EA Predicts End of Buying Games In Stores

I find this utterly hillarious because EA was one of the most reluctant publisher to go to Steam.

Not gonna happen anytime soon with more and more ISPs putting caps on internet. Besides with current bandwidth speeds and the size of video game downloads it is a hell of a lot faster for me to drive 15 minutes to the store and buy the game at the same cost as the download.

Star Trek was the last time I download a game!! Especially an Online only game!!! I didnt even get to play it! And the customer support wont even respond:P

If I am going to pay the same price, I will go to BB or WM and get a game that I can load and play just by unwraping a bit of plastic! And not having to buy online credit hours or points!

This is just another case of suits running around trying to figure out how to get more money into their pockets on the backs of everyone else! IF they actually had a brain cell left they would realize that when you put your game on steam and other downloadable sites, as soon as it is posted; there will be some russian kid who cracks it and torrents it...... that ends up losing five times the profit they projected in the first place!

Instead of trying to get rid of all those summer jobs for HS students at BB and WM, we should be doing what they did to the music industry! Get rid of all those corporate suits who are nothing but BS artists and take all the creadit for a good game!! At least with a disc, you still have jobs for disc and cover creation, boxing, shipping, sales, marketing!

Our games would look better if we had ten more artists for each game that equal the salary of one of those Suit AHoles:P

No bandwidth cap for me and I get 85mbs down speed, so less than 20 min I have a full game installed and playing of course a nice 128Gb Vertex 3 SSD drive just for games helps with that too. My last retail store game was COD4 for PC and never looked back.

I don't have any problems downloading games, but I prefer having a hard copy of my games on hand. The idea that one game manufacturer is going to try and steer PC gaming towards the online model that they envision is laughable. If online is the only way to get their games,...I'll live without them.

Yeah soldier that is ok for now, but what happens when the new gvmnt regulations take effect and you are only able to download 5GB's a month?

Then you will end up paying more for the over DL fees from your ISP, than the cost of ten games? But I guess you will be fine with paying 300 dollars a month for 85Mbs if you want to download a 15GB game?

One specific here is he is speaking to Eurogamer. In Europe for about 45 Euros a month you get a wide open pipe with a phone and television over Fiber. In the US it is all still run by monopolies basically We have Comcast, COX, Time Warner, ATT, and Verizon. In Europe in a city you have a number of service providers for all homes over one wire set, there cellular is the same about 50 euros monthly unlimited talk and data. It is kind of funny to hear politicians talk about letting the market decide and commerce when it is largely in America where much of that is limited now, and in Europe where the market, competition and consumers make the choice, it is all really kind of sad.

When a consumer has a 20-40Gbps pipe to their home of course this would be the choice. Most citizens in America have a max 10Gbps with a data cap at home for $100 or more a month.

I have a 40Gbps pipe (burst around 50Gbps) with no cap.

Of course, I wish I was back in Louisiana where there is a little company in my home town named LUS Fiber that is offering 50Gbps up/down (100Gbps on intranet) for $57.95 a month.

InfinityzeN1:

I wish I was back in Louisiana where there is a little company in my home town named LUS Fiber that is offering 50Gbps up/down (100Gbps on intranet) for $57.95 a month

That's quite the deal, but it's not the norm, here in the states. Not for most of us anyway,......

I think that the gist of this thread is turning out to be that the USA is dominated by corporate interests where they have successfully taken over our government with their unlimited pockets and their Supreme Court that says that they, (even though they aren't even people) are citizens.

Wireless provider's profits are obscenely huge, yet they clamor for more, more, more,.........and the same is true of the medical, automotive, pharmaceutical, food, and every other industry in the USA.

When we play competitive games and we do well at it, we say that we 'owned' the competition,......corporate America 'owns' us all.

I would actually prefer a disc with all its content and updates :D, less time required to wait and wait for the game to download :(

At the moment, the way games are sold is primarily through physical media, like the standard game edition with a disk, case and manual

But theres also the "special edition's that include extras"

I think soon the primary form of distribution will be online, which has alot of advantages like the ability to use your games across potentially multiple platforms, consoles or computer and re-download the games if you're hardware is ever damaged and you never have to worry about losing or damaging the actual game

From a collectors standpoint, when I read a good book, or play a great game I like to have it in a physical format to show off, and share with friends and such, so I prefer physical format most of the time but soon I think getting a game in physical format will be the "special edition" and digital downloads will be the standard form

Physical discs will remain viable for a long time. All of this talk of digital downloads is more marketing than anything else.

deinabog:

Physical discs will remain viable for a long time.

Agreed