Top 5 Reason Why Disc Based Media Will NOT be Phased Out

Ironstar Editor Alex Page writes: With all the gossip around games going completely digital next generation, let me be the first to break it to you that it won’t happen. Video games are not just a gimmick to waste time anymore, but have evolved into a fully blown art form, which we all proudly like to display around our homes.

[krouse93]

Hard Drives are Physical Media that's the number one reason lol. And Optical Discs are very convenient.

EDIT: The article has flawed information in it. As in Hard Drive Pricing. But hopefully he realizes it and corrects it.

[FanOfGaming]

long live physical media

[Perjoss]

I'm looking at my amazing collectors edition for StarCraft II right now and thinking to myself, digital what?

[pustulio]

Aside from that Sony is already researching on creating a new format better than Blu-Ray and wich much more capacity than Blu-Ray itself, so the question is why waste so much money on reasearching if everything is going to be downloadable?

Makes no sense to me, another thing would be i like to have my physical copy so my friends can borrow it and i can borrow their games...

It's just better and like tiamat5 says it would be a pain in the ass to wait the whole 50GB game to download.

[FanOfGaming]

It's fixed now

[HolyOrangeCows]

Link isn't working.
Here's a working link:
http://www.ironstarmovement...

[fatstarr]

IF physical media went got phased out tomoro best believe i am ordering 1000's of Blank High quality Dual layer DVD's and Pro dvd burners. I will be living with them until sense gets knocked into the world.

[tiamat5]

Because who will sit down and wait for 500GB or 1TB of data to download?

[jerethdagryphon]

im fling a largish file 40 gig an animae i cant find on disc

so no i wouldnt wait a week or 2 to dl a single game not my idea of a good time long live phy med

[GirlGamer21]

I love my disc collection because as the author of this article says, "it displays my taste" in games. People who want to go digital will never own what they have. DRM is so stupid and it makes companies less competitive as well. It basically is a way for companies to assure themselves of future revenue without innovating. I want to be able to take my disc wherever I want and play it wherever I want

[JRAMBO]

When I rage at my games I wouldn't be able to throw anything at them because they aren't physical. In all seriousness people, why don't we just become more antisocial. Never leave the house, never meet cool gamers or anything. I will never adopt a completely digital library of media. MP3 is terrible compared to an actual CD or Vinyl and you can just take one look at the shrinking music industry. This is a big problem and the this guy is the first to stand up against all these idiots who think the next gen consoles and so forth will be completely digital. Games that are big need massive amounts of space and should stick to disc, whereas small games can be downloadable. Thank God for people like this who realize games won't get cheaper because they go digital.

[Skadoosh]

Why is MP3 terrible to CD? Is it the quality? You can have MP3 have the exact quality of CD. It's called lossless or FLAC.

[JRAMBO]

Right, but if I encode all my music into Lossless or FLAC my music player won't even be able to hold all of it and there is a difference between MP3 and Lossy formats. One example would be plugging in your IPOD into your car and listen to an MP3 and then put a CD into your CD player. Plus imagine if your computer hard drive fails and you lose all your music you purchased and didn't have backed up. I do sometimes purchase a song on Itunes, but you hard drive can go out at any moment and I have over 5000 songs in my library of music. I have also heard horror stories of people losing all there music and Apple won't let them re-download it. That proves right there you don't even own your music. At least with a physical copy of a CD I can play it in my car or burn it back onto my computer.

[fatstarr]

Perfect scenario above , Nothing is wrong with redundant data, the world runs on it. Apple = thieves i rather give money to the homeless and hope download music from them. Last place id go to for music with that i tunes -_-. My friend was in that situation and the dummy re bought 1/4 of his collection.

Vinyls still exist today because people love the stuff. the same thing will happen with all disc formats that are popular. Hell people still have HD DvD's.

[jerethdagryphon]

maybe im tone deaf but i cant tell any diffference from mp3 or cd or vinyl

[Skadoosh]

Tell that to CD. Mp3's have overtaken the market. Just look at portable cd players vs. mp3 players.

Renting movies and streaming on your comcast box or other device's is starting to take over renting physical media. I expect this to really take off soon since Hollywood Video has closed down and Blockbuster is staring to fall apart.

Buying movies and buying games is another story. I would still like the physical media for these 2.

Overall their is room for both to strive.

[Myst]

Streaming seems like it could be tipped due to the Federal Government or ISPs. I mean over time there have been challenges to the bandwidth usage similar to how it is for people who live in Australia. If it does come to pass people will come to wish for Physical Media more so than streaming or download. If not perhaps both as a lot of people still aren't that savvy?

Though as for CDs v. Mp3s I'd say that's probably preference. I mean if your car doesn't have that 'snazzy' mp3 player in it gotta go for CDs. If you didn't buy the CD and got the MP3 you still will need the CD or perhaps one of those AM/FM transmitters, but I haven't found a good one as of yet.

To further add: Is blockbuster going out of business or something? I know the one over here that was slightly close closed down, but Family Video still remains. I just found that interesting.

[edit]
Changed a few things after reading your message again.

[IWentBrokeForGaming]

am I right?...

[MaxOpower]

And then there's the most impotent Reason of them all.

Less then 50% of WII owners are online, and about only 60% of Xbox users subscribe to xbox live.

No purplish would voluntary want to lose about half of there market.

[adlt]

That like to have a physical copy of things, with the exception of MP3's.

[Ascalon94]

like everyone else says, just sitting down on the couch or wherever and looking at your stack of games, also the cover art and the manuals are great to have. As well as collecters editions of games

[mac4u10]

Who ever that possibly think digital distribution will take over physical copy needs to get their brain checked, it will live along side it but not take over physical distribution...period.

[dcbronco]

Firstly two of his reasons contradict each other. The ability to sell disc and hard drive size. If you're selling them, 2TBs is more than enough.

Reason 5 is wrong because games aren't really 50gbs. Take out all of the video and uncompressed audio and they will be 20 at best. Devs are no going to be making 100gb games. They're going out of business left and right with the budgets for 15gb games. If you miss and a 100gb 100 million game fails to sell, you most likely go out of business or someone is definitely getting laid-off. No one is making enough to have failures on that level.

Reason 4 is wrong because of current DLC. Attach the rights to the title to an account. The drive fails or you run out of space, download it again later. On the 360 the license is attached to an account an a perticular machine. But everythibng is transferable. Also you could partition a 2TB drive for games you're playing on a 500gb section and 1.5TB of compressed data for the ones you aren't.

Reason 3 is wrong because maybe the author hasn't read, but the devs and publishers don't like the secondary market. DD would kill it. They actually want you to buy a new copy. But also companies could allow a person to turn in their license for $15 to $20 toward a new game from the same company or publisher. They could even make deals with other companies for the credits. It wouldn't matter because now they get the cash from every copy sold instead of not selling copies because of Gamestop. Between sales, retail profit, packaging, publishers and transportation the dev is lucky to make $35 per copy sold anyway. And if that dev has money to make their game they can make distribution a part of the console licensing fee and would no longer need a publisher. Even more money for them.

Reason 2 is wrong because of the things I mentioned being wrong about reason 3. Transportation is expensive. Truckdrivers make a lot of money. Retail takes a cut. Publishers, packaging, licensing the media(DVD or Blu-ray) and storage of actaully disc. Printing the disc. Buying the disc. All of the cost involved cost far more than storing on a hard drive. And unlike disc, when a digital master doesn't take, no big deal. Just load it again. Look Ma, no coasters. The author needs to look into storage space rental. Million of disc cost money to store. And they take up tons of shelf space. Which is fine for a game that sells. Not so much for one that doesn't. DD allows you to adjust storage exactly to the customers needs with little overhead.

And 1 is wrong because a hard drives aren't colassol. And they are getting smaller. In the time that Sony brings out that format(if they do), holographic will be a consumer option. And it will be offering 5TB disc and 120MB transfer rates. Most console owners will have reliable fast internet as the backbone moves to fiber. Right now more than half of console ownera have broadband and that number will be far larger in ten years. Games can download in advance and be locked until launch date. Instead of folding home you would be downloading your game during some of that time.

The author is strictly basing his arguments on the current thinking. Thank God not everyone is like that. We'd still be living in caves if they were. Somebody has to be first to do it different.

One other thing. I might as well have written a damn article too. I know some people have DL limits. I do. But the company doing the DL could pay the ISP a set fee based on the size of the DL. If you pay $50 for a game, $2 could go to the ISP for infrastructure and updating it's system to handle larger files. With all of the games downloaded they could pocket 100s of millions too. Plus there's no reason not to sell disc and do DD.