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Square Enix expects digital to account for 70-80% of their Western HD game sales long term
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Seems reasonable but giving the slides a quick once over I don't see a time table for when they think they'll achieve this.
OP
OP
Maybe at that point they, along with all the other publishers, can finally make digital purchases cheaper than physical ones.
Wishful thinking, I know.
Wishful thinking, I know.
"Q: What do you think of the platform Steam for downloading PC games? A: Steam has many users, but our games tend to get lost amongst the many titles it offers. As such, we think it's important to guide users from our sales website to Steam.
http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/18q2outline.pdf"
I am FUCKING DYING over here.
http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/pdf/18q2outline.pdf"
I am FUCKING DYING over here.
Conpletely digital here. Remember when everyone was mad about Microsoft's digital future with the Xbox one?? Guess what it's coming. Horrible for brick and mortor stores but great for software developers.
Give me the right to sell my digital license and I'm game.
Also, you shouldn't force change. Change will happen regardless.
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Unless Steam suddenly enforces mandatory 24 hour checks. I'm not seeing this return of Xbox One's future that you're prophecising
Horrible for consumers as well depending on the game. Many games use licenses that they only have limited availability for at which point they have to take the game off (meaning that unless you already bought it, you won't be able to buy it in the future) if the game is a licensed one or if the game uses licensed music, they need to either update the game to take out the music or take the game off entirely depending on if they renew the license to use said music.
That of course doesn't take into account the ability to loan games to your friends, take games to your friends house to play (without needing to redownload the games using your account on your friends console) or sell the games entirely via the second hand market.
And of course, America which is one of the biggest markets also has one of the worst internet infrastructure to deal with an all digital marketplace considering data caps and the ever increasing size of video games combined with the reluctance of ISPs to take away said data caps lead to a lot of trouble at accepting an all digital future with the main proponents from a customers point of view being people who that won't affect and people who don't lend games to people/bring games to other peoples houses/people who hate the second hand market.
There may be other reasons why an all digital future is a bad idea but these are the ones that come to mind and UNTIL these issues are sorted, I don't think everyone is going to just roll over and accept the 'inevitable all digital future'.
Short version: There is a lot of work to do before an All Digital future is likely to happen in a way that works for everyone (apart from Brick and Mortar stores though even they may survive due to the ability to sell vouchers for digital games and wallet top ups which is a thing that happens today as well)
What can they really do? They missed the boat on Steam or its equivalent. They failed to create their own original content and could never get a digital rental service off the ground. Their best bet might be the rental service they proposed but have currently suspended/delayed. Even then I doubt it will save them. Blockbuster tried a similar move near the end of their lifecycle.
Very wishful.
Hasn't happened with digital books vs. physical copies.
Pretty crazy idea: They could lobby for a revolution in digital good rights and establish a used market.
I have no idea what the reason for that could be.
Surely not late ports with 0 marketing and actively trying to hide the possible existence of PC versions as much as possible until a week before release have anything to do with this.
Surely not.
I'm laughing so much right now.
How? Licenses would not be transferable. At best you the end user would be allowed to trade in your license at a predetermined price to Sony/MS or Nintendo.
I'm still about 25% digital to 75% physical. Unless they allow me to resell my product and not be dependant on crappy internet, that won't really be changing all that much. Especially with ISP's now in control of the speeds.
Its not great for "developers" if the publishers simply pocket that money and force their anti consumer practices anyway knowing that retail is out of the picture to give users a choice in what they want to support.
And i would actually say this is the less offensive option compared to having to be online for a certain amount of hours just to play your games. Its still a shitty future with only an eye for publisher control and less consumer control
Its not great for "developers" if the publishers simply pocket that money and force their anti consumer practices anyway knowing that retail is out of the picture to give users a choice in what they want to support.
And i would actually say this is the less offensive option compared to having to be online for a certain amount of hours just to play your games. Its still a shitty future with only an eye for publisher control and less consumer control
Once they can stop thinking about their games being discounted on retail shelves to make room for the next thing I'm worried that digital prices will actually become more evergreen. I base this on nothing but pessimism.
Not if MTXs are still around. A larger userbase guarantees more opportunities to convert end users to mtx buyers.
Well, I have been buying everything digital for a while now. Convenience will make this trend even more prominent over time.
Not in the 70-80% of all consumers who buy their products digitally.
i hink part of that option already has been snatched by digital marketspaces taking their cut off a digital sale too like people say Steam takes a 30% cut off from every game sale and it is a sneaky way for a price hike
Long term better be 10 to 15 years. Cause i aint doing that within the next 5 for sure
Even then i doubt that claim of yours considering discs and dvds are still in vogue to this day. There will always be a niche to allow options if the market wants it...or there should be
You make some great points. There are some IP issues for games that use licensed music, but I feel that is the minority and not the majority of AAA/indie games. Plus developers want to continue to make digital an attractive offer so I would assume make better licensing deals in the future? Perhaps they don't expire?
High speed internet is not as available everywhere and I am probably spoiled living in Portland with our cable availability. But isn't high speed internet becoming more common?
Anyway. I understand that digital is not for everyone and I hope that physical is still available for those who want it. I just don't want physical copies anymore for all the various reasons already said many times :) Plus if it puts more money into developers pockets and continues the availability of small indie games then I am all for digital becoming larger.
I still don't understand this whole internet download caps. I've lived in both Arizona and Oregon and it does not exist there.
I live in a 3rd world country, download speed and data caps have never been a problem for me for a few years.
Lucky you, I didn't have data caps for the longest time where I live (Southern state US). But that changed a few months ago.
Anyway reading through their PDF, disk based sales are still going strong in Japan. They want to shift users to digital, so their sales will last longer.
They better work on making their prices a lot more competitive then. I'll buy digital games on consoles when they're a year+ old when the prices are very low, but on release day there's no way in hell I'm buying digital when I get the same game at retail for $12 less and then flip the game for another 30ish if it's not worth keeping. That kind of setup makes digital on consoles seem like a giant waste of money and not the kind of thing that I'm going to partake in any time soon.
They'll probably do that by making physical games $70 or $80 while leaving digital at $60 lol
Nier Automata did amazing digital PC sales when released simultaneously with consoles. But lets hide the existence of PC versions of Final Fantasy games and launch them 1 year + late.... FF12 should have launched at the same time on PC as PS4, same with World of Final Fantasy. FF15 I can at least understand with the difficulty of their custom engine why it would be delayed say 6 months, but it didn't have to be a year and they didn't need to hide its existence for so long.