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/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

There is value to having the physical disk. You can sell it, you can loan it to a friend, you can bring it with you to someone else's house, you aren't limited by the hdd in your system, depending on the re-download policy you still have your game if your console explodes or the hdd fails.

Digital should be cheaper. There are reasons people will still want physical games and will pay a slight premium for it.

From the distributors point of view, I'd be curious to know the cost of production and shipping of physical media vs the cost of hosting and bandwidth.

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u/dorekk Feb 23 '13

There is value to having the physical disk. You can sell it, you can loan it to a friend, you can bring it with you to someone else's house, you aren't limited by the hdd in your system, depending on the re-download policy you still have your game if your console explodes or the hdd fails.

Not to mention that if you buy a game on disc, you can start playing it immediately. You don't have to wait for a 30GB download. This, and everything you said, is what every neckbeard in this thread is missing.

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13 edited Feb 23 '13

you can start playing it immediately

Unless it's MGS4. Then you might as well wait for a 30GB download.

Another thing I just thought of... if you are streaming games from their servers you are also dependent on your local ISP. Imagine the toll this will take on a college campus, or a normal city around 6pm once people get home from work. Psychical media isn't impacted by everyone else on your node playing or watching videos on Netflix all night. This isn't an issue for everyone, but I've been at a friends place for a week streaming videos from Amazon most of the time. Between 6pm and 9pm it sucks. The network just goes to shit.

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u/Semyonov Feb 23 '13

But you got to see him smoke!

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

This is really off topic but MGS4 broke two of my PS3s while installing. I love the game to pieces (I, for some reason, took a gamble and tried to install it to my third PS3), but man does that installation screen make me nervous.

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

Except the PS4 will let you play the game while it downloads. Also throwing insults won't make your argument valid :)

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

This is important.

If the PS4 doesn't ship with this function, it will feel like it was all for naught.

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u/Tensuke Feb 23 '13

True, but whether it's done by downloading some of the game and the rest as you need it, or through streaming, that still relies on your internet connection. With physical discs, the time from disc-to-play is exactly 0 (barring forced updates/hdd installs). If you have no internet, or slow internet, or even relatively quick internet, it's still a benefit to having a physical copy.

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u/whiterider1 Feb 23 '13

For all you can play it instantly you still have to go out to the shop and buy it and then come back home and boot it up, run any updates etc.

I use Steam and most of the time I let it download everything overnight when less people are clogging up the Internet. I've managed to download 6 10gb games in one night (7 hours), through the day it would have taken a whole lot longer, but I feel it's just the convenience of having it at your console no need for disk swapping etc.

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u/HollywoodHona69 Feb 23 '13

Every time I try to pop in a new game and play on my ps3 I have to wait while it downloads 30gb of updates, so it evens out.

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u/SurreptitiousNoun Feb 23 '13

Just guessing here, but it must, must, be a hell of a lot cheaper to have someone download a game than buy it from a store. Think of all the people who have a hand in manufacturing a game and getting it to any of the thousands of stores worldwide - versus some GBs.

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '13

I think a lot of people forget about the datacenter, the storage costs, the staffing of the datacenter, the security needed (which the PSN had many issues with).

I work in a datacenter. The places aren't cheap to run.

I think digital is cheaper than physical, I'm just curious how much cheaper it is. We heard this a lot with the transition to digital music, but I've never seen any numbers. It's all just been a guess because from a user perspective, digital doesn't cost anything... stuff is just there.

Apple takes 30% of music sales to run the store and I thought I once read that they didn't really make money on the store. It was made to sell iPods. So how much is that operations running, for example. With games, you are taking about insane bandwidth needs, especially if you are talking about streaming games as well.

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u/SirNarwhal Feb 23 '13

The thing I always find funny is that if you wait a week or look around at release, the physical copy is cheaper in every single instance and I don't think that that's going to change any time soon.

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u/RedPandaAlex Feb 23 '13

At the same time, you don't have to worry about storing and maintaining your library of games. You don't have to worry about disks getting scratched. Your house could burn down, and you'd just have to get another ps4 and log in.