Noticing a disturbing trend...

[Flojomojo]

Hey cartridge fans! If you want to pay double the download price for the fun game Rocket League, now's your chance!

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-12-13-rocket-league-in-a-box-costs-35-on-nintendo-switch

[Atariboy]

Has Capcom said anything about their Disney collection coming to the Switch?

 

Mega Man 1-10 is neat and all, but I'd personally like to see this one on cartridge since it was a digital exclusive on the PS4/XB1.

[Tanooki]

I've wondered the same thing about both (Disney?? And physical vs digital on MM stuff.)

 

Also flojo I think the conversion factor from pound to dollar for the US sales is a $10 higher price due to the costs of the media. And yes if I liked such a game that much I would be angry but I'd pay it, but not entirely, as I'd preorder it on amazon to get 20% off making is $32 instead of $40 making it just $2 higher.

[Flojomojo]

Rocket League Switch is $20 to download. https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/rocket-league-switch

 

32-20=12

[Tanooki]

Eh guess the story I read was wrong as I doubt it was price dropped that fast. I'd still pay it. I've been burned more than once on false ownership of digital vapor.

[tbb033]

Physical carts and discs are just as digital as a download. It's all 1' s an 0's, pits and lands, ons and offs. Even atari 2600 games were digital.

[Mord]

Physical carts and discs are just as digital as a download. It's all 1' s an 0's, pits and lands, ons and offs. Even atari 2600 games were digital.

 

I don't think anyone but you really cares about that. At least everyone is using the term in the same way so they all know what they're talking about. It certainly won't be the first time, nor the last, that a word will gain a new common-use definition.

 

But I understand how pet peeves work, having some of my own, so I won't say much more about it.

 

*edit*

 

If it helps quell the peeviness (a new word), keep in mind when people are talking about buying a game digitally, they mean they're only buying the digital part of the product. When they buy physical, they're buying the digital + the content it's printed on. That's basically what people are thinking when they use the term.

Edited December 17, 2017 by Mord

[Rev]

Hey cartridge fans! If you want to pay double the download price for the fun game Rocket League, now's your chance!

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-12-13-rocket-league-in-a-box-costs-35-on-nintendo-switch

Physical is better no matter the cost.

[+cmart604]

Physical is better no matter the cost.

No one asked you, Intellivision guy. ?

[Tanooki]

You can argue all the 1s an 0s you want, but blame the industry at large. They called it a digital download and have for many years since the trend picked up and then caught on so it stuck around. With the more recent times of backlash against it with sleazy DRM tactics to just things like LRG and Fangamer, along with now just in general Nintendo Switch indie releases you see those games called physical releases. Are we going to argue you don't put any working level effort into using them so they're not physical? It's just an easy term for people to understand you're paying for vapor you have 100% zero control over the content, or you pay for a physical game which you do have true control over the content.

 

I also agree (mostly) that paying extra for physical is worth the cost. If the game has the value in it to be worth paying the price of having it put on real media to touch and own, it's worth it, and if it's not, then it probably isn't worth a download either.

[Keatah]

Digital Downloads are just fine as long as they are old-school. This means they can be operated, reinstalled, transfered to another computer, don't have date expiration issues, and can be "physicalized" by you. 100% all the way. All without future contact to internet.

 

I have many freeware and payware utilities, tools, games and whatnot. All digitally downloaded. And of a superior quality compared against the crap sold in the stores. And I "physicalized" them by keeping them on a "special" HDD. They're there at the ready.

Edited December 17, 2017 by Keatah

[Keatah]

It seems like the vast majority of games coming out on Switch are digital only. As it so happens nearly all the games I want are digital only...

 

Is this really the future of gaming? They bring back cartridges and put nearly nothing on them.

 

What gives?

 

To answer the question simply and accurately - it is what the people want. They have spoken and they prefer digital downloads over all other forms. It show in the sales numbers, and the numbers don't lie.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Physical carts and discs are just as digital as a download. It's all 1' s an 0's, pits and lands, ons and offs. Even atari 2600 games were digital.

In this instance "digital" is synonymous with "download".

 

A download is not a tangible object. CDs and vinyl records for instance, are. You cannot trade or resell MP3s the way you can with CDs, even though both formats consist of digital bitstreams (nevermind the CD is vastly superior and unadulterated by compression artifacts). The same is true of game media. You cannot resell a downloaded ROM or game you purchased from a digital marketplace; you can however resell or trade physical game disc or cart media. So whether the data is on a chip in a custom housing or pits in an optical disc, it is a tangible object.

 

You paid the same price for a download without the physical container, so why limit yourself to purchasing a download with no tangible value, as opposed to purchasing the physical embodiment which does possess tangible value?

 

Legally a download is a license to use the content with an unknown expiry date attached; the physical game you actually have something tangible to retain ownership of or resell if you get bored with it. So I see little reason to buy something as download when you can get a physical copy, except perhaps convenience, or you simply don't care about preservation in the event of server shutdown or console failure. I prefer to have the assurance that I'll still have access to my purchased games some 15 years from now. Only physical copies can guarantee that.

[Keatah]

[..]

It's entirely possible that game collectors like ourselves that prefer to buy games on physical media have become a dying breed and that the general public simply prefers digital distribution in this day and age.

 

On the other hand, if there's one thing that the game industry can learn from the music industry it's that trends in how society as a whole enjoys their entertainment media tend to be cyclical. After a decade and a half of digital downloads and streaming audio we're starting to see vinyl records and even cassettes become popular again, so it wouldn't surprise me if after a couple console generations of digital downloads consumers shift back to wanting to own their games on physical media again. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

 

I partly believe that Digital Downloading is something the industry has groomed the purchasing populace at large for. The other part is that cartridges were a means to an end. A means to change the program in your fixed-function computer sitting next to the television.

 

Today we no longer need cartridges. The technology has advanced to where that fixed-function 1960's and 1970's styled computer can accept updates over a network. The industry just attaches a $$$ value to each transmission or transaction. And some in the industry go to extra lengths to enforce the payment by way of encryption or constantly checking a server, or other methods.

 

---

 

About vinyl, thing is that the early digital music industry was pretty stingy and only wanted to sell low-quality low bit-rate tracks, 128Kbps isn't exactly a symphonic performance. And, they saddled it with all this ridiculous DRM that limited what players could play tracks, and "authorizations" allowing only certain computers to be signed on to an account.

 

Vinyl sounds better than that 128Kbps crap, doesn't have the hard quantization artifacting, and is reasonably DRM free - other than having to have a turntable.

 

I also believe vinyl was a victim of "tech advertising" in the same way 5.25 floppy disks were when higher-density media became available. The Mad Men of advertising on Madison Avenue told you floppy disks would be dying in a few short years. And you believed them. Like fools. Naturally. And what happened? Many have lasted 40 years already.

 

The 5.25 disk was replaced by the 3.5 disk, and it was the replacement which had the short life. CD-R/W was even worse.

 

Point being: advertising tells you what is in vogue, and you accept it. And right now it's DD.

 

---

 

Also, these threads are discussion fodder only, nothing written here is going to change anything.

[Keatah]

Legally a download is a license to use the content with an unknown expiry date attached; the physical game you actually have something tangible to retain ownership of or resell if you get bored with it. So I see little reason to buy something as download when you can get a physical copy, except perhaps convenience, or you simply don't care about preservation in the event of server shutdown or console failure. I prefer to have the assurance that I'll still have access to my purchased games some 15 years from now. Only physical copies can guarantee that.

 

Provided the game doesn't verify against a server with a time limit.

 

---

 

Physical copy, on HDD, CD, ROM-chip, or SuperMan's DataCrystals.. A properly "designed" uncontaminated old-school digital download, one that doesn't contacts servers, can be put on any one of those mediums and saved for decades.

 

In that way I like DD. The amount of cool stuff available is beyond belief.

Edited December 17, 2017 by Keatah

[Tanooki]

Digital Downloads are just fine as long as they are old-school. This means they can be operated, reinstalled, transfered to another computer, don't have date expiration issues, and can be "physicalized" by you. 100% all the way. All without future contact to internet.

 

I have many freeware and payware utilities, tools, games and whatnot. All digitally downloaded. And of a superior quality compared against the crap sold in the stores. And I "physicalized" them by keeping them on a "special" HDD. They're there at the ready.

 

Same here, it's why you see me always tout GoG.com over Steam. I know some Steam stuff can be cut away from their DRM but a good bit of it is stuck behind the wall. GoG has the locker or you can download and keep backups and make your own media or as I did stuff it on a portable hard drive.

 

 

Kosmic raises the ultimate point. Why pay the same price for digital vapor vs a tangible copy you can have for the long run. Also have anyone noticed you also have cases where the downloads don't drop in price and end up costing notably more than the physical, even if at times up front the download could be cheaper? Downloads can also be removed over licensing reasons. And that can go even into rare cases of purchased goods being removed over some point if the EULA allows for it as well (though in most cases cut off stuff is kept download capable for owners.) Networks drop and you lose your stuff, best recent case to be is the old pre-Nintendo Network (NNID) on DS and Wii, they're being/are shut down and that stuff is done unless you're a warez dog.

 

 

Digital download wouldn't be anything (as Keatah assumed correctly) if not for grooming. I had this explained to me 5-10 years ago by my brother who is a video game producer (he works for pipeworks/505 games on stuff like superfight) that the games industry wants all if it to go to downloads. Knowing it can not happen now because of ever increasing sizes out pacing the crap speeds of the internet most the world outside japan (all on gigabit now) have. If the world had gigabit level speeds for most areas where gaming sells best they would stop making physical media entirely, much like with Android and iOS. Why? Control. Remember that DRM dust up with the XB1? The industry tried again at that rate to force it and it backfired with the anger of many before it even arrived so they backed off it for now.

 

The argument is you don't own shit, you never did, it's a license, and because there is a USED market out there the industry claims the majority of their losses are OUR fault for buying used games. Clearly, bullshit. That's like saying the used car market has destroyed the new car market. You don't see Ford and Honda colluding to destroy used cars by making one time user start up coding on cars so they don't run for another. That's what the games industry wants instead of fixing their bloated budgets, mismanagement, and other kinks unique in their system of development. They work beyond their means, and place blame anywhere but them. He told me, if they could get gov't backing or other capabilities to pull it off, it would get done, but in turn they'd drop game prices (downloads) by 50% due to the removal of risk on their part due to no resales being possible anymore. I don't buy it, but that's the argument they intend to use. They feel if us 20-40+ year olds hate it, we can fuck off because a new generation are being born into everything being digital so they won't notice. Either they'll force it, or have us get excluded and die off to hit the end game. That's the plan.

[Flojomojo]

Holy balls, you guys are invested in your entertainment purchases.

 

These things have a commercial lifespan, like books, films, and music. The vast majority of sales happen at the time of launch. Very very few of them have a "long tail" to speak of. There is only a tiny subset of things I purchase that I would care enough to revisit in the distant future. There's more "product" at my house than in stores, and I have more than a normal person can/should enjoy in a lifetime.

 

I haven't lost any of my many many download-only purchases, and I doubt I will. The convenience and portability is totally worth any "lock-in" that happens. My stuff doesn't own me.

 

I still have lots of cartridges and discs and books, but most of it is accessible in other formats that don't require me to have the hunk of plastic or paper to enjoy it.

[Punisher5.0]

Holy balls, you guys are invested in your entertainment purchases.

 

These things have a commercial lifespan, like books, films, and music. The vast majority of sales happen at the time of launch. Very very few of them have a "long tail" to speak of. There is only a tiny subset of things I purchase that I would care enough to revisit in the distant future. There's more "product" at my house than in stores, and I have more than a normal person can/should enjoy in a lifetime.

 

I haven't lost any of my many many download-only purchases, and I doubt I will. The convenience and portability is totally worth any "lock-in" that happens. My stuff doesn't own me.

 

I still have lots of cartridges and discs and books, but most of it is accessible in other formats that don't require me to have the hunk of plastic or paper to enjoy it.

I like both sides. To be honest though digital movies concern me. I have a VUDU account and I've bought and redeemed movies with it. How long do you think VUDU will be around for? If they go out of business then all my digital movies are gone. That makes me hesitant to buy more. I guess atleast with games they are installed on the system.

[Flojomojo]

Vudu is owned by Walmart so it's likely to stick around.

 

I don't have any purchases there except via Movies Anywhere (formerly Disney Movies Everywhere). That service lets you link various DRM schemes so it doesn't matter where you buy things; they're shared among Apple, Amazon, and Google stores. Microsoft and Sony should be onboard soon, they were in the Disney incarnation.

 

It's nice being able to play movie purchases in YouTube.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

Provided the game doesn't verify against a server with a time limit.

 

---

 

Physical copy, on HDD, CD, ROM-chip, or SuperMan's DataCrystals.. A properly "designed" uncontaminated old-school digital download, one that doesn't contacts servers, can be put on any one of those mediums and saved for decades.

 

In that way I like DD. The amount of cool stuff available is beyond belief.

Ironically the only modern industry that provides such service is the music industry. All the music downloads are DRM-free now. Well I shouldn't say that. The MP3 have metadata in the ID3 tag that is traceable to the unique purchaser online so they have someone to blame if it gets leaked. Doesn't matter really as the tags can be stripped off by a simple program. But are there presumably inaudible artifacts or watermarks embedded in the audio file? One can never be sure. Oh, and in 2005 I made the decision to rip and encoded my entire CD collection as OGG Vorbis 50%. Why?

 

Audiophile observations follow that don't have any bearing on the discussion at hand.

 

MP3 LAME Alt Standard and Vorbis 50% encoded to roughly the same average bit rate, about 144-180 kbs average but varied based upon the sonic complexity of the song. So I did an experiment. I took the CD audio track ripped in WAV format, and subtracted the encoded MP3 and OGG files from the original, and added a 20Db boost to the resultant waveform. Both formats had roughly similar signal to noise ratios, but the Vorbis distortion tracks sounded like white noise when boosted. The MP3 distortion tracks sounded like gargling mud burps. So all else being equal, the Vorbis audio had similar distortion levels but was much much much less offensive to the ears.

 

 

Back on point, after Napster got taken down the music industry fought hard to add DRM in order to protect their investments. It backfired big time. Now music downloads are offered DRM free, even if provided in an archaic and now patent free (as of 2017) music format. The same could have happened with game and movie downloads, but didn't.

 

Consoles are walled gardens, always have been, and today is no different than 20-30 years ago. By the time bandwidth was great enough that whole movie downloads were feasible, streaming had taken off with sites like Youtube et all. Netflix, originally a predominantly physical disc mail in service, converted over to streaming as their predominant format. They singlehandedly killed the brick and mortar rental store, so now we have Redbox to fill that niche, as long as the movie has been out for a year or less. Movie download codes are still encrypted or stream only. Since the stream is never actually stored to the hard drive but cached in RAM, an encrypted bit stream is much more difficult to capture and save, even if the keys are present and readable in system RAM.

 

So your old school download philosophy is out regarding movie streams / download codes.

 

Next up, games. Consoles being walled gardens, it is possible to save the token directly to the system, and provided hacks/exploits are patched in a timely manner, you cannot play online or download new games without updating the system. Rock solid for the most part, and it is a game of cat and mouse with regular "stability" updates closing patches and loopholes as fast as they are discovered, for most of the commercial lifespan of the system. After the end of support, who cares?

 

PC is much more hackable due to the fact that anyone can run unsigned code on the system. Microsoft and Apple have mitigated that somewhat with app stores much like the competing mobile-only android, and traditional desktop games are now served predominantly through steam. One huge issue with steam is the majority of games verify the user account token online every time the game is booted, so even offline only games cannot be played without online access. This IMO is even worse scenario compared to the traditional big 3 consoles which allow offline gameplay of digital downloads, permissible because the system is generally secure and closed off to hacking.

 

That leaves us with the traditional delivery method of Windows installer files, whether provided online or through a disc. Good Old Games regularly provides DRM free downloads of PC games which the user can back up and archive as he/she pleases. However Keatah, you left out one small little detail. As the name Good Old Games implies, much of these games are 10+ years old, and the commercial lifespan of these titles is in the twilight years. You are not going to find modern AAA big budget games on GOG. Perhaps a few indie titles will be available, as well as old titles that sell for peanuts, but not new big budget games. And forget ever seeing console exclusives.

 

So GOG is more like a nostalgic factory, pumping out titles from yesteryear, some of which the original media no longer work on modern Windows. Want Maxis Sim City 2000? The 16-bit installers won't run so the installation media is as good as worthless. GOG has you covered in this case with 32-bit installers that work on 64-bit Windows.

 

Pity though, because music downloads services like Amazon, iTunes, and even Bandcamp (which FYI provide options for lossless codecs) went DRM-free and are quite successful, but so far movies and games haven't evolved to this point? Perhaps someday in the future it will come to pass? That chapter hasn't been written yet...

 

TLDR: In an alternate world, movies and games could be available without DRM. Take a page from the music industry. That is all folks...

[Flojomojo]

Yeah, I'm increasingly becoming a PC gamer -- I know most of my stuff will work on future hardware and is easily movable between many systems. The Xbox continuum where the xOneX improves OGxb software is neat, but just being able to install on any windows machine is better.

[Keatah]

I'm at the point where before I buy anything I check into its DRM. I'm also at the point where there are very few movies I HAVE TO SEE during the opening week. It simply isn't that important. Hasn't been for a good number of years. Ohh maybe when I was a kid I had to rush out. But not in god knows how long.

 

So I don't worry about having to stream the latest movies. My media pipeline is very very long. I'm more than happy to purchase a DVD/bluray of material I like. And movie studios are releasing official content faster and faster in effort to combat camming and other forms of piracy.

 

Consider Blade Runner 2049, it was just out in the theaters a few months ago. And now it's on disc for purchase for like 20 something dollars. So.. I had a choice. See it in my theater with all the comforts and amenities or pay $250 to do the same for a cheap night on the town, with the movie.

 

This one I happened to wait on. I'll get the disc when I get around to getting the disc. There is no urgency. There is no rush. And that's a nice place to be.

 

Star Wars? Similar. It's a family tradition to get together for these. And this one is no exception. Do I HAVE to see it today? No. Mid-Jan? Sounds fine. I have yet to fully absorb all the details and sub-plots of the last two anyways!

 

---

 

And whether it be a game, or music, or movie, any kind of media. If it has DRM I'm very likely to say no. If it has to depend on a server I'm likely to say no. The farthest I'll go with DRM is a personal code that is checked and verified off-line, not too much of that these days. I would rather make use of an older tool, one that isn't damaged by DRM. And, besides, there are so many cool freeware alternates that are lighter.

 

It's like with MS Office 2003. It's the last version I purchased. And while I'll use the more current versions from time to time, they're going to be somebody else's install or on someone else's rig. I've gotten used to using older tools in more creative ways, hopefully to the delight of the original developers.

 

All my Nikon software is older too. Photoshop? Yup. Old. OLD OLD OLD!

[Video]

Xbox one does still have DRM though. Very little, to nothing is on that game disc, which basically means I'm out on that one. Had I known beforehand, I would NOT have gotten an Xbox one. A month in and all I've used on it are 360 games (from their free with live program, and to my understanding for Xbox one, even that works different) once live support is pulled for 360 stuff, the tiny number of games I currently have for Xbox one will be all I have, once that system dies, and xbone support is pulled, there will be no way to get the games, even with the "physical" copy. I won't be getting another Microsoft console, and the way ms and Sony have their heads up each others ass, the ps5 will follow suit (currently you can still play most its games without internet access) so the ps4 will likely be the last Sony system I own. I plan to get a switch, but will only get physical there, and it won't surprise me if their next console is media less, or severely crippled as the Xbox one is RIGHT NOW.

 

Its OK, I'll never FORCE anyone to take my money, there's to much old stuff I either own, or haven't got yet to tide me over for the rest of my life. As for digital, I'll still use it, lord knows I've got dumptruck loads of them, and devices to play them, mostly for free, or at the most a couple of bucks. (Highest ive paid for a dd game is $5) Full price ($60+) will never be the primary means of DD, regardless of how much big gaming companies want that, especially on devices with ready access to super cheap and free games. It only works on consoles, for the moment, BECAUSE of the option to buy physical media.

[Mord]

Vudu is owned by Walmart so it's likely to stick around.

 

Like their mp3 service? Mind you, an extremely negative consumer backlash made Walmart change it's mind about shutting off the servers at the time, although the point is that just because a company is big you shouldn't assume it'll always be around. They don't need bankruptcy to pull the plug - just not high enough profit margins. (Especially the case with stores that aren't completely dependent on the drm service of the day for their bread and butter - you have a much better reason to have confidence in steam than a retail chain.)

[Mord]

 

To answer the question simply and accurately - it is what the people want. They have spoken and they prefer digital downloads over all other forms. It show in the sales numbers, and the numbers don't lie.

 

Weeeeelll... when at the beginning especially there would always be a shortage of games on the store shelves - but those exact same games available in infinite supply in the e-shop, I guess that can certainly alter the intent of the numbers. Ultimately it means people wanted games regardless of how they could get it - even if they'd prefer to get physical, if they had to deal with digital, so be it.