2015 Until Digital Downloads Won't Match Blu-ray

PWC report says so: There could be a brief window of opportunity for Sony with Blu-ray and hence PS3 before digital delivery swamps the entire world forever. Well, the whole world that has better download speeds than say the Australian outback or the United Kingdom. A new report from respected financial analysts (yes, apparently they still exist), Price Waterhouse Coopers, called 'Global Entertainment and Media' 'proves' it.

[mrv321]

MGS 4 on the PS3 is 50gb's which is roughly 50,000 mb's and even on my connection it's still take wel 150,000 second to download it and that's a pretty long time, especially considering I have a download limit.

Or how about the fact you can't trade in games, so you pay the £30 and don't like the game so you must delete it because it takes up 50gb on your hard drive.

For those reason digital download wont be good for me, and what's wrong with discs anyone, they are easy to carry, it's nice to see your collection in real life and it's not like they are that outdated.

[Mo0eY]

I'm quite the opposite of you because I see the possibilities.

How about a game trading service for the online networks? Being able to trade my game for your game without shipping fees, making sure the disc works, and other crap that can go wrong sure sounds good to me. This will ruin AND kill GameStop, a company I loathe. A point-based system such as Goozex could work well. XBL, PSN, and WiiWare could generate profit by selling the users token to trade.

I want digital distribution to happen, but a few things have to change before it becomes the medium: Download speeds have to be blazing fast; the government must support net neutrality and maintain it; people and companies need to support it.

So far, I like the way it's going - do small games and stuff. However, I dislike paying for downloadable content especially as I own the game. If it were an expansion of the game, I would drop my money for that. Anything else should be free (see Burnout Paradise 2008 vs Burnout Paradise 2009).

[The Meerkat]

A dvd case is 19cm x 13.5cm x 1.3cm
with a large Movie or Game collection that adds up to a lot of space.

Hard drives are much smaller. Maybe for Americans with large houses discs are OK but for Europeans with more limited space Digital Downloads help.

And with over 1/3 of all internet use being taken up by BitTorrent i'd say the world has already chosen a winner and its not BluRay.

[mrv321]

I have a stack on 19 games and they take up little space, if I where to download them all and let's say they at 15 gb each that about 285gb of data, I have a couple blue-ray movies on top which are even more data, then you have my videos so no matter how you look at it it's still alot of data especially for Europeans on their slower connections to download.

[The Meerkat]

Europeans have fast connections compared to America.

And 19 games take up 24.7 cm x 19cm x 13cm. much more than a HDD sitting inside your PC/PS3

Then you have to get up open the box put it in your drive. All i do is point my remote at my TV and have instant access to all my movies and TV shows instantly. Once the PS3 has a big price drop i'll be buying one to use as a media player in my bedroom. But i'll never buy a BluRay movie ever.

Do you still keep your vinyls, cassettes, VHS, 8 tracks?
Maybe in a box in the garage but not in your livingroom. CD/DVD/BR are going the same way.

[mrv321]

Actually I have a pile of VHS tapes sitting in Eye few. It's in the same room as my PS3. And I may not have Vinyls in this house I do have some, which I do listen to.

You point being?

Look, I like the whole not having to walk 5 meter thing but seriously I have a 2mb connection and I know for a fact I won't be getting anywhere near 10-20mb's soon, untill the days when we are upto 100mbs and Sony/MS support it then we can talk, but games are getting larger and larger with more detail.

[The Meerkat]

Only 2mb? do you live in a remote area?

I have 20mb fibre optic. I could get 50mb but i'm too cheap to pay for it.

Virgin Media are customer testing 200mb now, with the aim of offering it to everyone by 2012.

[mrv321]

I live in a big city and 2mb is plenty for stuff like downloading demos (3-4hours), a song (2 minutes), SD video (12 minutes).

I am perfectly happy with my connection and I know allot of people with less.

[Pandamobile]

GTA IV is 25 GB, and that only took about 6 hours to download on a normal cable connection.

[poindat]

See, that (and the HDD space issue, and the download cap issue) is the problem. I don't want to have to wait 6 or more hours to play my game. I want it now.

Call me impatient or spoiled, but once you start racking up larger number of games, discs are just going to be much more efficient and fast.

[strotee]

"GTA IV is 25 GB"

wow lol

[menoyou]

Digital downloads should come ASAP but they won't because the main thing we need is a boost in our internet speeds and no one is doing this for us. Socialist Obama is demanding a bunch of stuff be done so why doesn't he at least do this?

[meepmoopmeep]

wow, 6 hrs to download 25GB
by 2015 games will be what, 50GB?

and i thought people complained about the PS3 5-10 minute installs,
now 6 hrs + isn't bad anymore, lol

no thanks, for small games like DS, PSP or PSN/XBLA sure, downloads are good
otherwise i'd rather stick to discs.

[themyk]

1.8 -
GTA IV is 25 GB, and that only took about 6 hours to download on a normal cable connection.

Wow
did u just make that number up out of thin air? The last time I checked, the game was on one disc for the 360. So I guess it couldn't have been More than 6 or 7 gigs.

[Carl1412]

Tell me about it. I have a 1Mb connection...No bloody thank you

[Pandamobile]

GTA IV on PC is 25 GB.

[themyk]

oh

[Marty8370]

Untill internet connections become cheap as chips and alot faster. Digital downloads will never replace media for a good few years yet. Blu-ray has a bright future ahead.

[mrv321]

What is wrong with discs?

[Pandamobile]

Easily damaged or misplaced, file size limitations, etc.

[mrv321]

Most of my games barely scratch even my OLDEST games work

Since when is 50GB limited, atleast your limited by bandwith the size of people hard drive, the cost, the download speed. Misplaced? Hardly, keep them in the boxes.

[meepmoopmeep]

hard drives fail all the time,

so say you had a year's worth of games, say 10 @ 25GB each
and your drive corrupts or dies.

that's a long time to redownload

there are pros & cons for both

[Pandamobile]

Yeah, but when your hard drive fails, you don't have to rebuy your games. With online distribution, you'll always have an account where you can just redownload your stuff at any time.

I've been using Steam since 2004 and I can't live without it now.

[Serg]

Discs are easily damaged, if you smash them with a hammer or sit on them or play football on them... But seriously what do you do to your discs? My PS1 collection is alive and kicking, they have minor scratches and work flawlessly.

Now HDD space is another story. My PC has 4 HDDs with a total of 1.6 TB (terabyte) of space, full. You read me right, they are completely full. Family movies, pictures, music, all sorts of programs, games, you name it.

Digital distribution is the solution for Sony haters who can't stand seeing BluRay everywhere, and that is stupid. I have a lot of games I play, not excessively, but I might want to play a game for an hour and put it back. Now, if I would continue to have that habit I would have to have 100 TB of HDD space at my service, filled with games. So I don't have to redownload a 50GB game every time I feel like playing it. Not to mention delete a previous one and redownload this one, too, after I finish fiddling around with the other one... Not seeing it happening even with my 50 MBit connection.

Not to mention the vast majority of people don't give a rats 4ss about downloading digitally, there are even people out there who don't know how to move a PC mouse, let alone connect their HDD reciever to their WLan router and download movies with it. Now I doubt that will change by 2015. A physical medium will be here to stay until we can download 100 GB with the blink of an eye. Games, movies, now even songs with the slowly getting popular .flac (lossless) format are getting bigger. In fact they get bigger faster than our internet connections are getting faster.

By 2015 a game will be a lot more than 50 GB, especially with BluRay supporting <insert large 3 digit number here> GB discs without the need of a hardware upgrade. Also the average guy buys a movie on DVD or BluRay, puts it in his player and expects it to work right away. Streaming works now, but not in full 1080p with uncompressed 7.1 sound coming out of your speakers.

Don't believe half the crap you read here on N4G. People have been saying BluRay is doomed since the PS3 launched. The outcome: Adoption rate is higher than that of the DVD back in the day. Some jerks on the Internet make some wild predictions on how millions of people all around the world will behave. Go ask you parents what they think about digital distribution compared to BluRay. I bet most of the answers will be a question: "What the hell are you talking about?".

If these people would give a thought about what they are writing we wouldn't see any of these BluRay is doomed/DD is coming articles. They are suggesting killing retailers, disc manufacturers etc. Putting even more people on the streets without a job, and the situation is already bad as is. Seriously turn on your brain once in a while.

Digital distribution is inevitable in the far future, but as long as people want discs, they will stay.

[CyberCam]

Here in Canada, our 3 major ISP's are throttling & limiting (small amount of GB's per month) their end user & wholesale (smaller ISP's) customers... they are traffic shaping every byte!

I laugh at anyone that thinks the future is that disc based content will be replaced by downloadable content, especially here in Canada.

http://www.itworldcanada.co...

[Pandamobile]

I live in Canada and I've never had a problem with bandwidth. I've just got the normal Cogeco package with (60 or 100?) GB of monthly bandwidth.

[CyberCam]

you must not live in a heavily populated area or not many in your area use cable, because when I was on Rogers; anywhere from 4pm (when the kids got home from school) to midnight my speeds would slow to a crawl and gaming was unbearable. But, since moving to TekSavvy my speed is always a constant 5+MB... except for one week when Bell was farting around with my line, TekSavvy got on their asses and had them fix it a.s.a.p.! Gotta love TekSavvy they're the ISP for the little guy!

Also, I run my own web/mail server from home and Rogers blocked all my e-mails. You have to go through their mail-server for everything (except webmail), even if you're checking/sending your work/company e-mails, they block all the ports necessary to for e-mailing? With TekSavvy I get to run my own secure private mail server and I also get 200GB per month, more than that mesily 95GB Rogers caps you at, and at half the price to boot!

I'm not a heavy bandwidth user but it's nice to know you have the option to have a heavy usage month without getting your speeds slowed down to a crawl or being charged a ridicules amount $$!

I dare you to go over your monthly bandwidth cap once... you'd pay a heavy price for that mistake!

[Myst]

As much as I'd love my discs there are only certain things I feel should be on Digital Download, for one thing I'd say the PSP Go is pretty much one of them. I like the design, I'd like my games to be saved so I'm not lugging around stuff, and most games aren't as heavy; but when you move into the realm of blu-ray and such it's just not worth it.

When I get a new game I'd rather pop it in and get my updates needed or play right away. I rather not wait at least 4~7 hours (or however long it may take to get the game via download :/)

[meepmoopmeep]

i agree,

carry around handheld or small games i'm fine with.
or even PSN/XBLA games.

but sitting there for 6-12 hours to get a game... that's a bit too much.

i still prefer a hard copy because i like to collect games and have a nice library of them.

[dizlaoboi916]

200 blu ray disks later, i scoff at mass digital downloads for now

[Rourker]

we will be getting into the new higher definition, and that means larger movies, and then we will be arguing that our 100mb/s internet connection isn't fast enough. I don't discs going anywhere fast, because reading data from a media disc will always be faster than downloading it. and hard drives fails a lot more than disc media does. hard draves conk out on people all the time and then there goes that hard drive that held $200 worth of download content. physical media is where it's at.

[Captain Tuttle]

That's all the proof you need that digital downloads are close to being everywhere.

[Pixel_Addict]

anyway if anything digital downloads will probably dominate on the Video game market by that time

[Kyur4ThePain]

That title doesn't not even make sense.

[4pocalyps3]

i knw i looked at the title and thought wtf? ~_^

[Carl1412]

"doesn't not even make sense"

Now who's speaking rubbish ;)

[Kyur4ThePain]

A little slow today, Carl?

[Carl1412]

Today? More like every day

[Dante43]

Digital download will only work if internet becomes as cheap as possible. Right now I'm paying 50$ with tax for a connection of 7mb/s and cap of 60gb a month, if I had any plan to download a whole game via download, let say a blu-ray game like MGS4 , that 50gb worth of stuff, it'll take me a good 10 hours to download and I'm already capped. So yeah. Not very likely.

[Shadow Man]

is on a 50gb blu-ray disc, but the game itself is 32gbs.

[themyk]

What ever shadowman. U get his point right? And I could have swore it was 50gigs. Anyways I can't wait for u to lose one more bubble so u can enter the irrelevent kingdom with the rest of the trolls.

[cmrbe]

32gigs is 60% whic means about $30 for his bandwidth.

$30 + Game price + 6hrs wait != $60 game you can buy from a store

[dragonyght]

2015 Until Digital Downloads Won't Match Blu-ray they my right tho i wonder if they take into consideration that game data might increase pass Blu-ray

[Kyur4ThePain]

If game data increases beyond Blu-Ray capacity, digital distribution will NOT be the answer. Not for a very long time.
In a galaxy far, far away.

[CyberCam]

are they/you taking into consideration the 200GB Blu-ray disc that's already been created/invented? If I'm not mistaken, I believe Panasonic invented it.

If by 2015, video games reach past 200GB... I'll eat my own faeces! LOL!

[PirateThom]

Digital distribution may have its place someday, but it's too consumer unfriendly at the moment for it to matter to me and I like to be able to display my games and take my games to friends or loan them to friends or, if I really hate them, trade them in.

[beavis4play]

wow, there are some real dreamers out there thinking DD is just around the corner.
my favorite comment from the DD supporters: "oh, i've got 50 mb/s connection"......newsflas h, most only have access to 1,2, or 3 mb/s! i've got 3 and i feel lucky to have it. many people i know still only have accesss to dial-up!!!
until EVERYONE has access to these "fantasy" high mb connections, DD is just a dream. but even if these connections happen, many (including myself) like owning a physical copy with boxart.

DD may end up being a very viable rental option, but it'll NEVER replace owning a physical copy of a game/movie.

[Isis06]

I like to cuddle with my Planet Earth box set...
blu looks so beautiful in the moonlight.

[PirateThom]

I'm lucky enough to get a steady 6-7MB.

The UK average is 3.6MB. Many people either have no access to broadband or as little as 512kb/s (even if their package is rated higher).

Digital distribution is not the present or even the near future because it isn't a universal delivery system for many people.

Even if you take something like movies, how many people have a PC or delivery system hooked up to their TV right now? How many people want to watch movies on a PC or laptop screen? How many people have download allowances or speeds that give them access to the downloads?

You can't just discount a HUGE portion of the population, because you're getting 100MB download speeds and you have a way to get access to downloads.

Everyone can get access to a disc, not everyone can get access to a download.

[guerojose]

So, in other words, the "brief window" that Blu-ray has will be roughly equal to the entire time that DVD has had on the market. I'm sure all members of the BDA will by crying all the way to the bank. LOL at this constant stream of articles trying to paint BD as anything other than a success.

Nice post; now, can you explain what the poorly-worded title of this article is trying to say, exactly?

[Gitaroo]

realistically speaking probably, most country internet providers still have a download cap, I don't see them removing it for another 5 to 10 years. Even if they can get 1080p movie download it still not match for a disc media in terms of bitrate and audio quality. Those dd movies are smaller for no reason.

[Dead_Cell]

Who the hell is writing these badly worded headlines lately?

[PLAYSTATIONGENRATION]

I dont even think then....i still buy my movies dvd

[kaveti6616]

I want to switch to blu ray soon but I just stopped in to toys r us a couple days ago to apply for a job (yes, I am now that desperate) and they were selling new blu ray releases for $29.99. And I don't know what the movies were but at the time I remember saying, "Wow, these movies suck. I can't believe they're this expensive." Some people on here are talking about how cheap Blu ray movies are getting. Well, for people who scour the internet looking for good deals on obscure websites, yes, bluray is getting cheaper. But for the average consumer who only shops at WalMart or some other megastore, Bluray movies are still very expensive. I can get a DVD movie for 15 bucks, but the Blu ray version of the same movie runs me 30 bucks. I'm sure Bluray quality is astounding, but I'm not a videophile and therefore I can watch a movie like The Dark Knight on DVD on my crappy laptop with one ipod earbud in my ear and still enjoy the movie. Quite frankly, I'm getting tired of people vilifying DVD quality. DVD quality is still very good quality.

[nycredude]

Dude I was in bestbuy yesterday and while some of the newer movies are on sale for 29.99 most you can get for 24.99 or less. A large portion you can get for 15.00 and I am sure you can get them for less online.

Besides you have to remember when dvds were still new they cost just as much also. Heck vhs tapes were that expensive when they first came out.

Edit: Let me ask you if you can get dvds for 15 and bluray for 20 you wouldn't buy blu? I paid 19.99 for the nrew indiana jones movie (collectors edition) and guess how much the dvd version was? $25!

[kaveti6616]

If I was at a store and saw a DVD of The Matrix for 15 bucks and the blu ray version for 20 bucks, I would still buy the DVD version. Because for me, personally, buying the blu ray version would be pointless.

I do not have an HDTV. The highest resolution of my television is 480p and even then it stutters. It's an AKAI television (Chinese company).

I do not have surround sound. I don't have any special setup or speaker configurations.

I understand that for people who have an HDTV and surround sound speakers, the Blu Ray version is noticeably better. For people who have the technology, definitely get the blu ray. Blu ray players are pretty inexpensive now, but I don't plan on buying one until the economy gets better, my financial situation gets better, and I get a decent HDTV. I can only imagine how much fun you guys have playing games like Killzone 2 and Dead Space on HDTVs in surround sound. Must be a blast.

[nycredude]

I think there are pros and cons to both digital and disc.. However to think that everyone in the world has great internet connection is being too naive. Personally I like tobuy and own my games on disc, and I am sure studies show that an overwhelming % of people do. Besides I need the space on my computer for porn.