# Got a nice idea on games purchasing..



## NoSnake221 (Sep 8, 2019)

A friend of mine recently had a dream which involves a nice idea on CD games purchasing:

"What if we had retail stores with this computer that has a database of a LOT of games? Come in the store, ya get a booklet of games available with their respective prices, platforms available and etc, ya pic one or more, a CD is placed in a reader, software gets all set up, game gets printed in the CD with a case cover and manual, all assembled and handed to you upon being paid?" 

So, what do you think? Could that work?


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## FAST6191 (Sep 8, 2019)

It it an idea that has been floated for many years, indeed I recall people contemplating a variation on the theme as far back as when MP3s were still on the rise and downloading one of those still represented a significant time investment, along with hard drive space to store the things.

I would like to see such a thing, along with the option to resell said copies later, but today I would only expect game devs to do it for low bandwidth markets, and as all the main game markets these days have high bandwidth and 3g is going in faster than mains electricity in many third world countries...


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## SpiffyJUNIOR (Sep 8, 2019)

Wouldn't work because nobody buys physical PC games anymore.


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## NoSnake221 (Sep 8, 2019)

SpiffyJUNIOR said:


> Wouldn't work because nobody buys physical PC games anymore.


Well, I still prefer physical games over digital ones. I'm sure there are still people who think the same..


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## SpiffyJUNIOR (Sep 8, 2019)

You'd be surprised sadly unless your living in a place where internet is super slow or nonexistent digital is preferred still.
But I mean really who the fuck would be willing to get a 3-4 disc game just so they could say they got it physical


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## Reynardine (Sep 8, 2019)

Isn't that kind of like what Nintendo tried with the Famicom Disk Writer in Japan?

But back then piracy was the downfall of that idea.


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## NoSnake221 (Sep 8, 2019)

SpiffyJUNIOR said:


> You'd be surprised sadly unless your living in a place where internet is super slow or nonexistent digital is preferred still.
> But I mean really who the fuck would be willing to get a 3-4 disc game just so they could say they got it physical


Oh. Well. I'm actually living in a place where the Internet is pretty slow and sometimes nonexistent I guess 
Plus, I prefer physicals since hey, you have it in a disc, and if you take enough care of it (Store it in a safe place, never get it scratched, etc.) You are gonna have that game with you even if the Apocalypse hits the earth 

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Upaluppa said:


> Isn't that kind of like what Nintendo tried with the Famicom Disk Writer in Japan?
> 
> But back then piracy was the downfall of that idea.



Well, yeah! Actually now that you mention it, yes. It is basically a modern Famicom Disk Writer. But, was there already game cartridge piracy back then?


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## Reynardine (Sep 8, 2019)

NoSnake221 said:


> Oh. Well. I'm actually living in a place where the Internet is pretty slow and sometimes nonexistent I guess
> Plus, I prefer physicals since hey, you have it in a disc, and if you take enough care of it (Store it in a safe place, never get it scratched, etc.) You are gonna have that game with you even if the Apocalypse hits the earth
> 
> --------------------- MERGED ---------------------------
> ...


Hmm, I'm no expert on this, but as far as I know the Disk System failed because it was very easy to pirate the games.

Sorry for being a bit lazy and not explaining it myself, but I just found an article that talks about that issue:
https://kotaku.com/nintendos-early-drm-was-simple-and-didnt-work-30784483

There were even plans to release the disk system in the West back then, I've seen old magazine articles that mentioned it, but it fell through because of that.

Edit:
I just finished reading, the article doesn't really mention how it was done. I'll see if I can find out more. Now I'm curious myself.


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## NoSnake221 (Sep 8, 2019)

Upaluppa said:


> Hmm I'm no expert on this, but as far as I know the Disk System failed because it was very easy to pirate the games.
> 
> Sorry for being lazy and not explaining myself, but I just found an article that talks about that issue:
> https://kotaku.com/nintendos-early-drm-was-simple-and-didnt-work-30784483
> ...



Hmm.. I see. It's such a sad thing. It would have been great to have that back then. And thank you for the article! Very informative.


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## tech3475 (Sep 8, 2019)

There could potentially be ways to reduce the piracy issue e.g. per disc encryption tied to some kind of database with the disc's 'BCA' as a part of it.

But overall I don't think the idea would sell due to various issues, the only real benefit I could see is that it's still disc based DRM.

For example, you'd need the time to burn the disc (could take hours for a BD), room for the equipment, cost, value of a 'burned' disc/printed manual, man hours, maintenance, etc. 

Even retailer may not like it.

I suspect the console manufacturers want physical media to die anyway, one reason why I suspect the Xbone SAD edition exists is to test the market.

Do note however, I do generally prefer to buy physical on console where possible because of disc based DRM.



Upaluppa said:


> Hmm, I'm no expert on this, but as far as I know the Disk System failed because it was very easy to pirate the games.
> 
> Sorry for being a bit lazy and not explaining myself, but I just found an article that talks about that issue:
> https://kotaku.com/nintendos-early-drm-was-simple-and-didnt-work-30784483
> ...



I recall reading somewhere that devices existed which could connect two Famicoms together to copy the data.

I decided to look it up and found this:
https://www.famicomdisksystem.com/disk-copy/


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## Reynardine (Sep 8, 2019)

tech3475 said:


> I recall reading somewhere that devices existed which could connect two Famicoms together to copy the data.
> 
> I decided to look it up and found this:
> https://www.famicomdisksystem.com/disk-copy/


Thank you very much! That website provides all the info one could wish for.

That was an interesting read for me.


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## NoSnake221 (Sep 8, 2019)

tech3475 said:


> I recall reading somewhere that devices existed which could connect two Famicoms together to copy the data.
> 
> I decided to look it up and found this:
> https://www.famicomdisksystem.com/disk-copy/



Thank you for sharing the webpage! Same as @Upaluppa, that was a very interesting read for me.


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## The Real Jdbye (Sep 8, 2019)

NoSnake221 said:


> Oh. Well. I'm actually living in a place where the Internet is pretty slow and sometimes nonexistent I guess
> Plus, I prefer physicals since hey, you have it in a disc, and if you take enough care of it (Store it in a safe place, never get it scratched, etc.) You are gonna have that game with you even if the Apocalypse hits the earth
> 
> --------------------- MERGED ---------------------------
> ...


Sadly discs are doomed to fail eventually as they succumb to disc rot. Cartridges i think should last just about forever though, barring hardware failure, which can be repaired.


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## TimPV3 (Sep 8, 2019)

FYE does this with music CDs


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## NoSnake221 (Sep 8, 2019)

The Real Jdbye said:


> Sadly discs are doomed to fail eventually as they succumb to disc rot.


Disk rot? Never heard of it. What is that?


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## The Real Jdbye (Sep 8, 2019)

NoSnake221 said:


> Disk rot? Never heard of it. What is that?





NoSnake221 said:


> Disk rot? Never heard of it. What is that?


Discs eventually start breaking down from contact with air, you can tell when it happens because the edges look weird.


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## NoSnake221 (Sep 8, 2019)

TimPV3 said:


> FYE does this with music CDs


Good to know. Never heard about that company before though 

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The Real Jdbye said:


> Discs eventually start breaking down from contact with air, you can tell when it happens because the edges look weird.



Oh. I see. Looks like nothing gets away from the pass of time huh?


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## The Real Jdbye (Sep 8, 2019)

NoSnake221 said:


> Good to know. Never heard about that company before though
> 
> --------------------- MERGED ---------------------------
> 
> ...


Maybe those Bluray M-Discs. They're supposed to last 1000 years. But no one presses discs out of that material, since it costs way more.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 8, 2019)

NoSnake221 said:


> Disk rot? Never heard of it. What is that?


Rot gets added to many things with electrical failures but in this case the dyes used by burnable discs are just that. The laser makes a nice pattern in them but over the years moisture, heating and cooling and general chemical degradation by matter of time (pick up any chemistry textbook and read the section on yields and how to increase them -- obviously this is a situation where yield or byproduct is bad but still the same things going on) means the pits made by said laser will grow, shrink to nothing, and similarly others might appear, none of which is good for the 1s and 0s. Obviously a disc will come with some things to negate this a bit but eventually it will be too much. Similarly if you ever look at a burned CD under a microscope it is almost a miracle they work at all.

Compared to a disc made in a pressed which is far more robust (being physical pits cut into a fairly stable layer of metal) then yeah.

That said I don't see why such a setup couldn't come with a download code as well to help negate this issue, and the possibility to recreate the disc (possibly for a fee).

At this point I would almost look into what low volume pressing is up to these days -- in discussions in the past I have seen volumes in the high hundreds for sensible money so that could be a thing here. We have seen some book sellers do a print on demand thing, and I have seen a few DVDs in the past too be this (we once got some DVDs for my grandma of some old films she wanted to see again, cost was about in line with a normal DVD at the time).


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## The Real Jdbye (Sep 8, 2019)

FAST6191 said:


> Rot gets added to many things with electrical failures but in this case the dyes used by burnable discs are just that. The laser makes a nice pattern in them but over the years moisture, heating and cooling and general chemical degradation by matter of time (pick up any chemistry textbook and read the section on yields and how to increase them -- obviously this is a situation where yield or byproduct is bad but still the same things going on) means the pits made by said laser will grow, shrink to nothing, and similarly others might appear, none of which is good for the 1s and 0s. Obviously a disc will come with some things to negate this a bit but eventually it will be too much. Similarly if you ever look at a burned CD under a microscope it is almost a miracle they work at all.
> 
> Compared to a disc made in a pressed which is far more robust (being physical pits cut into a fairly stable layer of metal) then yeah.
> 
> ...


You think the downloadable version would still work after 20 or however many years it takes for the disc to break down to such a point that it no longer works? Games get removed from download services all the time, that's if the service even stays up.


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## FAST6191 (Sep 8, 2019)

The Real Jdbye said:


> You think the downloadable version would still work after 20 or however many years it takes for the disc to break down to such a point that it no longer works? Games get removed from download services all the time, that's if the service even stays up.


It is always a risk. That said an extant copy being destroyed as part of the new burn, license agreement at the time of sale and all that other jazz would help dodge most of those worries.


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## Reynardine (Sep 8, 2019)

Reading through this thread reminds me that data preservation is a serious problem, one that only becomes more pressing as time moves on. Makes me shudder to think of all the games, source code, assets and also music, movies and whatnot we have already lost to bitrot or ill handled preservation measures.

Even unreleased games, prototypes and things like that waste away because people fail to make proper backups, whatever the reasons.

Heck, even the internet looses things regularly.

I wonder if glass or maybe bacteria as a backup medium is the future?

Sorry if I'm being off topic, this just came to my mind.


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## SpiffyJUNIOR (Sep 8, 2019)

Source code has been lost or never archived for many, many games. FF8 is one that comes to mind.


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## Kwyjor (Sep 9, 2019)

Upaluppa said:


> Reading through this thread reminds me that data preservation is a serious problem, one that only becomes more pressing as time moves on. Makes me shudder to think of all the games, source code, assets and also knowledge, music, movies and whatnot we have already lost to bitrot or ill handled preservation measures.
> 
> Even unreleased games, prototypes and things like that waste away because people fail to make proper backups, whatever the reasons.
> 
> Heck, even the internet looses things regularly.


There are probably  lot of things that have been lost not because they were stored on media that rotted away, but because no one could be bothered to properly catalog and index the stuff for later retrieval – which requires both time and space.  (The first thing that comes to mind is an add-on for Shadow Warrior discovered years after the game's release because someone found an old CD-R stuck in a drawer.)


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