What does subscription based (digital only) content mean for the future of entertainment?

[StatUS]

That example does because if that game wasn't physically available it would basically no longer be playable if it only existed in the cloud on a service.

This market transitioning to a full on digital only market where we pay a service fee to access games is a bad idea. Games should be preserved and accessible to anyone not on a cloud where if they get pulled over licensing they basically no longer exist.

I'm saying this just seems like a console problem to me. On PC everything is digital so if there was a licensing issue for a game for it to be pulled or Steam goes under then it is what it is, blu ray ain't happening over here But there's also places like GOG who sell DRM free games that you own forever.

Now if you're saying that eventually, everything will be subscription based I'd have to disagree because you can still buy individual episodes/seasons and tracks/albums if you choose in other mediums for example.

 

[Mass]

Because in the long run, ownership > renting

You are good at putting arguments together. Well written, eloquently stated thoughts.

However, i think you are wrong.

You have to adapt to change.

 

[winb83]

I'm saying this just seems like a console problem to me. On PC everything is digital so if there was a licensing issue for a game for it to be pulled or Steam goes under then it is what it is, blu ray ain't happening over here But there's also places like GOG who sell DRM free games that you own forever.

Now if you're saying that eventually, everything will be subscription based I'd have to disagree because you can still buy individual episodes/seasons and tracks/albums if you choose in other mediums for example.

We're heading to a point where it's more advantageous for game makers to produce games as a service. It would entirety eliminate used game sales as an example and games as a service would make releasing games episodically much easier and more justified. Something like the Final Fantasy VII on a service is easily justified.

Eventually games won't be released as the full complete products we have today. They'll transition to a monthly service which cuts out retailers and allows companies to monetize them as they're being developed and avoid flops all together as if the response isn't there early development ceases early on after part 1 is released.

I think in the next 10 years that's going to be the only way AAA games are released as chunks that require a monthly service fee. It offers publishers too much control over their product not to do it.

 

[daze23]

That example does because if that game wasn't physically available it would basically no longer be playable if it only existed in the cloud on a service.

This market transitioning to a full on digital only market where we pay a service fee to access games is a bad idea. Games should be preserved and accessible to anyone not on a cloud where if they get pulled over licensing they basically no longer exist.

pirates can preserve these games

 

[winb83]

pirates can preserve these games

If they exist in the cloud only it will be more difficult

 

[MeachTheMonster]

Digital>>>Physical when it comes to preserving games and ownership.

With your ownership in the cloud you will always have access to it, without needing physical space to store the games or dealing with physical damage/loss/degradation. I think about all the games I've purchased or spent money on over the years, if there was some way to have a digital record of my ownership and access any one of those games at any time that would be amazing. And it looks like that's the way Microsoft and steam are going. To me, that's a much better option than trying to keep up with and store physical copies.

Yes games might get pulled from digital stores but those games would also get pulled from physical store shelves. After that it's up to the owners to not lose/destroy/delete the game.

 

[Rekkapryde]

Imagine if the wire was on CBS instead of hbo. That show would have been cancelled season 1 and would have had to make huge concessions to the creative process.

But hbo being subscription meant they could let the show be what it wanted,ratings be damned.

The creativity aspect of games could sky rocket under a subscription model. We could finally see big studios break the chains of AAA vanilla sameness and take risks

some companies do take risks on games though. problem is saying no altogether to future risks and not trying again. Nobody bats 1.000 .

 

[winb83]

Digital>>>Physical when it comes to preserving games and ownership.

With your ownership in the cloud you will always have access to it, without needing physical space to store the games or dealing with physical damage/loss/degradation. I think about all the games I've purchased or spent money on over the years, if there was some way to have a digital record of my ownership and access any one of those games at any time that would be amazing. And it looks like that's the way Microsoft and steam are going. To me, that's a much better option than trying to keep up with and store physical copies.

Yes games might get pulled from digital stores but those games would also get pulled from physical store shelves. After that it's up to the owners to not lose/destroy/delete the game.

If someone wants a copy of Alan Wake they can go on eBay and buy one. In an all digital future if a game is pulled that’s it. It would be like PT demo in that I have it on my PS4 so I can play it but if you never downloaded it you can’t and I can’t even redownload it.

I’d much prefer to own my games and do with them as I see fit.

Also your last paragraph is complete bullshyt
Alan Wake for Xbox 360 | GameStop

The problem with games as a service is its existence will gradually become more and more anti-consumer because it offered companies complete control over the end users’ experience.

From a business standpoint it makes too much sense not to push all games to the cloud as a service and no longer sell them individually. I also think the price of the service will rise. $10 a month is too cheap. It was cool when it was just old games but new premiere titles will likely be moved to a higher tier service at some point.

 

[MeachTheMonster]

If someone wants a copy of Alan Wake they can go on eBay and buy one. In an all digital future if a game is pulled that’s it. It would be like PT demo in that I have it on my PS4 so I can play it but if you never downloaded it you can’t and I can’t even redownload it.

So preservation will be on hard drives instead of dusty shelves.

You are talking consumer to consumer sales here. People can will and do backup and sell games on hard drives. As things move more into digital people will be more comfortable with this and it will be the norm.

I’d much prefer to own my games and do with them as I see fit.

You never "own" the game. You own the rights to play the game. The disc is your proof of rights ownership.

You lose/damage your proof or the hardware to use it, then you are ass out. With your proof in the cloud you can always access your content.

Also your last paragraph is complete bullshyt
Alan Wake for Xbox 360 | GameStop

That's used

The problem with games as a service is its existence will gradually become more and more anti-consumer because it offered companies complete control over the end users’ experience.

From a business standpoint it makes too much sense not to push all games to the cloud as a service and no longer sell them individually. I also think the price of the service will rise. $10 a month is too cheap. It was cool when it was just old games but new premiere titles will likely be moved to a higher tier service at some point.

Random ass slippery slope speculation

 

[winb83]

So preservation will be on hard drives instead of dusty shelves.

You are talking consumer to consumer sales here. People can will and do backup and sell games on hard drives. As things move more into digital people will be more comfortable with this and it will be the norm.

this stuff is tied to accounts. I have PT on my PS4 so I can play it but if you don't have it already on yours then you can't. your account doesn't have permission to play it so now that it's delisted you never can unless you buy my account off me and buy my PS4 with the game physically on it.

You never "own" the game. You own the rights to play the game. The disc is your proof of rights ownership.

You lose/damage your proof or the hardware to use it, then you are ass out. With your proof in the cloud you can always access your content.

You own the physical disk and the rights to play the game as you see fit on the hardware it was released on. You can also resell the physical disk with said rights to whomever you choose.

In the cloud the company that runs the cloud controls your ownership. They can remove the game from the cloud leaving it inaccessible to you unless you backed up all your cloud content and even if you did hard drives will fail far quicker than physical disc will.

That's used

it being used is irrelevant. it can be sold second hand to another party but the game is currently unavailable to download from the services that previously sold it.

Random ass slippery slope speculation

This is the nature of the industry. Someone comes up with an idea that isn't necessarily bad on it's own and companies push and push it further to the extreme. If the customer base notices you get revolts like against loot boxes with Star Wars Battlefront II but an all digital games as a service future isn't necessarily a sinister idea until you see how far it can be pushed. When it goes that far it will be too late.

In case you haven't noticed this is an industry that game makers have very little respect for their customers and insult their intelligence and pull bullshyt all the time.

I know you like to defend every single thing Microsoft is involved with in gaming but even you can see where this can go wrong.

 

[MeachTheMonster]

this stuff is tied to accounts. I have PT on my PS4 so I can play it but if you don't have it already on yours then you can't. your account doesn't have permission to play it so now that it's delisted you never can unless you buy my account off me and buy my PS4 with the game physically on it.

As I said, going forward I think more options will become available. But as it is people will find ways to preserve/trade/sell the software just as they did with PT. And furthermore PT and Alan Wake are the exception. The overwhelming majority of games will not have similar situations.

You own the physical disk and the rights to play the game as you see fit on the hardware it was released on. You can also resell the physical disk with said rights to whomever you choose.

In the cloud the company that runs the cloud controls your ownership. They can remove the game from the cloud leaving it inaccessible to you unless you backed up all your cloud content and even if you did hard drives will fail far quicker than physical disc will.

Yeah you can do the doom and gloom greedy company thing if you want, but on the flip side the world controls your ownership of the physical disc. Accidents/theft/loss/physical degradation/hardware failure all can take your ownership away without warning.

it being used is irrelevant. it can be sold second hand to another party but the game is currently unavailable to download from the services that previously sold it.

No. It's very relevant. The game is no longer for sale. Some users have preserved and and put it up for sale. That's no different than what's done with digital media.

This is the nature of the industry. Someone comes up with an idea that isn't necessarily bad on it's own and companies push and push it further to the extreme. If the customer base notices you get revolts like against loot boxes with Star Wars Battlefront II but an all digital games as a service future isn't necessarily a sinister idea until you see how far it can be pushed. When it goes that far it will be too late.

In case you haven't noticed this is an industry that game makers have very little respect for their customers and insult their intelligence and pull bullshyt all the time.

I know you like to defend every single thing Microsoft is involved with in gaming but even you can see where this can go wrong.

Every year there's some new boogey man coming to kill gaming as we know it.

Every year games keep getting bigger and better.

Don't got shyt to do with Microsoft. The OVERWHELMING majority of users consume media through digital streaming/subscription services.

 

[daze23]

If they exist in the cloud only it will be more difficult

if someone has the data somewhere, it's still around. IMO it's better than paying some dude on ebay $300 for a discontinued physical game

if a game gets pulled for whatever reason, it's gonna be hard to find. at that point it moves into a grey market, which isn't that different from piracy

 

[winb83]

As I said, going forward I think more options will become available. But as it is people will find ways to preserve/trade/sell the software just as they did with PT. And furthermore PT and Alan Wake are the exception. The overwhelming majority of games will not have similar situations.


Yeah you can do the doom and gloom greedy company thing if you want, but on the flip side the world controls your ownership of the physical disc. Accidents/theft/loss/physical degradation/hardware failure all can take your ownership away without warning.


No. It's very relevant. The game is no longer for sale. Some users have preserved and and put it up for sale. That's no different than what's done with digital media.



Every year there's some new boogey man coming to kill gaming as we know it.

Every year games keep getting bigger and better.

Don't got shyt to do with Microsoft. The OVERWHELMING majority of users consume media through digital streaming/subscription services.

You go ahead and surrender control and management of your game library to a corporation and hope end users figure out ways around their iron clad control of how you as an end user can experience the product you purchase. I'll continue to buy my games in the physical.

Like I said people who see the media as disposable have no problem with digital only as a service future. People who want to revisit these games years to decades later will see it differently. I'm about to start a playthrough of Xenosaga something I can only do now because I own the physical disc and console to play them on already. Those games are PS2 games, even if they were available digital because they exist in licensing hell it's questionable if they'd even still be available to play. I'd rather not be dependent on companies constantly remaking older games for the ability to play them.

I know very well what I'm talking about because I'm the type of person that watches a movie or TV show once and never again so I love my streaming services there because they encourage that sort of disposable approach I have to those forms of media. I don't have to spend $100 on a box set of a series I'll watch once and never touch again. Those forms of media have no real value to me after I've viewed them once.

 

[winb83]

if someone has the data somewhere, it's still around. IMO it's better than paying some dude on ebay $300 for a discontinued physical game

if a game gets pulled for whatever reason, it's gonna be hard to find. at that point it moves into a grey market, which isn't that different from piracy

So having a game pulled from an online market place and unavailable to people who didn't buy it when it was available is better than people having the option to spend $300 on eBay to play a physical copy that isn't account locked?

No it isn't. Having more options is better than having less.

 

[MeachTheMonster]

You go ahead and surrender control and management of your game library to a corporation and hope end users figure out ways around their iron clad control of how you as an end user can experience the product you purchase. I'll continue to buy my games in the physical.

Corporations are better at keeping up with records than I am keeping up with physical games. They're doing me a service for free.You pay for storage/replacement of games/hardware for the rest of your life

Like I said people who see the media as disposable have no problem with digital only as a service future. People who want to revisit these games years to decades later will see it differently.

No. You got that backwards as fukk.

People who care about storing boxes on their shelf so people can see how big a nerd they are care about physical disc.

People who want to be able to access their games conveniently and indefinitely are the ones who prefer digital.

I'm about to start a playthrough of Xenosaga something I can only do now because I own the physical disc and console to play them on already. Those games are PS2 games, even if they were available digital because they exist in licensing hell it's questionable if they'd even still be available to play. I'd rather not be dependent on companies constantly remaking older games for the ability to play them.

Had digital and open hardware been the norm back then you wouldn't need an old ass disc or a PS2 to play. You'd be playing it on whatever hardware you have, with no need to search for/keep up with a disc for 20 years.

I know very well what I'm talking about because I'm the type of person that watches a movie or TV show once and never again so I love my streaming services there because they encourage that sort of disposable approach I have to those forms of media. I don't have to spend $100 on a box set of a series I'll watch once and never touch again. Those forms of media have no real value to me after I've viewed them once.

That's you. Plenty of people use digital/streamed media very differently.