Traditional Console Death! Long Live Streaming?

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skykappah
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Traditional Console Death! Long Live Streaming?

Post by skykappah »

With some in the industry predicting the PS5 being the last console with a media disc drive, though even that may change as Xbox Two is rumoured to be a streaming box.

Are you guys ready to spend 50 smackeroons on visual thin air?

As it is... I’m already not playing that much and streaming only will probably be my “get out of dodge” card. Though I do buy spesh editions for my current consoles on a regular basis. Download-wise... I only buy the games if it’s around half the price of a physical copy. So no can do if it’s £35-£50 for downloading or streaming a game.
Besides feeling 99% cheated out, I like owning physical objects.

What are guys gonna do?
Last edited by skykappah on April 20th, 2019, 3:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Traditional Console Death! Long Live Streaming?

Post by yosai »

I gameshare on my consoles so downloaded games are better for me. I don't buy games at launch and will happily wait until they're cheaper or on offer.

Consoles are a lot quieter too when not spinning up disks too. :awe:
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Re: Traditional Console Death! Long Live Streaming?

Post by cools »

I like to know that (hardware failures aside) I could pick up a game years after it's release and still play it.

Download only - there's potential there, although it relies on someone ripping it.

Streaming only - no chance. Game is locked away. For massively online games where you need a large number of players just for the game to work, fair enough - they're a game based in a particular time never to be repeated. Make it cheap and subscription only, with a free trial or easy refunds? I might take a look but with so much else to play, more likely I wouldn't.

All of these digital only systems I just see as expensive rentals. If I could get a cheap rental with the opportunity of using the money spent as a full discount on the cheapest available physical copy (NOT RRP!) I would be far more likely to embrace it. Free demos are just as good, but a couple of quid on a time limited digital copy I've no problem with.

I'd happily pay a few quid for a game knowing it was going to delete itself in a set (short) period, rather than paying full whack for something that I'll lose a in a couple of years. Give me the old rental model digitally, and release physical games and I'm all over it.
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Re: Traditional Console Death! Long Live Streaming?

Post by geotrig »

You can see what Xbox are trying to do with the gamepass and moving to not owning games anymore . At least that's what I think they are trying to do and to be fair this world for some games that have no "offline" or single player aspect ..I don't play them so it doesn't bother me :lol:

I do hate buying dl only games especially at full retail price. A few indie titles here and there are ok or at heavily reduced rates and it's handy.
I suppose this gen and next don't really want us to be still playing on it in 20 years as retro when they will be accessible online on the "new shiny" systems.

Physical ftw
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Re: Traditional Console Death! Long Live Streaming?

Post by phillv85 »

If games go digital only I’ll likely only buy games I definitely want to play, and doubt I’ll pick something up to take a chance on it. That’ll be good for my wallet, but not for my collector/hoarder mentality.
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Re: Traditional Console Death! Long Live Streaming?

Post by skykappah »

Same here, and that in all... if a lot of people think that way then companies won’t be taking chances on new new IPs like they used to. Only guaranteed sellers. Doesn’t bode well for creativity but it’s really been downhill since COD and GTA, choice wise anyway. Kill, shoot people in the face.. football.
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Re: Traditional Console Death! Long Live Streaming?

Post by trev1976 »

Well this generation has really surprised me as there as so many nice games on the PS4 (loads of interesting indie stuff) and lots of it is pyshical too.

Tbh if it did go digital it would give me an excuse to get out of modern gaming and concentrate on my retro collecting.
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Re: Traditional Console Death! Long Live Streaming?

Post by CTN »

What's up with all those limited numbers physical releases then I got offered from play-asia every week. I guess there is some money to be made here.
Also when the games increase in size but there is no increase in internet speed this will be problematic especially in rural markets like a lot of the US.
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Re: Traditional Console Death! Long Live Streaming?

Post by cools »

The limited releases I'm seeing a bit like the vinyl resurgence.

I've a feeling that even if the manufacturers wanted to get rid of physical media, they know if they tried it would cause their system to flop.
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Re: Traditional Console Death! Long Live Streaming?

Post by jimmerd »

OnLive was ahead of it's time as a streaming box (720p), the latency was not too bad on first person games but noticeable on fast input games. Although I was located within 100 miles of a server. Apparently they had almost a 'whole PC's' worth of processing for each user online, so the system could never really scale up to support a huge number of users at once - but technology has moved and if the games are also designed to allow for that kind of service it could work.. but i'm still not sure the network infrastructure is quite there for everybody to give a good experience.
no doubt they will make you subscribe to some additional premiere broadband service feature, which will probably be just as expensive as buying a full console in the end. But I suspect the subscription 'no upfront' fee's will appeal to people.

Of course when the OnLive system went 'OffLive' the few games I have purchased went into a digital oblivion.
That's why for the handful of games I really like, a physical copy is essential, besides having all the art work, books and so on is fun.
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