MS on Blu-Ray - "Who needs it?"

[pcmanrules]

I'd have to agree, i ordered Civilization V on disc because it would be faster. Here in NZ whats considered a good cap is 20-50GB and speeds rarely get into MB/s. Still even I have a descant steam library.

 

[Maz7006]

Streaming isn't practical in all cases; with a 3GB cap and at 30kb/s cnxn its out of the question (yeah im still on a 256 kb/s cnxn)

it does the job though for light browsing and online gaming

not to mention i extremely dislike digital downlaods (movies or games)

i'd like to own a hard copy

picked up a PS3 for the bluray, that way i got a nice plus that it has gaming abilities etc.

 

[DSGamer64]

Lets make some assumptions, right now games usually fill up at least a dual layer dvd (so ~8.5 GiB), say it takes me 2 hours to download that (to do that you'd effectively need to max out a 10 Mb connection), imagine release week for a big title, millions of customers all hitting your servers all at once (since you can no longer use the excuse of shipping discs to stagger release dates). They'd need to use a P2P system (like bittorrent) and that you reduce their requirements but slow everyone down and it really screws over those with bandwidth caps. It's doable of course but even on current levels it's impractical.

Now lets go forward to the next console, it's all digital and it's going to need to be 1080p because otherwise you won't notice much of an upgrade, all the textures will be doubled in size, things are more detailed and data requirements are doubled. 4 hours of maxing out my bandwidth to get a game? It takes me 30 minutes to walk into town to the local game store (even at my slow rate I can be playing in about an hour and a half). Additionally what about those of us who have ridiculous ISPs that 'shape' (read nobble) our bandwidth at peak times to next to nothing.

Cloud computing for games is fine, assuming we all live with low levels of lag, anyone who's playing quake (or doom) with a half second lag will see where this is going... Immersion is completely lost the moment you've died for the hundredth time because your shooting is half a second slower than your seeing.

- edited to fix a typo

P2P is the worst method of transferring data on the internet today. Direct server downloading is faster, you don't have to worry about the people who have crappy internet connections that will let something download for 3 days and kill the sharing part of it.

 

[MeritsAlone]

That... that must be the dumbest thing i have ever heard.
BluRay=More Storage=More Gameplay/Better Graphics

please tell me microsoft, what the hell is wrong with better gameplay and graphics?
or youre just lazy since youre the most greedy company in the world, before EA

 

[tk_saturn]

Gamers shun stores for downloads

US sales of PC games via downloads have exceeded shop sales for the first time, suggest figures.

Valve's games site Steam tops the download game rankings

In the first six months of 2010, 11.2 million full games for the PC were bought online compared to 8.2 million physical unit sales, said NPD Group.

Topping the list of download sites was Steam, the online shop of game developer Valve which created Half-Life, Left 4 Dead and many others.

Despite the prevalence of downloads, physical sales generated more cash.

NPD said that PC sales in shops made up 57% of all cash spent on PC games compared to 43% for downloads. NPD said this was due to the higher average price of games sold in stores.

The figures also revealed that the total sales of downloads and in-shop sales were down 21% on the same period in 2009.

Continue reading the main story
Top 5 download stores

• Steam
• Direct2Drive
• EA.com
• Worldofwarcraft.com
• Blizzard

"The overall decline of PC games when combining sales via both digital downloads and physical retail sales is impacted by the expansion of social network gaming as well as the continued expansion of free game options," said Anita Frazier, NPD Group industry analyst in a statement.

Ms Frazier said the research also revealed that established game download sites were prospering at the expense of smaller outfits. For instance, she said, sites such as Steam and Bigfish have both grown their share of the games market in the last 12 months

Source

And these consoles are still 3-4 years away...

 

[BlueStar]

BluRay=More Storage=More Gameplay/Better Graphics

That may be the dumbest thing I've heard. How does more storage mean more gameplay? The more storage Kojima gets the less gameplay MGS fans seem to get, if Sony bring out a Blue-Ray disc with any more storage then the next Metal Gear game is going to just be a 48 hour movie.

 

[Deleted User]

I need it.

 

[dmonkey21]

Lets make some assumptions, right now games usually fill up at least a dual layer dvd (so ~8.5 GiB), say it takes me 2 hours to download that (to do that you'd effectively need to max out a 10 Mb connection), imagine release week for a big title, millions of customers all hitting your servers all at once (since you can no longer use the excuse of shipping discs to stagger release dates). They'd need to use a P2P system (like bittorrent) and that you reduce their requirements but slow everyone down and it really screws over those with bandwidth caps. It's doable of course but even on current levels it's impractical.

Now lets go forward to the next console, it's all digital and it's going to need to be 1080p because otherwise you won't notice much of an upgrade, all the textures will be doubled in size, things are more detailed and data requirements are doubled. 4 hours of maxing out my bandwidth to get a game? It takes me 30 minutes to walk into town to the local game store (even at my slow rate I can be playing in about an hour and a half). Additionally what about those of us who have ridiculous ISPs that 'shape' (read nobble) our bandwidth at peak times to next to nothing.

Cloud computing for games is fine, assuming we all live with low levels of lag, anyone who's playing quake (or doom) with a half second lag will see where this is going... Immersion is completely lost the moment you've died for the hundredth time because your shooting is half a second slower than your seeing.

- edited to fix a typo

Well, I see one problem there. I assume that if MS started releasing all their games online they wouldn't release all downloads at 8.5GB dual layer sizes. I think steam has shown that even current games do NOT always fill up a full disc (this is an old example, but I know when I dl'ed Fallout3 it took up about 3.7GB). Also, I think M$ can get servers to handle release weeks without the use of P2P lol. There are many venues that use much more bandwidth at the time you shouldn't have to worry about people downloading games.

 

[Robbin_rus]

Well, now weknow MS thinks everyone has fast internet. Personally i even dont have a drive in my new pc... Digital distrib is the future, but looks like its not so near...

 

[tk_saturn]

Well, now weknow MS thinks everyone has fast internet. Personally i even dont have a drive in my new pc... Digital distrib is the future, but looks like its not so near...

Mine is normally unplugged too. Not enough SATA ports, and a few 1.5TB drives. It's rare I ever use the optical drive anymore.

 

[TM2-Megatron]

I have 2 optical drives in my computer (one's a BD-ROM)... I really don't understand how someone can get by with none; I use them every day for burning or just accessing data. Not enough SATA ports? Don't boards now come with like 8-10? My MB is 3 years old, and it has 6; enough for my four 750GB HDDs and 2 optical drives.

What I don't have is particularly fast internet, though. Or unlimited bandwidth. Canada is a digital ghetto, after all.

 

[tk_saturn]

If you are really interested, mine has 4 Sata ports and 2 ide ports.

It's a case of each to their own. Once I brought 600 DVD because they were going really cheap on eBay. I've disks full of crap everywhere. I quickly decided it was easier just to buy additional HDD's.

I once had this idea that rather than being picky, I would simply download every single 720p film that gets released.