entire "collection" of movies (if you want to call a bunch of digital, over-compressed files a "collection").

I sincerely hope digital downloads are NOT the way of the future. Physical discs are much more convenient and give you beautiful artwork and the ability to showcase your collection. Not to mention you can watch these discs whenever you want, wherever you want (assuming you have the appropriate player), and as many times as you want.

I don't understand why anyone would choose digital downloads over physical discs. I'd rather pay another $10 to physically have the movie and not have to worry about hard drive space, bandwidth, DRM, where/how to play it, and all the other inconveniences that come with digital downloads.