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EA Sports' Moore: Disc-Based Platform Is 'Burning'
by Leigh Alexander
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October 19, 2009
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Though it may be years off, the death of the disc-based model for video games is inevitable, says EA Sports president Peter Moore, and companies must prepare for a digital-only world or risk the same fate.
"Look at the platform we're on, it's a burning platform," said Moore on a recent panel at the PLAY Digital Media Conference, as reported by consumer site IGN. "As a concept, do you stay on the platform and face certain death, or do you jump into the water and face probable death? Most of you would choose probable death, so you start moving towards a hybrid model of digital distribution."
So are video game consoles themselves as we know them on the way out? "I'd say the core business model of video games is a burning platform. Absolutely," Moore reiterated. "We all recognize that, and we'll recognize it 10 years from now when we tell our grandkids."
"We'll tell them we used to drive to the store to get shiny discs that have bits and bites on them and we'd place them in this thing called a 'disc tray,' and it'd whirl around…and they'll go 'What?'"
EA, however, currently ships 125-130 million discs per year, Moore said, hence the "hybrid" in the ideal vision for the present. Most publishers are cautious about alienating key retail partners by too eagerly embracing an all-digital model, and the economic reality is that most of the revenue still lies in packaged goods.
Cloud computing services such as OnLive and Gaikai could change things, however. "As digital distribution becomes more and more, we'll continue as an industry to work with retail and to ship discs, but more and more of the content will be in the 'cloud,'" Moore said. "More content will be delivered daily, weekly, or monthly, and less will be of the old model of cartridges and discs."
According to IGN's report, Moore pegs Microsoft as the first among the Big Three to launch an entirely digital gaming console when the time comes -- referring, apparently, to home consoles, as Sony has already made the digital-only move with the PSP Go.
"As an industry, I still think we may be as many as a decade away from saying goodbye to physical discs," Moore added. "The important question is, what does the next console look like? Does it actually have a disc drive?"
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i hope in 10 years from now our kids don't get his freshly served pieces of wisdom anymore.
Looking at the CD-vinyl comparison its no different....digital distribution despite all the hype will utimately become the endangered species because the market will make it so. Why? For starters people still prefer to have the phyiscial production and secondly a phyisical product can acquire value(take a game like Radiant Silvergun or PD:Saga...in 2009 it would cost you nearly $300 to get a mint copy of either game) whereas a digital product cannot acquire any value.
Hopefully hackers and modders will find a way to provide us with a way to have physical media in response, otherwise I see a lot of classic gamers leaving the hobby.
20+ years ago vinyl was the industry standard for physical music media (tapes gained popularity because they could be played in the car, but vinyl was still the main media standard). Today it is not. It's still around, but primarily as a novelty/collectible option. Yes, there are audiophile zealots out there that have super high end amazing stereo sound systems with a turntable, but most vinyl collections these days are people who collect it for collections sake. It is not the primary media you see in the big music retailers, by any stretch. Vinyl never died, but it's popularity did wane. CD is the music industry standard for physical media. Based on this precedent, digital distribution will be the industry standard in 15 years and you will still be able to buy CDs (for games) or CDs/Vinyl (for music) as a collectible/novelty type thing.
If everyone has greater than T6 speeds content won't even need downloading because like cable/satilite
of today when you turn it on it's just there,instant streaming and future consoles would simply be the door.
There are unanswered questions though like how do people feel about owning the right to use over an
actual product that,for some,is more tangible. What happens to retailers who have nothing to sell.
I already Que up stuff on amazon so i can bypass retail or get content from xbl or psn.
In the future i expect the internet to be even less secure than it is today and terrorism will become cyber terrorism which might threaten to crash sectors of or entire cities,states or countries infastructure denying hundreds of millions access to their lives.
Nothings flawless because we'll trade cluttered area's and stacks of incompatible media for simple rights to use but never own content we never see which gives us neat n tidy areas.
Don't get me wrong i have a 360,ps3 and just grabbed a go primarily for the bluetooth and sheer convince of not needing stacks of games to haul around but am able to play whatever i download or buy over again...groan. I wish i could simply register my games with sony and be able to download a digital copy or even have a digital copy come with the umd so i could get both if i so chose,avaible only on unreleased games.
Maybe in the future controller issues where southpaw,legacy,legacy-southpaw and even better still FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE layouts are not included today will be fixed-if i have anything to do with it that will also be fixed...it really should have been years agao.
We can all expect bandwidth to increase in the future, but at the same time game sizes will as well. So this problem will persist.
But it has to be remembered than when CDs came to replace cartridges in the videogame industry, it has it's issues as well. Loading times being the biggest issue. Secondary issues like disc scratching and the fact that it doesn't take much to break a disc were issues as well.
But in the end it was cheaper to manufacture and held much more data at a fraction of the cost of cartridges. So as consumers we were shown the pros of more data meaning higher fidelity visuals and audio at a price that was affordable, with the con of a physically flimsy format that introduced long pauses in our gaming sessions. To us the pros outweighed the cons...despite the con still bugging us to this day.
When it comes to the digital download format on consoles we don't see a big advantage in the same way we did for CDs. The pros consist of having the game on your console the entire time so there is no need to swap discs, but the cons are quite numerous (no physical copy so if your hardware dies it is a pain to get that game back on new hardware, no resale value, no ability to loan it to your friends).
The one thing that can be a "pro" is price. Because there are no costs associated with printing, packaging, shipping, stocking, and no retail profit margin to deal with, costs should be noticeably reduced. On the 360, they haven't been, if MS's 360 "Games on Demand" prices are used as a reference.
But Steam has provided games at a much cheaper price than retail and so I have bought a relatively large number of games on their service. It's a big "pro" to have, and as a result I have adopted a "digital download" policy on my PC games purchases.
Downloading gigabytes of data for each Steam game isn't a big problem for me as I do it while I sleep. Console games released in the future could have a pre-loading scheme where games are downloaded days before it's release and then are enabled to be played the day of release by referencing an online clock (I had to mention that before some smartass says you could just change the clock on your console :P).
I think price and cost savings, if passed from the publisher to the consumer, can really jumpstart this. The only other problem at this point is hard drive space. My Steam directory takes 200Gb of a 500Gb drive on my PC. I recently upgraded to a 120Gb HDD on my 360 but that is running out of space as I install games onto it for faster loading. While upgrading my PC (and PS3) is rather affordable, it isn't on my 360...which is ironically the console platform leading the way in terms of digital downloads.
This is largely due to Microsoft's shortsightedness. They should have stuck with the 3.5 inch hard disk drive format to allow for highly affordable storage capacity upgrades. They still can do it if they make an external peripheral that houses such a hard-drive and connects to the current power/data port the current hard drives use.
If (when?) direct download games become the standard for AAA titles, the game engines will be designed to manage content downloads in the background. For example, the player can start creating their character while the textures for the first level are still coming in.
He's either oppressively pessimistic or terrible at making analogies. Either way, yawn. If in 10 years we're all playing downloaded, ray-traced games full of microtransactions... we'll know all this focus on those things now was worth our time.
Also, with no physical media there is no used aftermarket so GameStop and Amazon do not cannibalize future sales. With all those incentives you can bet everything that every Publisher has a very large vested interest in pushing digital distribution. Their only caution needs to come in keeping friendly with their current brick and mortar distribution channels while the retail market is still large. Once that market accelerates in decline I see the publishers quickly increasing their efforts at adopting the new, high margin model ASAP. The only question is whether they will pass any of that large savings on to the consumers (I'm betting they try it and will let the market decide if it can be supported).
I can easily see Microsoft and maybe even Nintendo releasing their next console without a disc drive. Sony should also do the same but they may be wishing upon a star that Blu Ray will continue as a viable format so they may stick it in just to slow the demise.
As for EA we should also remember that they led the media revolution charge from cartridge and disc to CD back in the mid 90s and that was for purely economic reasons since they could control the manufacturing of CDs and save a bundle on each unit. That was also one of the main reasons they had limited exposure on the N64 since it was the last cartridge based console and Nintendo closely controlled manufacturing of the higher cost media.
On the other hand as game sales continue to expand further into global markets I think in many parts of the developing world broadband will still be far behind 10 years from now and thus retail games will still have a presence in those markets for many more years, at least on the computers in the event the new consoles do not include those drives.
$0.02
The thing is, due to the nature of the marketplace, offering up a download focused product will fail given another option. Offering a customer base something that they simply do not support is just asking for a competitor to come in and drink your milkshake.
Music may have gone largely digital, but movies generally, have not. We've gone from VHS/Betamax to DVD to Blu Ray/HD DVD. Besides, digital music was pushed by consumers, not businesses. Consumers wanted it, as shown with peer-to-peer programs. Piracy was an issue, but even when consumers were told to pay for digital music, they did. And iPod was a success.
Just watch the PSP Go and compare the sales to the UMD model to see a simple gauge of how much consumers want a purely digital console.
"That was also one of the main reasons they had limited exposure on the N64 since it was the last cartridge based console...."
This is like saying New Orleans got flooded because of Hurricane Katrina. From what I recall, it was the levees breaking (as a result of Katrina) that actually caused the flooding.
The N64 did not lose because of a cartridge-based format. It lost because of a lack of third-party support. Nintendo took for granted Final Fantasy, Mega Man, etc. But you can of course say that the cartridge model caused a lack of third-party support.
I don't expect to see every console without a disc drive 10 years from now.
It's great if you have the bandwidth.
In 10 years I bet most games will be download only and/or streamed (i.e. OnLive).
19 Oct 2009 at 12:19 pm PST
I think it will be inevitable that someday someone will see digital distribution as the only way. I like having a collection, I like knowing I could always find some used hardware and get back to playing all my games again... but it probably is inevitable. Too many suits see it as a good idea.
Hopefully hackers and modders will find a way to provide us with a way to have physical media in response, otherwise I see a lot of classic gamers leaving the hobby.
^
Adam, you took most of the words out of my mouth. Lol.... I too, like having a collection and as annoying as it is to go to a video game store and deal with clueless sales associates, I still like to enter the store and look at and buy the games.
As S. Miyamoto stated in a previous Gamasutra article, "I'm the kind of person who likes to have a physical object, rather than a digital product. I prefer to have something physical I can hold in my hand..."
And yes, I can see a lot of people, including myself, slowing down the number of games purchased. It's kind of strange though. I don't mind music being digital and I don't mind too much, movies being digital, but video games, I will have an extremely hard time dealing with that.
I mentioned that I did not mind movies being digital, but there is exceptions; Thudercats and the He-man series to name a few. I love the box art and all that is included with the DVD and had those 80's classics been revived DIGITAL ONLY, then I would have never purhcased them. I would simply watch them on Youtube, but since they, thankfully, came out on DVD, it is good to own them and have them visually in my collection. A pleaseure I would not have had, had they been released digitally only.
I am a person that tends to make purchases a lot quicker when the product is in physical format and I take risk on some games that may/may not be great, whereas if the games go all-adigital, then I'll probably take a more conservative approach in my spending habits and stick with the more famailar, name-branded games.
The strong indicator I see is that sales from digital distribution is currently one to one as opposed to one to many as occurs in retail outlets that buy back the title and resale it for a lower price but still not affect the original cost to development. (However I do see some possibility towards 5x5 key replacement if authentication is done at the sale rather than provider level.)
Personally I think a major indicator will be the micro vs macro transaction model and how it evolves. (i.e. Maple Story vs. Fallout 3) Both are strong indicators of what can extended unit sales by adding to existing content across multiple SKUs. The real long term strategy is see how much can by done in a single development cycle that includes multiple SKUs and whether there is a long term plan to have content with the same SKU distribution. I don't see much difficulty along those lines unless there is no consensus.
Digital works better for portables like ipod and even dsi has a store now. As for go being all digital is fine but sadling it with 802.11 b makes downloading a chore. You can also download from ps3 and transfer
using part of the new power pack as a transfer cable. Like i said before the best thing about go is the ability to use a dualshock over bluetooth and when you pair your go with sony cradle you can use the old power pack to charge and the new multi-out to transfer video to a hdtv.
I also have a massive collection of dvd's and a growing collection of blu ray's .
Personally handhelds have smaller games so while killzone 2 would take an absurd amount of time to download most psp games can be pretty quick,though anything 1gb or around there would be better transfered from a ps3 or pc. I have a wireless n router the dgl-4500 and a wireless n netbook so grabing games and transferring would be my fastest bet...outside a physical title.
If sony reads this put a digital copy in all future umd's to get people into downloading games.
1. It's not being hyped up - it's being recognized. It's a major difference! Digital distribution has already lift off on all platforms ranging from PC to handhelds. People are buying and it's a fact not a wish of some guy in a suit.
2. Why consumer will benefit? Digital distribution is cheaper and it means that games will become cheaper OR will become better (bigger development budgets). Right now a lot of resources is simply lost to manufacturing. It's a free worldwide market with fierce competition! Publishers/developers can't simply take the extra money to their pockets and do nothing.
3. Many people like to have something physical for the money? True but look what happend to the music and is happening to movies as well. Imagine that your games catalogue (on XBLA, Steam etc.) will be visible to all your friends in a nice way (some kind of social portal). It will be a lot better collection than the one you have on your shelf since very limited number of people can visit you personally. Its a lot more physical than you think.
Those reasons make it in my opinion an inevitable future. The only question is "when" not "if".
It might be even faster than 10 years to marginalize traditional disks (thou they will probably find a niche like vinyl). Look where we were in terms of bandwidth 10 years ago. For example in Poland (where I live) 10years ago we barely had modem speeds (56Kbit). Now its not really that hard to get a 120Mbit connection for a price affordable to normal users.
Therefore I don't think it is a stretch at all to predict that physical copies of games will take a similar path. The music industry has suffered because they were not ready and the stand-alone retail music store is an endangered species mostly catering to nostalgia buffs like the vinyl aficionados discussed above. Downloadable and web-based games are already big business. Though not the bulk, all the publishers are doing it and therefore have the infrastructure ready to make this transition profitable right away unlike the music industry which took years to figure it out while the Napsters of the world were costing them tens of millions.