Sony: Most Gamers "Don't Want To Buy Online Right Now"

SGTGimpy said:
It is simply a cash grab. Any network engineer will tell you that bandwidth on any modern networks is not a finite resource.

Now the issue with data caps on Cell phones though they say it is due to bandwidth limits it is not. It is due to the cell provider’s poor implementation of their licensed spectrum which is different than network bandwidth.
.
There was a great Youtube video posted on [H] about a year ago that summed up this BS quite nicely but I can't find it now.
Click to expand...

A resource being infinite sites not in any way mean it's free. Still costs money.
 
Rizen said:
Do people really care about bandwidth? I have a 24mbps connection which isn't anything special,
Click to expand...
Ouch, that makes me feel like crap when you say 24Mbps isn't anything special. I'm stuck on DSL with "Up To" speeds of 20Mbps, the reality is I get 6-7Mbps, and unless I want to go balls in with Xfinity, there's no way I could get speeds any faster than that.


Godmachine said:
You have U-Verse which is not At&t DSL its VDSL which is a different kind of offering (DSL is full copper to and from the distro , VDSL is half copper and half fiber although it can be FTTP).
Click to expand...
Slight correction, AT&T has recently apparently renamed their DSL service as "U-Verse" as well, in a way to trick customers to thinking that it is in fact that "fast" U-verse that they used to advertise. I checked it out the other day when I got mail that says Uverse is now available to me, went to AT&T's site for shit and giggles, said I wanted the TV, Internet, Phone package, click add to cart, enter address and what was available to me? Internet and Phone package, of 1.5Mbps, 3Mbps and 6Mbps ... yeah that ain't Uverse.

Sorry for that rant, you're absolutely right in your statement though :)
 
sfsuphysics said:
Ouch, that makes me feel like crap when you say 24Mbps isn't anything special. I'm stuck on DSL with "Up To" speeds of 20Mbps, the reality is I get 6-7Mbps, and unless I want to go balls in with Xfinity, there's no way I could get speeds any faster than that.



Slight correction, AT&T has recently apparently renamed their DSL service as "U-Verse" as well, in a way to trick customers to thinking that it is in fact that "fast" U-verse that they used to advertise. I checked it out the other day when I got mail that says Uverse is now available to me, went to AT&T's site for shit and giggles, said I wanted the TV, Internet, Phone package, click add to cart, enter address and what was available to me? Internet and Phone package, of 1.5Mbps, 3Mbps and 6Mbps ... yeah that ain't Uverse.

Sorry for that rant, you're absolutely right in your statement though :)
Click to expand...
What do you mean "go balls in" for Xfinity? U-Verse and Xfinity is pretty much the same price. You can get 30mbps through Xfinity where I live for about the same cost as my 24mbps for U-Verse, and Xfinity offers up to 100mbps here if you want to pay 150+/month.

I don't really consider $60-70 a month for internet speeds of 24+ mbps expensive.
 
Draiko said:
Everyone is ignoring one major league possibility...

What if games were served out in smaller but more frequent chunks (Gabe Newell's own vision of episodic gaming)?

What if you could buy and download 5-10 hour game episodes every month or two for about $10 each instead of (or along with) waiting 1-2 years for a 20-40 hour $60 disc game?
Click to expand...
No thanks. Finish the game, make it something I can plan on investing at least 60+ hours into and don't bother me with bullshit short episodes that don't even take me a day.
 
Disposed said:
A resource being infinite sites not in any way mean it's free. Still costs money.
Click to expand...

I never said it was free but it does not cost any where close to the amount they Bullshit out to everyone to support and operate their networks.

The most expensive part of deploying any modern network is laying the fiber and that is, while still a chuck a change is now where near what it used to be. In 2006 it cost $40k-50K per a mile to lay fiber, in 2011 the cost was somewhere around $2k-$3k per a mile. (You can Google this)

The backhaul equipment, ring infrastructure and management parts of the network is all peanuts now days. A backhaul fiber router use to be somewhere in the rage of $200,000.00-$350,000.00 10 years ago. Now they go for $20k-$30K and can handle a hell lot more bandwidth per a node.

So yes it is not free to operate their networks but it is a fraction of what it was 10 years ago so it is now costing them less money to operate them.

So why are they charging everyone more now days? Makes you wonder ;)
 
I think console gamers and PC gamers are fundamentally different ... console owners aren't really about ownership (with the whole used game fiasco on the XBox) ... they are essentially a rental model where users literally rent their games or buy them but resell them after completion ... PC owners are more likely to want to retain their titles over time (hence the popularity of Steam and other download services) ... plus the backup capability on PCs works well with ownership of large game libraries

As to the market question most people estimate digital sales to be the dominant method of sale for PCs (greatly exceeding the physical sales of discs) ... Steam alone is estimated to have about 50 million registered users (about half of the total console base for each platform) ... for most cross platform titles that aren't exclusive I would expect to see about equal splits between PS, XBox, and PC for overall game sales ... I would expect more titles to migrate to exclusivity though as that benefits the console makers more (and in the case of PCs simplifies the support and expansion options)
 
Dekoth-E- said:
No thanks. Finish the game, make it something I can plan on investing at least 60+ hours into and don't bother me with bullshit short episodes that don't even take me a day.
Click to expand...

You'll still get the option of buying completed $60 games the same way you do now but you'll be able to get cheaper download-only episodic chunks at a faster pace if you CHOOSE to. The game episodes themselves won't "feel" any different than "levels" or "sections" of the full games you play today. You'll just get to a certain part of the game and have to wait another X days or months to purchase and play the next bit.

It's not like you won't have the option to wait until the first "season" of a game is finished up before buying and playing it.
 
ERRRRRR! Wrong Sony.

Gamers don't have a problem buying online. Gamers have a problem buying online and being locked forever into that game. Give us the ability to sell and trade our digital downloads and I'll gladly jump on board. I'd rather have my games on an account than on disc but I want the same flexibility.
 
One thing I like about console (at least in the past) is the ability to just put the disc or cartridge in and play.

Sony is right, not everyone have the internet service capable of downloading the entire 20GB while we're having our lunch or taking a poop. For many users, it's still hours of download.
 
The real issue is that at 25gb per game, the pathetic 500gb hdd on the pre-aged 'next gen' consoles means you can only fit 15-20 games after OS...
 
bigdogchris said:
ERRRRRR! Wrong Sony.

Gamers don't have a problem buying online. Gamers have a problem buying online and being locked forever into that game. Give us the ability to sell and trade our digital downloads and I'll gladly jump on board. I'd rather have my games on an account than on disc but I want the same flexibility.
Click to expand...

How exactly is it wrong? In this country with the average broadband speed how long do you think it would take to download a full size ps3 game? Last I checked the average here was about 6.5meg. Try downloading 25gb on that connection and tell me how wrong Sony is again.
 
Most people work or go to school. It won't hurt them to download a game while they are gone. I think people are just resistant to change because we have too many misinformation trolls out there scaring the hell out of them.
 
Godmachine said:
I think its a fair opinion though. Games are often 25GB+ in Blu Ray format (most Steam games come under 10GB or in fact well under) and if you buy a few per month or have to redownload anything you could hit your bandwidth cap. If you are lucky enough to have a no cap ISP than its no big deal.

Not everyone in the US or the world has 25+ meg connections or hell even 5Mbps connections without data caps. I've got friends in Ireland still on 1.5Mbps connections with 50GB monthly caps.

People need to stop thinking inside their bubbles on this matter. The infrastructure across the world isn't even close to ready to switch over to such massive downloads , perhaps 5-10 years down the line , yes but not right now.
Click to expand...

Ur_Mom said:
That's my argument as well. For the most part, a 25GB download would take a while at 5Mb (no caps, thank you great Xenu!). I prefer physical media. If I had 50+Mb, I'd not question it at all. Google Fiber? I'd give up physical media, as long as my HDD could be upgraded. My Steam folder is just a bit above 1 TB. I don't want to uninstall games just to wait a day or two to download them again for a quick game.... Without that instant gratification, I'll just go to the PC and play them. That would basically what I'd be doing, anyway. Download, install, and play. I can already do that.
Click to expand...

the only thing is. there are crossplatform games where the pc download is a fraction of the ps3 blu ray size. wouldn't a digital download be way less due to compression and getting rid of dummy files?

not saying right or wrong here, digital is a given for pc gamers but a harder pill for the console crowd to swallow.

still I can't imagine you would be downloading blu ray iso's into your system.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Ouch, that makes me feel like crap when you say 24Mbps isn't anything special. I'm stuck on DSL with "Up To" speeds of 20Mbps, the reality is I get 6-7Mbps, and unless I want to go balls in with Xfinity, there's no way I could get speeds any faster than that.
Click to expand...

LOL I'm 'up to' 2Mbps supposedly, but capped at 0.2Mbps because I've exceeded 30GB for the month already.

If I want to get the 'up to' 20Mbps plan, I will be essentially buying one GTX 770 per month.


Anything faster than that doesn't exist yet here.
 
rantanamo said:
Most people work or go to school. It won't hurt them to download a game while they are gone. I think people are just resistant to change because we have too many misinformation trolls out there scaring the hell out of them.
Click to expand...

Um, the average internet speed and quota (in certain ISP) is a reality, it's not misinformation.

In your suggestion, you are going out of your way just to accommodate digital distribution when a more convenient method still exist, that is you can just buy a game from the store and play it immediately. Not every situation where we purchase a game is just right that we need to go to work first before we can play it.
 
I'd say younger PC gamers who have parents paying the internet bill don't want to have to get someone to drive them to the store and buy a game. Console gamers like having that disk in hand for resale (XBO crap aside).

Everyone else (like older PC gamers) have been pissed by online game services pulling stupid crap at least once and really want to avoid hassle, get a freaking disk and play.
 
I think it's crazy how people put confidence in a company like ie. steam to hold all your programs for you...geez people mass storage hard drives are super cheap nowdays. It has got so out of hand even nowdays they want a cloud service to store your business information... that's scary ! Ya keep the consoles simple and pc users wake up and stop this madness of storing your data on some far away cloud system. Not only that you can't resell your software !?!?! Geez it's down right madness to use any cloud storage you ask me.
 
yelsewshane said:
I think it's crazy how people put confidence in a company like ie. steam to hold all your programs for you...geez people mass storage hard drives are super cheap nowdays. It has got so out of hand even nowdays they want a cloud service to store your business information... that's scary ! Ya keep the consoles simple and pc users wake up and stop this madness of storing your data on some far away cloud system. Not only that you can't resell your software !?!?! Geez it's down right madness to use any cloud storage you ask me.
Click to expand...

Although there may be some relevant business reasons to approach the cloud with caution, paranoia shouldn't be one of them ... technologies change over time ... digital media is a progression of technologies that allow businesses to now lease software rather than selling it (Adobe and MS cloud services) and faster internet speeds that allow more remote usage of applications

People have been predicting the end of Steam since it launched and it is still going strong ... I personally am glad to be rid of physical media and having to hunt for discs to play my games (it is wonderful to just turn on my computer and play) ... as people shift more and more into the always connected environment of smartphones and tablets these web based and cloud based offerings will just become more entrenched, not less

I think eventually consoles will make the jump to digital (the same as computers did a few years back) but for now, since consoles are still tied to physical media and the rental paradigm of console gamers, they are not yet ready to make the digital transition ... I would be extremely surprised though if the next gaming system in 10 years still relies on physical media ;)
 
I think just give us an option for both, offer physical media and downloads at the same time. I love steam, but the same time I still want physical media whenever possible
 
Godmachine said:
I think its a fair opinion though. Games are often 25GB+ in Blu Ray format (most Steam games come under 10GB or in fact well under) and if you buy a few per month or have to redownload anything you could hit your bandwidth cap. If you are lucky enough to have a no cap ISP than its no big deal.

Not everyone in the US or the world has 25+ meg connections or hell even 5Mbps connections without data caps. I've got friends in Ireland still on 1.5Mbps connections with 50GB monthly caps.

People need to stop thinking inside their bubbles on this matter. The infrastructure across the world isn't even close to ready to switch over to such massive downloads , perhaps 5-10 years down the line , yes but not right now.
Click to expand...

Exactly: Downloads are a great option, but they're not optimal for the entire market under all circumstances...and I tend to think they never will be. If history is any indicator, the size of contemporary movie and game downloads will continue to grow along with bandwidth. Rural gamers might have connections suitable for 25GB downloads 5-10 years from now, but new games will be larger still.
 
...and I should also add that an all-digital model makes a LOT more sense for a continually updated open platform with perpetual backwards-compatibility (e.g. x86) than it does for closed consoles without such continuity.
 
Rizen said:
"Only" 15-20 games?
Click to expand...

Considering I have over 300 games in my Steam account on the PC with at least half of those being installed I would say "only" is a valid term for a miniscule quantity of 15-20 games :D
 
kbrickley said:
Considering I have over 300 games in my Steam account on the PC with at least half of those being installed I would say "only" is a valid term for a miniscule quantity of 15-20 games :D
Click to expand...
I have over 200 games on Steam and I have like 20 installed. Why do you keep games installed that you aren't playing if you can just easily re-download them at any time? :p
 
Rizen said:
What do you mean "go balls in" for Xfinity? U-Verse and Xfinity is pretty much the same price. You can get 30mbps through Xfinity where I live for about the same cost as my 24mbps for U-Verse, and Xfinity offers up to 100mbps here if you want to pay 150+/month.

I don't really consider $60-70 a month for internet speeds of 24+ mbps expensive.
Click to expand...
What I mean is that my current provider, not AT&T, is cheaper for a slower speed, I think the 25Mbps Xfinity price after the promo period might be a little less than twice of what I'm paying ($40 vs $70), although I get voice + unlimited everything with that bundled in for "free" (phone taxes that you can't escape). Also my ISP doesn't have any sort of data caps, which isn't that much of an issue considering my speed isn't super fast and even if it was that wouldn't instantly translate to more downloading. However something I do like about my ISP is that they don't share information with anyone, including the government, unless there is a court order, including other entities who might want my home address based off an IP number, they will have my back if someone comes after me too, plus the length of time they keep anything never exceeds 2 weeks, and there wouldn't ever be throttling due to a competing service. Also aren't cable speeds "Up To" as well? Dependent upon how many users are on a particular node? (I see the xfinity vans in my neighborhood quite often makes me think most everyone has them).

So could I get more if I pay more? Sure. But that also comes with losing a few things which I value, regardless of my lack of criminal nature on the internet ;)
 
Steve said:
I like it when company executives say crazy stuff like this. I think what he meant to say is that most console gamers don't want to download 24GB games. I know the guy is new to the gaming industry, but surely he's heard of that little thing called "Steam." ;)
Click to expand...

I don't want digital distribution at ALL, and I'll only use Steam when there's a LARGE discount over buying physically... though I'm unfortunately probably not in the majority these days.

However I am willing to totally stop buying games for this opinion, once they start enforcing digital-only without a major price drop.
 
Rizen said:
I have over 200 games on Steam and I have like 20 installed. Why do you keep games installed that you aren't playing if you can just easily re-download them at any time? :p
Click to expand...

Because disc space is cheap and plentiful and I am a mood gamer (I play a game for awhile when I am in the mood) ... I don't burn movies and my music collection is only about 75 GB ... so I need to do something with all that space ... might as well install games :D
 
i would not want to download something that is a blu-ray size of over 25GB. plus you cant re-sell. i am ok with PC games that are usually a lot smaller. Plus i found out recently that I have a 250GB download cap a month and blu-ray sized games would go over
 
Also, if you look at TV tech moving to 4k resolutions - if console games move lockstep to that, the amount of data for games will likely rise as well. So that's another strike against streaming right there.
 
yelsewshane said:
I think it's crazy how people put confidence in a company like ie. steam to hold all your programs for you...geez people mass storage hard drives are super cheap nowdays. It has got so out of hand even nowdays they want a cloud service to store your business information... that's scary ! Ya keep the consoles simple and pc users wake up and stop this madness of storing your data on some far away cloud system. Not only that you can't resell your software !?!?! Geez it's down right madness to use any cloud storage you ask me.
Click to expand...
I'm really sick and tired of reading this. Your fear and paranoia is in overdrive. No offense, but your comment makes me think of you as stereotypical militia people. That the world is ending tomorrow and everyone is out to get you.
 
Disposed said:
Come now... Theres a reason gamestop is doing very well and BB is still in business. Gamestop kicks the ever loving shit out of steam in sales so how can you even make an argument that people do not prefer this?
Click to expand...

Well, considering that Gamestop sells few PC games and Steam doesn't sell console games I am not sure how they are comparable ... Does Gamestop sell a lot of console games for $5 or $10 because Steam does :cool:
 
sfsuphysics said:
However something I do like about my ISP is that they don't share information with anyone, including the government, unless there is a court order, including other entities who might want my home address based off an IP number, they will have my back if someone comes after me too, plus the length of time they keep anything never exceeds 2 weeks
Click to expand...

Who is your ISP?
 
When Steam first started I was very hesitant to buy games online and have them just "exist" somewhere. But now, for PC games, it is the only way I want to go... many places to buy games online.

Console games... I still want a disk for some reason.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top