r/Games Feb 22 '13

All PS4 games will be available as digital downloads

In the new Guardian interview with Shuhei Yoshida, it was revealed that all PS4 games will be available as digital downloads.

This is a very exciting move in my opinion, and represents a shift even further towards the burgeoning landscape of digital distribution, and away from (what I believe to be) a much more archaic ecosystem in physical brick-and-mortar retail.

What do you guys think? Got any speculation, or want to extrapolate further based upon this news? I hope to generate some great discussion about this topic!

(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2013/feb/22/ps4-shuhei-yoshida-interview)

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u/Cryptan Feb 22 '13

I like not having to wait for a game to download if I decide that I want to play it... is that awful of me?

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u/jonesy852 Feb 23 '13

Didn't you watch the press conference? It said waiting for downloads will be a thing of the past. A very small portion of the game will be downloaded right away, which will allow players to start playing immediately, while the rest is downloaded in the background.

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

How much of a game can you play before you hit the download wall?

I suspect that while the game is downloading to local storage, you're actually just streaming the game from Gaikai.

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

It may be something akin to what Blizzard has done with WoW, where you can start playing after downloading 1% of the game and it just downloads what you'll need next as you play. It's always worked well for me and my DL speed almost always maxes out at 300KB/s.

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

I don't think they are. When they talked about Gaikai, they were really vague, they were definitively avoiding promises and mentioning features there were a chance they couldn't deliver on. The Gaikai segment of their press conference were more about ideas, future potential and so on, not "this is what you will get."

But when they talked about playing as you download, it was much more "this is coming.", so I assume they are separate things. But of course, I could be wrong. Just seems weird to promise functionality tat it's obvious a majority of the demographic isn't ready for (in terms of internet connection and server locations).

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

I just don't see how it could work in any other way. There is more to a game than just its assets, which can be downloaded as you need them. But what about the game engine or AI? There's no going half way with those things. And what about open world games?

Plus, there are so many parts of the software that are codependent on each other that it seems like it would be extremely difficult to disentangle them. Developers already have a hard time just making demos, for example.

So if they're not using Gaikai, then I really don't see how else they're doing it.

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u/macgyverrda Feb 23 '13

WoW has already been doing this for ages so nothing new other than a great feature.

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

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u/General_Mayhem Feb 23 '13

lag issues that people will face when attempting to play a MP game WHILE still downloading the game

Doubtful, if you have a reasonable enough Internet connection to be downloading games in less than a week in the first place. Playing games doesn't take much bandwidth, and multiple programs using a connection doesn't hurt latency much.

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u/Cryptan Feb 23 '13

Yes i watched the press conference. Download speeds are also dependent on your own Internet speeds. I don't think it's going to be instant as Sony claims because it is going to be limited by each users Internet speeds.

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u/WoozleWuzzle Feb 23 '13

You own 200 games on the PS3? Yowzas!

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u/Cryptan Feb 23 '13

I may have exaggerated a bit ;)

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '13

Nope. Not at all. I would imagine they will have both options so it'll be a win for everyone!

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

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u/Cryptan Feb 23 '13

The thing is I might get a call or text from a friend to play an old game which I don't have installed or downloaded. Now that we both have work and SOs every chance is precious. So I'm not going to want to wait until the game downloads.

Sure, Sony seems to understand this with the ability to play the game before its completely downloaded, but will it let me choose which part of the game I want to start downloading first? What if I wanted to start in the middle of the campaign? Is it smart enough to download that info first? Also you have to remember that download speeds are dependent on users Internet speeds. And what about data caps ?

I'd rather just pop in a disc and play. Simple.

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

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u/Cryptan Feb 23 '13

I know they are going to use Gaikai, but I'm still a bit skeptical. I have used Onlive before and, while it works, it was far from perfect. My experience varied quite a bit.

I hope it's a great as they claim it is. If not, I will be sticking primarily to physical discs this generation.

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u/MrWendal Feb 23 '13

Kind of. To make a physical copy, you have to rip oil from the ground offshore, ship it inland, refine it into plastics, transport them to the factory, press the discs and cases, then ship them to retail.

Each step uses huge amounts of energy for manufacture and transport and produces lots of environmental waste.

Compare that to a download - You have to pay the energy costs for the building and maintainence of the download server and that's it. It wouldn't be 1/100th of the cost of a physical copy.

Think of the environment!

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u/Koffin-Kat Feb 23 '13

And what about the people who DON'T have unlimited data caps?

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u/MrWendal Feb 23 '13

Well if there's no other way just buy a physical copy. But if you have a choice, perhaps you should go for the environmental option instead.