26th March 2006, 11:39 AM
Quote:1.) SD cards can hold a few gigs of info, this is great for retro gaming and even last gen gaming, but not really curent gen. When you think of next gen, it becomes rediculous. However, Revolution uses DVD's, that's about 7, 8 gigs of info. a 50 gig HDD would allow you to download around 10 games depending on their total size. if you run out of room, you delete it, but because the Nintendo network knows that you purchased it, you can d/l again when ever you want 9i-tunes does the same thing). after all, I play games alot, probably more than anyone else on this board and i cant devote myself to more than 5 games at a time anyway until i beat one/get bored of it, so this should be more than enough for most people. By the time you want to d/l a 11th game, one of those 10 are going to be played to death or boring and will need the boot.
But my point is, this is a bad idea, not a good one. Games that big take a long time to download... it's not play-on-demand like a disc. And with only being able to have a few games, it's a serious problem that only physical media can solve. Downloading as an option for some titles? Yeah. But as the norm? Nope. The ease of use factor is countered out by the limited space factor, and quickly enough the limited space one will win.
Quote:4.) people say "d/l isn't the same, people want to OWN the actual DISK!" and to those people, i laugh very hard and point to MP3's, emulators, ROMS. etc.
It means more to own the actual media than any ROM or MP3. Yes, because of ease-of-use you might well use the MP3/ROM more, but still, actually owning it means something more...
Quote:3.) By d/l the games, the developer does not need a publisher, does not need to market commercials or work through an ad agency, does not need to worry about manufacturing, release dates, shortages or anything that goes along with getting a product in to a store.
You're right on this one though... the publisher system isn't that good for small develpers, and downloading frees them... and smaller, 'indie' titles are the perfect ones to have as downloadable titles; see Darwinia on Steam... but as the primary distriution system for major releases? It's just not going to happen that way. The limited-space thing will win over the downloading-means-faster-access thing (that is, you don't need to find the disc/cart, etc, to be able to play the game, just turn on the system and launch it) for a long time to come -- for as HDDs get bigger so do game media formats and the games themselves... just look at BD-ROM on the PS3!