Did I get you with the title? That was the idea… I’m not misleading you, I really do think there’s a paradigm shift coming. A fundamental change in the way we’ll think about current handhelds and how future handhelds are designed. I’m not alluding to some new battery technology or uber-powerful ultra-efficient processor… I’m talking about…
…the beginning of the end for physical product distribution. Nintendo’s newly announced DSi features an SD slot for downloading and storing content onto. Similarly, new package shots for Sony’s PSP-3000 heavily hints at a native-to-PSP PS Store interface. What does all of this mean? Well, by this time next year, we could very well be buying all of our software electronically, with no physical UMD discs, or DS cards. WiFi is becoming more and more common in everyday locations and with built-in commerce solutions, an open WiFi hotspot is as good as an in-store download station, except instead of downloading demos, you could be buying full retail products.
If the rumors are to be believed, Sony is moving to offer all titles released past some certain (mystery) date in 2009 also available as digital downloads. Of course, they still have to release physical copies of games this generation, but it’s a very real possibility that people will trend to digital downloads instead. On the PSP for example, there’s the very real benefit of greater battery life with downloaded software rather than spinning a UMD disc, not to mention the side-benefit of theft protection (you can re-download purchased games from the PS Store, unless they change that, I expect the PSP PS Store will function the same.) If someone steals your PSP and UMD discs, you’ve got no recourse, if someone steals your PSP and downloaded games, at least you can recover the games.
Sony and Nintendo are both very large game publishers and while they can’t completely cut retail out of the pipeline (they still need to get hardware and accessories into people’s hands,) they stand to gain a lot more money by reducing the secondary game sales market. Digital distribution drives a stake into the heart of used game sales. As a business, it makes more sense to keep doing what you’re doing and focus on making your slice of the pie larger than trying to increase profits simply by making more games or better games. What may be looked at as a simple tweak to the video game market, could have catastrophic effects for some.
As long as the DRM is someone flexible, which I have to admit it has been in the case of Sony and the PS3/PSP, I really have very few hesitations to fully embracing digital downloads and shunning physical media. I’m not the type of person that typically trades in my games and if I’m free to shuffle my content on/off multiple handhelds I might own, then my major concerns have been met. The details of Nintendo’s plans are still unclear, perhaps we’ll learn more later this week from announcements during the Tokyo Game Show.
I would be curious to read your thoughts on “going digital” with your handhelds. Do you value having physical media? Do you think this will simply accelerate piracy? Do you think this could partially be the answer to piracy (having a “connected” handheld)? Speak up, let me know what you think.
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I think this is pretty fantastic. I think that the PSP is sometimes under-rated considering it has great functions including Skype and ability to download your movies onto it in addition to playing games.
I would love to have a handheld that I don’t need to worry about losing a small disc or cartridge. It’s very convenient and practical.
Glad I don’t own stock in a game store! :O
I welcome it… UMD’s suck.
No more scratched discs.
I knew it would come to this, another excuse for me to stay home.
Yeah it sounds good.
If future handhelds are totally reliant on downloadable games, think how thin they could get. Like the slim and lite psp is pretty thin now, and look at how much space of that is the UMD drive.
@Eddiemilz: Or at least replace that crappy UMD drive with a smaller and more efficient hard drive… yeah, it wouldn’t totally solve the battery life issue, but if I could replace my slow 1.85GB single-title UMD drive with a 20-80GB hard drive and store all sorts of stuff on there, well, sign me up!
i ame a boy on 16 yr. and my prob is that i dont have a bank card to use on playstation store or what the hell the nintendo thing is named, my mom and dad wont let mi use there bank card so my only option is umd and ds cards, i ame sory but i also vants a cover to have in my bock shelf so i can brag about hoe meny games i have, i oalso wants to go to game stop and get out whit a cover in my hands, that make the game itself more valuable for me
ps. sory for bad spelling
The only real porblem i have with this is i prefer to have the game in hand. he makes me feel more like i bought something to have a object in my hand. But i think that is something i could get over with time. Other then this small problem i think its great idea. I think what a better idea would be is to have both a Phyical and a downloadable verson of the game. like sony did with warhawk and a few other games.
That way thoughts that want to have the phyiscal object in hand can and those that don’t mind downloading can go download it.
I don’t know maybe its just me but i do like having the phyiscal object in hand.
sorry for the bad grammar in that post. Lol at work so i was doing one thing and thinking about two things lol.
@kim andre: You can always use cash to buy pre-paid cards from Nintendo and Sony. Sony is actually trying to FINALLY make those cards available to consumers (I’m assuming they realize it could make them some money or something… I have no idea why it’s taken so long.)
As far as “bragging rights”, well, you’re on your own there… I could see the “physical manual” point, though I have to admit I rarely ever read manuals anyway… PS1 games on the PSP/PS3 include scanned copies of the manuals, they could certain expand that to include newer titles as well.
Theoretically, these companies could also allow you to sell/exchange your downloaded games to other network members (for a small fee I would assume.) For this to be considered, I’m guessing we’d need to have a pretty widely established community of folks buying games from these services and even then it’s doubtful it would happen. Would you buy/sell a game if there was a $5 license transfer fee involved on top of whatever the seller wanted?
I would be fine either way. I like hard copies because you and friends can borrow or lend games and you can buy them with cash. On the other hand, downloaded games can’t be lost or scratched.
I’ll keep my comments based on handhelds.
I am in favor of digitally distributed games versus disk or cartridges. A major point is to be portable. It’s harder to carry around a handheld, headphones, charger/batteries, etc. when you have to carry around a disk for each game you want to play. Let’s say the device can hold 100 games — then I can play whichever one of those 100 games whenever I want, as opposed to carrying around 100 disks. Look how portable mp3 players are. Instead of carrying around a suitcase of CD’s, I can have the equivalent amount of music available in a much smaller package.
The con is the borrowing/selling aspect. In the digital gaming world, you can’t really borrow or sell a game to another person. And data storage is an issue as well
@Rothbart: It’s an interesting idea to have licensing costs for transfers, however the costs for transfer must be much smaller than the value of the game for it to be reasonable. And who does this license transfer fee go to? the publisher? the developer? the console manufacturer? It’s an interesting idea. I would probably use something depending on how it’s implemented
@ Rothbart
Yup a smaller hard drive would be great!
like you said, if they could get a little 80gig one in there than that’s at the very least 40-something games. Great idea.
I wonder if games would be cheaper since the companies would save so much money not putting it in stores… Maybe that could make up for the console price increase, since no doubt with a hard drive it’d be much more expensive lol.
@dankster: My guess is that it was be somewhat large to entice people to consider buying the game new outright versus buying it from someone else, and yeah, I think if they cut in the publisher of said game on a resale, the publishers would probably totally support a system like that.
i have heard that soney is planing to use somting cald “mini bueray” on th nekst psp (not the 3000) it is the same sise of an umd but has 10gig i think, it is only a rumor but the mini blueray do eksist so if they chud do that it whud make pirasy more harder becose of the sise of an memerystick and it whud make the games realy good (if the system can run it ofcorse)
but remember it is only a rumor
ps. sory for bad spelling
@kim amdre (nice try on the slight variation of “kim andre” to confuse us into thinking it’s the same person…)
Clearly someone pulled that out of their @$$. That’s not gonna happen.
I certainly hope it doesn’t all switch to digital downloads, since where I am the fastest internet I can get averages 50 kbps and we only have 10 gigs of bandwidth a month
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Well it’s official, all first party PSP titles will be available both on UMD or digitally from the PSP PS Store. It goes live October 15th in Japan, the rest of the world will follow (hopefully) shortly after that.