In the latest rumor surrounding the Xbox 720 console, Microsoft has purportedly planned to do away with disc drive systems, MVC reports.
Despite a strict NDA after a secret briefing at an undisclosed location in London, MVC’s source has informed the UK publication that Xbox games and applications will be made available only for downloading, but will integrate the use of removable solid-state cards for storage.
If these rumors hold true, coupled with a purported disc-less PS4, the novelty of owning cases and its manuals will be a fading reality. On the other hand, with the onset of this trend, the third-party gaming retail shops, particularly Gamestop and UK’s GAME, will be forced to pivot their strategy or face an alarming wake-up call due to rapidly declining sales.
One individual helping to erode physical game sales has been Gabe Newell, the newest video game billionaire and co-founder of Valve. With the introduction of its cloud-based distribution network, Steam, Valve has virtually taken away the physical game retailer’s PC game-selling business – a fact that has Gamestop’s employees scorning Newell.
The debut of the PS4 is reportedly slated for E3 2012, while Microsoft has repeatedly denied that the Xbox 720 unveiling will occur in 2012. MVC claims the Xbox 720 launch date is set for 2013.
Yay, once your 360 dies and you can’t get a replacement, your collection is useless!
Spoddy from digitaltrends.com said:
I thought Steam had a system where the files are download before launch day in encrypted form, then decrypted by the local machine on release day? Did they throw this system away?
As for hard copies – does MS really care about Gamestop, et al? Lest the second hand market where they make zero money? (esp when the console is a loss and secondhand all the player buys?) Years ago people were talking up how MS and Sony were going to fight over their consoles being the centre of the living room for all things media, etc… is this still their view? Looks like it to me.
As for the brick and mortar stores, i’m sure they’ll end up giving a few percentage points of secondhand sales to the console makers to encourage them to keep physical media.
I believe that physical media will go out of fashion sometime in the future, if simply to destroy the second hand market – if someone sells their console + 100 games, MS and Sony make no money. If those are all downloads tied to an account you don’t want to give up, and you can’t sell or gift those games with your console, then the culture will change and accept that if you want a console, albeit secondhand, you’ll need to buy the games new, or wait a while for them to be discounted.
I hope the solid state card system doesn’t develop into a new cartridge based deployment system… :-/
well there saying homes are going to go up in the realestate,except florida,and ya know i moved here out in the country and when it comes to giveaways or sweepstakes i never get picked,but when i lived in the bigger city i won maybe 2,the price of homes are going up erywhere else except florida
Cheap 360 games? Yes please. Getting rid of annoyingly 360 disk drives? Yes please!!!! Making games download only? Hmm…..
I’m sure Microsoft will come up with an ingenious form of read only storage card that will secure their intellectual property for about a year, until hackers find a way around it. More importantly than the medium used for games, I’m more interested in the graphical quality of the games and capabilities of the new console. 3D gaming without a 3D TV???? I can only dream.
well there saying homes are going to go up in the realestate,except florida,and ya know i moved here out in the country and when it comes to giveaways or sweepstakes i never get picked,but when i lived in the bigger city i won maybe 2,the price of homes are going up erywhere else except florida
well there saying homes are going to go up in the realestate,except florida,and ya know i moved here out in the country and when it comes to giveaways or sweepstakes i never get picked,but when i lived in the bigger city i won maybe 2,the price of homes are going up erywhere else except florida
I still like the psp3 i think sony is ahead of em all on this
What happens to all of the people that don’t live in a large center with huge bandwidth limits and speeds. I moved out of the city a few years ago and now have 2Mbit/sec download speed and 15Gig a month cap. hopefully by 2013 LTE networks have huge caps and affordable prices for the home internet connection.
Dumb
fakdat
cant wait
This is horrible. I for one will not purchase one if i can’t physically own the product in which i purchase. So no resale value at all.
Yeah, no resale value is probably a lot of the reasoning but it is also the way the internet is going.
*annoyingly loud