Next generation consoles to be the last?

NewNeoOwner

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Jun 15, 2014
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88
Not gonna happen. Even if the infrastructure catches up who is going to want to pay what they'll charge? They're already beating the hell out of people who have cell phones and that's a large reason I don't have one. I refuse to pay for that.

I too would probably quit if things go all digital. I left PC's a long time ago. It's cheaper to go physical if you wait for sales and thanks to groups like LRG, SRG, or Play Asia I'm finding many games that were once digital only now available in a physical format. What's more is some companies have tried and failed. People didn't want the PSP Go, the Ouya, or the 'launch version' of the Bone.
 

ssjlance

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I can't imagine consoles entirely disappearing from the market. At worst, it'll end up being like the Neo Geo was; a niche market that finds its success with hardcore gamers. Some people just like owning hard copies. For a modern company, Limited Run makes a good example. They'll take digital-only games, give them a small print run for the hardcore gamers that are interested, and the prices on their games just keep going up on the secondary market once they sell out of however many they decided to print.

Even if we get past the point of most gamers thinking it's worthwhile to have a dedicated console and instead just play games on their smartphone, there will at least be a niche market of old fucks who like to fill their shelves with crap.
 

greedostick

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I actually think digital is cheaper, especially when you are patient, and use Steam. It's much cheaper.

I could never see consoles gone, but I could see consoles without a disc drive, that stream, or only sell digital copies, or both.

Even if this does become a standard, Moore's Law is dying, and processor companies like Intel, AMD, and others you have never heard of are in a rush in attempt to develop biological, and quantum processors. Once those get sorted out, especially quantum computing, and the languages become viable enough to develop games for them, then gaming will shift in that direction. I don't see biological gaming ever being a thing, but I would bet there are people out there right now developing quantum versions of shit like Pong, in attempt to make what would be the Java or C# standard for quantum processing languages.

Once these processors come out, the cycle of Moore's Law will probably repeat its self for another few decades, and people will be having this same conversation 70 years from now.
 
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NewNeoOwner

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I actually think digital is cheaper, especially when you are patient, and use Steam. It's much cheaper.

I could never see consoles gone, but I could see consoles without a disc drive, that stream, or only sell digital copies, or both.

I've seen digital games remain at full price on consoles while the retail version dropped months earlier. Unless they give it away like they do with Plus I've not seen digital become cheaper faster. I had a bad experience with Steam when I first got it, never went back.

I insist going all digital will not work for a variety of reasons, but I could see disc drives being replaced with flash memory cards like the Switch and handhelds use. Those cards hold a lot of data.
 

Tripredacus

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The digital prices being what they are depends on the publisher. A good example of a game franchise that never "really" goes on sale is Call of Duty. They will go on sale sometimes down to $20 or $30 for an old game, but rarely ever will go below the $45 mark. Even COD4 and MW2 are high price games. Also now that there is no physical stock, there is no reason for games to go on clearance and have the price be super low. So then we have this other example of games that are crazy old (think DOS/90s games) that you can find for $1 at your closest thrift store, sell for $10-20 on Steam.

But also you are seeing more and more publishers try to make their own platform to get away from Steam to cut out the new middle-man. Ubisoft has Uplay, whoever has that shit service Origin, Blizzard has their own platform service, etc.

Of course the old middle-man was the retail store. You see a huge decrease in any physical release, whereas the big box stores only have some big selling/proven AAA titles like Sims 4, Starcraft II or whatever. Gamestop barely has anything, maybe a dozen boxed games total. Most everything is cards. Then any other type store has weird shovel ware or budget games that they've always had.

So by now we can take for granted platforms like Steam, or PSN, or Xbox store or whatever because they are proven services now. Even Origin and Uplay can be in that mix. It makes sense for physical to go away because you end up not even using it for the most part anyways. Games these days are you put in the disc and your gizmo just goes online to download the game. Some games you can buy now just have a box with a card in it with no game anyways. Collector's Editions that have no game, or even Collector's Editions that are just extra crap and your game comes in an e-mail.
 

JRedmond3

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Joined
Mar 13, 2010
Posts
166
I can't imagine consoles entirely disappearing from the market. At worst, it'll end up being like the Neo Geo was; a niche market that finds its success with hardcore gamers. Some people just like owning hard copies. For a modern company, Limited Run makes a good example. They'll take digital-only games, give them a small print run for the hardcore gamers that are interested, and the prices on their games just keep going up on the secondary market once they sell out of however many they decided to print.

Even if we get past the point of most gamers thinking it's worthwhile to have a dedicated console and instead just play games on their smartphone, there will at least be a niche market of old fucks who like to fill their shelves with crap.

It's interesting to think about. Another thing to consider is that when the all digital ( er mostly digital ) era emerges, it'll effectively draw a line in the sand in terms of collecting and we'll end up with a much more finite supply of physical media ( in terms of everything pre-digital I mean ). I know that retro gaming being repopularized by Youtube /etc, has caused a spike in game prices in recent years, but I kinda feel like the move to all digital could cause another, even greater rise in prices.
 
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