26th March 2006, 2:22 PM
Oh, i'm not saying that this coming gen is going to be medium-less, i'm saying it's the begining of it. Once you connect millions of people together, stuff happens quickly. All that has to happen is someone, any third party (Datel) or Nintendo, releases an HDD for Revolution. Once that happens, you wont be able to stop small deveopers, indies, etc from releasing d/l Rev games. And if they sell, you can bet your ass that major developers will follow suit.
I disagree that owning the disk is more valuable to people. MP3's, ROMs, programs, etc are just as valued by consumers as their actual CDs, games, etc. Even though it's illegal in most cases, look at the popularity of d/l movies, the only reason people burn them to disk is so they can watch them on TV. For the people who donnt want to break the law, you have paid services to d/l movies which right now, makes almost as much money (as a segment of the industry) as Blockbuster. But then look at Netflix, or other services like it (including BB's online service), and they make as much or more money than the physical Blockbusters, many consumers have completely abondoned the 'walk in the store' method and completely adopted the online method; That's a consumer who will not be going to Blockbuster, if that trend reaches larger numbers (and it is steadily increasing) eventually Blockbuster will close its physical locations and work just as Netflix does. This is an eventual thing and it will take years, but it will happen.
the same thing can be applied to video game stores.
storage is not an issue, there will always be larger capacity drives, cheaper drives, whatever. if the consumer wants to d/l games on to Rev, he can get the cheapest 10 gig HDD or the more expensive 80 gig drive or the much cheaper, korean company made hello kitty '"1000" gig' HDD
I disagree that owning the disk is more valuable to people. MP3's, ROMs, programs, etc are just as valued by consumers as their actual CDs, games, etc. Even though it's illegal in most cases, look at the popularity of d/l movies, the only reason people burn them to disk is so they can watch them on TV. For the people who donnt want to break the law, you have paid services to d/l movies which right now, makes almost as much money (as a segment of the industry) as Blockbuster. But then look at Netflix, or other services like it (including BB's online service), and they make as much or more money than the physical Blockbusters, many consumers have completely abondoned the 'walk in the store' method and completely adopted the online method; That's a consumer who will not be going to Blockbuster, if that trend reaches larger numbers (and it is steadily increasing) eventually Blockbuster will close its physical locations and work just as Netflix does. This is an eventual thing and it will take years, but it will happen.
the same thing can be applied to video game stores.
storage is not an issue, there will always be larger capacity drives, cheaper drives, whatever. if the consumer wants to d/l games on to Rev, he can get the cheapest 10 gig HDD or the more expensive 80 gig drive or the much cheaper, korean company made hello kitty '"1000" gig' HDD