Death of retail? (split from Ketsui/DOJBLEX)

[bcass]

Pretty sure it's DLC. If it were the full game though I wonder how big it would be...

2.3gb

I suppose there's no reason why they couldn't release the "complete" version on the Games On Demand section.

[originalz]

Shit, I'd actually give a rat's about XBL if I could download BLEX, or even just BL or WL. I miss DOJ and I can't afford a JPS2 =( Getting a new PS2 and going through all the shit to mod it again to play DOJ doesn't seem worth it to me when I can still play my other two favorite shooters with no effort at all.

If it shows up on Games On Demand, then you won't be able to buy it regardless of your system region. It does IP checks and won't let you buy a game from a region that you're not currently in.

[bcass]

Shit, I'd actually give a rat's about XBL if I could download BLEX, or even just BL or WL. I miss DOJ and I can't afford a JPS2 =( Getting a new PS2 and going through all the shit to mod it again to play DOJ doesn't seem worth it to me when I can still play my other two favorite shooters with no effort at all.

If it shows up on Games On Demand, then you won't be able to buy it regardless of your system region. It does IP checks and won't let you buy a game from a region that you're not currently in.

It's already been proven that it's possible to circumvent Microsoft's IP checking using VPN/Proxies. It's a pain in the ass, but it's possible (assuming you are downloading onto a system the game is region coded for). As a last resort, you could always send your HDD to someone in Japan for them to download the game for you, then get them to send it back.

[antares]

What if you give someone in Japan your japanese gamertag and password and he buys it for you? Would it be possible to download it then even if you are in another region?

[bcass]

What if you give someone in Japan your japanese gamertag and password and he buys it for you? Would it be possible to download it then even if you are in another region?

I don't think anyone has tested this yet. Might be worth a try.

[Elixir]

What if you give someone in Japan your japanese gamertag and password and he buys it for you? Would it be possible to download it then even if you are in another region?

Actually this wouldn't work, since you would need to download it to your own HDD and it'll say that it "can't be downloaded from this location".

[TLB]

Shit, I'd actually give a rat's about XBL if I could download BLEX, or even just BL or WL. I miss DOJ and I can't afford a JPS2 =( Getting a new PS2 and going through all the shit to mod it again to play DOJ doesn't seem worth it to me when I can still play my other two favorite shooters with no effort at all.

doesn't DOJ emulate, like, almost perfectly?

My computer blows. I'm not even using it right now; I browse with my phone a huge percentage of the time. I probably had it configured crappily, though. Maybe someday. Ibara's my whore for now.

[antares]

What if you give someone in Japan your japanese gamertag and password and he buys it for you? Would it be possible to download it then even if you are in another region?

Actually this wouldn't work, since you would need to download it to your own HDD and it'll say that it "can't be downloaded from this location".

So if someone is moving to another country and takes his XBox with him he won't be able to download the games he had paid for. Very nice from MS.

[Elixir]

What if you give someone in Japan your japanese gamertag and password and he buys it for you? Would it be possible to download it then even if you are in another region?

Actually this wouldn't work, since you would need to download it to your own HDD and it'll say that it "can't be downloaded from this location".

So if someone is moving to another country and takes his XBox with him he won't be able to download the games he had paid for. Very nice from MS.

Basically yes. Even if you sent someone in Japan your HDD and gamertag, it would defeat the purpose of the games being "on demand" since you're still dealing with mail services and shit anyway.

There's not many games on the Games On Demand service that are worth checking out anyway. I can see, maybe, 3. It's probably better if people just keep importing JP-only 360 games instead.

[bcass]

It's games on demand, but it's demand through a friend. It's no particular hardship having to wait an extra week or so to benefit from the long-term convenience of being able to load your games directly from the HDD. Retail *will* be dead by the next gen or the one after. All you collectors lusting after superfluous paper and plastic packaging are going to be in need of some serious therapy.

[Battlesmurf]

Haha- say what you want, but if it goes that route I'll pretty much stop buying new videogames alltogether I am really hoping it never gets that bad. I guess worst case I can go start hunting my backlog of all the older PCBS and games and say screw the newer stuff.

[Elixir]

It's games on demand, but it's demand through a friend. It's no particular hardship having to wait an extra week or so to benefit from the long-term convenience of being able to load your games directly from the HDD. Retail *will* be dead by the next gen or the one after. All you collectors lusting after superfluous paper and plastic packaging are going to be in need of some serious therapy.

Yes, because we all buy physical copies to read the manual.

I, too, one day wish to visit your fantasy world.

[bcass]

It isn't necessarily what I want to happen. The trouble is, retail is a massive pain in the ass for the big players now that they have infrastructures in place to circumvent all the hassles and costs that retail brings. It isn't even a matter of conjecture any more. It's destiny. Don't blame me.

[adversity1]

It's games on demand, but it's demand through a friend. It's no particular hardship having to wait an extra week or so to benefit from the long-term convenience of being able to load your games directly from the HDD. Retail *will* be dead by the next gen or the one after. All you collectors lusting after superfluous paper and plastic packaging are going to be in need of some serious therapy.

Every post you make is a different type of hilarity. I thank you for my morning lols

[bcass]

Dream-on sweetheart. I've seen the future, and it doesn't involve a shelf full of cardboard and plastic. The funny thing is you won't have a say or a choice in the matter. Just have a quick glance at where all music sales are now. That's exactly where all games distribution is heading.

[Elixir]

The trouble is, retail is a massive pain in the ass for the big players now that they have infrastructures in place to circumvent all the hassles and costs that retail brings.

And yet, Wii Sports is #1 on sales charts almost every week. It requires nothing to download, nor an internet connection.

I'm sure they'll just ignore the significant profit margin from the offline gaming community because it's "a hassle".

[CStarFlare]

can you have this conversation in another thread

[THE]

@Bcass
Even if the industry total shifts towards digital distribution, your problems of lack of funds won't be solved.

As they will raise the pricing to 20-35 USD. Otherwise the industry would loose to much money.
If your are a first party developer or EA, with a 40 USD release you can still make around 20+ USD per retail copy. So why loose all this money?
The only winners of digital distributions are small studios and independent developers as they can drop the publishers and gain a higher profit.

@Bcass
And please do something about your inferiority complex, you would have a much better life without it...

[bcass]

The trouble is, retail is a massive pain in the ass for the big players now that they have infrastructures in place to circumvent all the hassles and costs that retail brings.

And yet, Wii Sports is #1 on sales charts almost every week. It requires nothing to download, nor an internet connection.

That's a really poor example, given that it's a pack-in title. It's such a small game (data-wise) it could in fact easily be built into the system.

I'm sure they'll just ignore the significant profit margin from the offline gaming community because it's "a hassle".

A profit that could be increased by cutting out all the costs associated with retail (which are significant). We could argue about this all day long, with many reasons for and against, but the one *big* thing that will ensure the death of retail (as far as games distribution is concerned) is this: 2nd-hand sales. Publishers/developers make zero from 2nd-hand sales. Most game shops (at least here in the UK/Europe) make most of their profit from 2nd-hand sales. Online distribution means a much longer life-span for games and income from games. The additional power that online-only distribution gives to the publishers/developers is immense.

Oh, and maybe a mod could split this topic. Cheers.

[jpj]

i used to work in videogame retail and i think you've got a lot of misconceptions.

here in the UK, there used to be 2500 independent videogame stores in 1995. by 2005, that had shrunk down to 250. back in the ps2 days, if a retail copy of a game was £39.99, the unit cost was about £25 + VAT (ie £30 give or take), so the retailer makes £10 per sale (if sold at rrp), but also carries the risk of losing money on any copies that don't sell unless they're privaleged to a sale or return policy (the distribution centres like gem, centresoft and pinnacle only make about £1-2 per unit, the rest of that goes to the publisher). and so then supermarkets came into the equation and really started becoming aggressive on their pricing. if a 360 game is £49.99 retail, the unit cost is about £32 + VAT, so again in theory the retailer would make £10-15 per copy. but supermarkets began pricing everything at £39.99, which means a retailer makes about £1 per copy sold (and again, you have the risk of losing money on unsold copies). then you have asda who will price games at the unit cost without even including the VAT (ie £32.72 etc), and losing money per copy they sell, but expanding their market share - and thus helping drive a lot of the smaller competition out of business. even gamestation when it was owned by blockbusters and had over 150 stores nationwide was not turning a profit. blockbuster had been looking to sell the company for years and years - eventually bought up by GAME (primarily because they were terrified gamestop would swoop in and make life very difficult for them).

so ultimately what's happening now is that most videogame retailers (ie specialists who only have the one source of revenue) are forced to sell all new games at a price that breaks even, and only make profit from second-hand sales. fortunately, after GAME's aquisition of gamestation, the pair of them are now less competitive so there's a bit more breathing space, but please don't make out like videogame retailers are raking in the cash because it's simply not true. if the likes of asda and hmv moved into second-hand sales and could successfully micro-manage all the necessary pricing (unlike MVC), then that really would kill off the specialists.

as for the issue of second-hand games sales in principle - we live in the EU, and have Fair Trading Laws. which entitles me, after i have bought a product, to sell it on without any interference from the original seller. i wouldn't write Ford a cheque if i sold my car the efforts made in particular by EA and nintendo to get rid of second-hand sales inspite of their huge profits shows this to be nothing but greed on their part. it's not something you see people complain about with regards to music cds, books, dvds, etc etc. but that's probably because they don't have second-hand markets as large videogames do. and that's because videogames are more expensive. if you really want to shrink the second-hand market, the cost of videogames would have to come down. which wont happen, but you can't have it both ways

as for digital distribution, it's one of these cliches that has been doing the rounds for a good number of years. i'd been hearing about how "the mobile phone market is really set to take off" for about 7 years. i got bored of that one after 1 year, and obviously it never happened. i think the difference here is that videogames contain a lot more data than music does, and that amount is always increasing. we've gone from CD's of 700mb, to DVD's and dvd9's with up tp 9GB, and now blu-ray (+25GB) in the space of only ten years. ubisoft were treading the waters with the latest tomb raider to see if it was viable. but changing to purely digital distribution for all games would be a massive risk, and publishers are still raking it in with the current retail model. and if there's one thing i learnt from working in retail it's that publishers don't like risks, and they are greedy.

i haven't bought a console game since outrun2006 by the way, so i don't really care either way, just wanted to clear things up a bit

[bcass]

please don't make out like videogame retailers are raking in the cash because it's simply not true.

At no point have I suggested that.

as for the issue of second-hand games sales in principle - we live in the EU, and have Fair Trading Laws. which entitles me, after i have bought a product, to sell it on without any interference from the original seller.

There's nothing stopping you selling your games collection on your HDD, or a gamertag with associated downloads.

if there's one thing i learnt from working in retail it's that publishers don't like risks, and they are greedy.

Yes, publishers are greedy, which is why they want to make a profit from *all* sales of their products, and not only a portion of them (as is currently the case). Also, there are very few PS3 games that use anywhere near 25GB. Most Wii games, once scrubbed, come to around 1GB (many of them much less). Anyone who installs 360 games onto their HDD knows that most titles clock-in at well under the total size of the DVD (with many clocking-in at less than 1GB). Anyway, the size is irrelevant. If a game is particularly large, you do what Steam does and allow downloading to start well in advance of the release date, then allow customers to activate their copy once the downloads are complete and release date has arrived.

[Acid King]

It's games on demand, but it's demand through a friend. It's no particular hardship having to wait an extra week or so to benefit from the long-term convenience of being able to load your games directly from the HDD. Retail *will* be dead by the next gen or the one after. All you collectors lusting after superfluous paper and plastic packaging are going to be in need of some serious therapy.

I seriously doubt this will happen anytime soon. Games are just getting larger and larger and unless download speeds increase dramatically to compensate for the massive increase in data use each generation brings, it will never happen.

[antares]

Imo retail games will not vanish for two reasons:

Many / most people love to go shopping, be it clothes, shoes, CDs, DVDs or videogames. Many people just go shopping without the intention of buying something in particular and they end up buying something they've seen in shops and that grabbed their attention. Especially the large crowd of "casual" gamers that don't know which games are even out, don't read magazines or internet news sites and so just buy what they see in stores and looks interesting or fun.

Many parents, grandparents buy games for their kids for birthday, christmas,... They also don't look for particular games, they just buy what looks interesting.

Maybe all games will be released both retail and download in the next generation of consoles but imo retail games won't be gone for long.

[Elixir]

That's a really poor example, given that it's a pack-in title. It's such a small game (data-wise) it could in fact easily be built into the system.

Wii Fit, Wii Play, Wii Music and so forth are all really popular and sell a lot. Pretty sure the majority of them are offline users. Just name any popular Wii game.

A profit that could be increased by cutting out all the costs associated with retail (which are significant). We could argue about this all day long, with many reasons for and against, but the one *big* thing that will ensure the death of retail (as far as games distribution is concerned) is this: 2nd-hand sales. Publishers/developers make zero from 2nd-hand sales. Most game shops (at least here in the UK/Europe) make most of their profit from 2nd-hand sales. Online distribution means a much longer life-span for games and income from games. The additional power that online-only distribution gives to the publishers/developers is immense.

Right, and consumers are still making profits from selling used games on ebay and shit. It's the same deal.

DLC-only titles aren't gonna simply cut out the offline users, it's also going to kill online stores. Some people want to buy physical games or at least have the choice of doing so.

[EPS21]

Another reason why the physical retail market needs to stay alive: Some day in the future, in the likely event of being in a post-apocalyptic world, there aren't going to be any xbox live/PSN/steam etc networks up, your hard drive in your console will probably fail (they aren't expected to last more than 5 years anyways, maybe 10 at best, the highest extent of HDD manufacturers warranty), so I'll be damned if I can't just pop in a game and play it without dealing with external networks (a huge problem with steam and xbox live indie releases atm). How I will set a safe shelter with power running to it, or even the fact I probably shouldn't waste my time on games if survival is at stake, is another story.

Although on the flipside, given the fragility of these new, cheaply manufactured consoles, If I don't learn how to fix every problem with the 360 I'll be stuck with just some packaging and a DVD

Hypothetical joking aside, digital distribution is only as good as the reliability of your medium holding those 1's and 0's, and seeing as CD/DVD's have 0 moving parts and no need for network uptime, I'll gladly take the minor inconvenience of acquiring a physical copy of a game, than to deal with what could possibly be a bigger problem later on.

[brokenhalo]

There's nothing stopping you selling your games collection on your HDD, or a gamertag with associated downloads.

sorry but this is just nonsensical. So if I download a game on xbla and I decide that I don't want it anymore I sell it how?

[dcharlie]

i just wonder - if the pubs manage to kill off most of retail, who is going to stock the actual machines?

the current situation is that the machines get sold at a minimal profit but the stores then take their cash from their game mark up. With potentially no games to stock, which stores are going to want

The PSP Go! is a first trial run at this and as far as i can tell retail has been completely indifferent to the thing. The Japanese stores seem to be pretty much indifferent. It's there - but it's not front and center like any other new machine usually is. Can't say i blame them - there's not much cash to be made from a machine that takes punters -out- of your store on one front.

I'd personally not want retail to go away because i like box arts and packaging. Well, maybe not recent box arts and packaging but certainly retro stuff. It's all part of the charm and seeing it go completely, replaced with a 'digital license' would be a little depressing.

[crithit5000]

Some day in the future, in the likely event of being in a post-apocalyptic world

Yeah, that's what I want to do after surviving nuclear assault; play some fucking video games...I probably would, too.

[dcharlie]

play some fucking video games...I probably would, too.

i've already started building my own Googlemaps loot plan, perhaps we could all group it so we can share the spoils (if we make it)?

[bcass]

There's nothing stopping you selling your games collection on your HDD, or a gamertag with associated downloads.

sorry but this is just nonsensical. So if I download a game on xbla and I decide that I don't want it anymore I sell it how?

I'll give you a clue - there is no limit to the number of gamertags you can create on any given console.