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Players who received early physical copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 report that the disc doesn't actually contain the game. It contains around 70MB of data, while the other ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY GIGABYTES, the actual game, have to be downloaded and installed via teh interwebz. The disc is basically just proof of purchase.

The officially releases tomorrow, and until that time those with physical copies can just twiddle their thumbs and fume. Since the game isn't officially out yet, and download isn't available, the disc is really just a piece of shiny plastic.

What does this mean in terms of copyright, intellectual property, software as a license VS as a product VS as a service?
What does this mean for resales of physical copies?
What does this mean for game preservation?


Activision has yet to comment.

Source,

 

[HideoKojima]

technically you've never ever owned a game (except you programmed one yourself)
you do possess a vast assortment of shiny plastic discs and cartridges though, I presume

Do you know who I am?

 

[Noctosphere]

Do you know who I am?

None of us do
Introduce yourself please

 

[HideoKojima]

None of us do
Introduce yourself please

I'm Hideo Kojima

 

[LeNoobio]

I'm Hideo Kojima

And my name is
Chika-chika
Slim Shady

 

[godreborn]

Bah, you whippersnappers, back in my day games were 4KB in size and came on audio cassette tapes. And they weren't easy to come by 'neither. One time I had to buy a cassette, so I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Ah, there's an interesting story behind that nickel. In 1957, I remember it was, I got up in the morning and made myself a piece of toast. I set the toaster to three: medium brown.Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...

back in my day, games were from a few kilobytes to a few megabytes, it was almost impossible to find a working copy on the internet, and games back then cost around $80+, and this doesn't account for inflation all the way to today. be grateful that things are cheap by those standards.

 

[Veho]

back in my day [...] it was almost impossible to find a working copy on the internet

Back in my day the internet didn't exist

 

[godreborn]

Back in my day the internet didn't exist

it existed at some point for me, and it would take an hour to download 1.5MBs.

 

[LeNoobio]

it existed at some point for me, and it would take an hour to download 1.5MBs.

I can "hear" your download from here, all those years later

 

[tech3475]

it existed at some point for me, and it would take an hour to download 1.5MBs.

I still remember when I first got 256kbps ADSL in the early-mid 2000s, being able to stream video practically was mind blowing.

 

[HideoKojima]

And my name is
Chika-chika
Slim Shady

Please stand up

 

[Spider_Man]

the answer is licensing/royalties. Similar to how the (early) wii had DVD support, but Nintendo didn't want to deal with royalties, so the feature got axed.

Has nothing to do with royalties.

The fact that pc games are still dvd based is to ensure maximum support, for most if not all pc gamers there is 0 reason to upgrade to a blueray drive just to install game data and run a disc as proof of ownership.

Thats is why pc games are still dvd based, maximum user support.

Nintendo as far as I can recall have never ever paid for rights to use media licensing such as dvd, this is why all of its consoles while having optical media, have lacked the media support.

They are always one step behind using the cheapest hardware as possible, hello how they long it took them to wake up and accept the advantages of disc based media vs very expensive cartridge based media to which they reverted to for the switch.

Which is a massive step backwards in regards to console evolution, the media platform is very expensive to produce in comparison to optical media.

It was the main reason what crippled the n64 and why it failed to gain advantage over the ps1.

That continued over the to cyber, nintendo still refused to pay up licensing rights to use dvd based media and opted for its again restricted mini dvd based media for its games.

Then the wii had to use dvd format simply because it would be stupid in those days to have a basic game on multiple discs when it could be on one dvd discs.

Nintendo don't have to pay any royalties for the use of dvd unless its consoles have dvd media support.

Which any form of the most wanted feature, media support has only ever become a possibility because of the console exploits their legal lapdog work so hard to shut down.

Maybe nintendont should we up, see the needs today from gamers and actually release a good console, not some inferior cheap ass bullshit with inferior bs gimmicks to hype the console.

Pc games would benefit from blueray support, but it also has to tailor to the public, not many pc gamers have upgraded to blueray media which I find stupid as most you see online these days dknt even include dvd drives.