Before the current generation of consoles began there were question marks about whether or not physical media would remain as part of the industry. Microsoft had originally planned to ditch the discs and opt for a digital-only approach but had to retract that vision, among others, in order to satisfy demand from gamers who weren't ready to do away with their discs just yet.
Well it looks like gamers have to enjoy their discs while they last because they're likely to be banished for good in the next generation of consoles, if an ex-Microsoft employee is to be believed.
The PS4 and Xbox One’s console cycle has been well-documented over the first two and a half years of its life-cycle, but when you take a look back at the PS3 and Xbox 360’s beginning, t…
They were very smart with the 360 and got the marketshare, but lost their ways with the one
Yet the Xbox 360 launch still felt rushed, what with it's high failure rates and other various hardware malfunctions like disc scratching.
You don't plan so far in advance when you will release a product and have it still be so extremely faulty around release that it costs your company more than a billion dollars to fix.
Don't forget that the XboneS is replacing the current Xbone after less than 2 years, and it isn't even THAT necessary.
To compare with something that is absolutely necessary, the original abysmal 360 launch model was on the market for almost FIVE YEARS before it was remodeled AND the disc scratching was never fixed on the console to date. Even the last "Stingray" super slim console still had the Windows 95 era CDROM like disc loading tray that can easily scratch your games if you sneeze in the same room as it.
But yeah, these guys planned the 1.15 billion dollar repair plan for their next console in 2002 lol.
And that is why I ultimately decided not to buy a 360 after buying and still owning to this day the OG Xbox. While being a manager at Game Crazy, I saw first hand as customers brought their systems back in because they died when we launched it. But Game Crazy moved quickly to have customers send their system to Microsoft that alleviated our returns. But, you could tell the lawsuits were coming soon for them or recalls.
http://spong.com/article/13...
https://www.engadget.com/20...
They had to have known through testing before console release that there was a failure rate higher than the industry standard but put it out there anyway. They most likely felt burned by Nvidia's pricing on the first Xbox. So, decided to manufacture themselves and was not experienced in chip design as they thought they were. Plus, wanted to get that jump on Sony and rushed to market leading to failure. They probably thought if 3-4 died out of 10, they were still ahead by 6 or 7 and could manage the rest.
But when you extend a warranty from the usual 90 days to 1 year to 3 years, you know the problem was endemic. But when the company stayed silent on it, I knew that they were no longer getting my support even after starting pay to play online on the OG.
Them knowing they were launching during 2005 don't help their image much. I'll give them credit now for Xbox one working properly. But it's too little too late for me. I still enjoyed playing 360 at work on the demo units then, but I wasn't buying any systems from them.
Video games have become one of the biggest industries in the world, with so many different divisions of gaming having grown over the past decade.
Gaming consoles do not come along everyday, and so when a company takes a crack at doing so, there are often times a lot of lessons to be learned. Sony learned them in the past with PS3 and with the Xbox One, Microsoft did the same.
Seems like an odd title. (at least to me) If you truly learned before, and you repeat the same mistakes, what did you learn the first time? Maybe they finally learned from mistakes that they made before???
After reading, it seems that Bach is saying that he had HOPED that they learned from lessons in the past and couldn't see (while imbedded in the heat of everything) that they hadn't. Kind of a hindsight being 20/20 situation.
Either way, MS has come a long way from the console that was initially pitched. I can respect that.
They better or they'll be dead in the water when it comes to keeping the industry healthy financially
Yes I have good Internet and play online but what about the billions that don't
Offline play option and online multiplayer for the win
it all depends of how much high-bandwidth Internet has been established around the world, right now people connected to the internet is not even 50 % around the globe, in that 50 % cut a huge chunk of it of people that have horrible internet connection I'm talking about 2 Mb connections and a bit more.
So as long as
1) they offer something like the steam refund policy
2) digital games are cheaper
3) they provide more storage and the ability to increase said storage myself not proprietary crap
4) i am able to play the games i have purchased offline with no need to connect online to play them
After the above then i might consider digital only as my choice
game sizes are growing faster than internet bandwidth sizes are. Downloading the larger games isn't practical for many, unless they wait hours or even days for it to finish.
I have been digital only for quite a long time now. If you are lazy it is the only way to go haha. But in seriousness, my understanding is that digital sales are surpassing physical by a large margin this generation so it seems this decision is being made by the gamers.
@Volkama: maybe where both are available, but even that trend is changing pretty quickly, as the numbers from GTAV are showing in the latest quarters. The majority of the library for PS4 and X1 is digital only already. And DLC is pretty much exclusively digital only.
Another big reason Digital Sales are dominating is that the exclusive deals for being a subscriber are aimed at digital buyers.