Publisher: PC Games Going All Digital in 2011

bummer if you are bandwidth capped, you get to download then the next month you can play it ;P

Bad idea. It took me 15min to go to shop and buy it, another 5 min to install it. But it took me over 2 hour to download and install it.

In contrast to the above I can download a game much quicker than going to the shop. I am all for digital downloads.

But I like my bookshelf full of PC games

@chronicbint I believe the average download speed in the UK is around 4Mbps, so assuming a 4GB game, the download here would take on average just shy of 3 hours. You got to remember broadband speed are very much location dependent and even if someone wants a really fast connection doesn't mean they can get one.

True, but then I have a 50 meg connection in the UK, 4GB would be about 5 minutes (assuming it downloads flat out).

Can't see it happening in that timeframe, downloads might become consumers' preferred route of buying PC games in the near future, but box versions aren't going to disappear for obvious reasons, some of which have been touched upon already. It doesn't take much resources to get boxed versions out the door and into the hands of Amazon and such, or selling directly from the developer's own online store. The likes of Telltale have already been doing this, secondary to offering downloads.

On the other hand I can easily PC games disappearing from actual bricks and mortar stores altogether, which surely they have been doing for over a decade now. Do most people even still shop for entertainment media from retail stores these days?

Bad idea, I don't like it, I want my games on hard copy, like ownage said you can go out and buy a game and have it installed so much quicker. What about when I have to reinstall Windows, or I have a severe crash?

I was given Empire: Total War as a Christmas gift, so I got it installed, all excited, activated with Steam, all set to play then, Whammy!!! The game is NOT ready to play, update required. What!?! All I wanna do is play the single player mode and try the game! 120MB, 5 hours later on my throttled Sky broadband connection I get to play, no longer excited and played for 10 mins.

Digital is NOT the way to go, it should be an alternative, not everyone has a good broadband connection or unlimited, if they have broadband at all.

I understand about the need to cut the amount of piracy but to have games that require an internet connection is unfair on those who don't have internet.

Broadband is soo inconsistant you can't generalise, I live in a town now and the line is rated at 2MB, reality is I get 1.5MB max and between peak times I'm lucky to get half a meg, 9 months ago I lived in a village 15 miles away and it was a 8MB line and late at night if I was lucky I got 11MB, average was 6MB and peak well 4.5MB I was happy enough with the village broadband but I still wouldn't want to rely on digital solely.

Who buys games in a shop anyway? they're almost always much pricier than just ordering it online. Downloading is fine for some things - for example I bought and downloaded a 1gb add-on for borderlands the other day. I have slow internet at home, because I live in the middle of nowhere, so the download took over six hours. I just left it on all day while I was busy with other things. Of course this is only available online, so I knew I didn't have another option if I wanted it. Something else to note - the prices on steam/impulse/D2D are often higher than online retailers like amazon/play.com anyway.

Now take for example Medieval II - Total War. This game is nowhere near new or cutting edge - proven by the fact that it runs on my pathetically underpowered laptop (sempron 1.6ghz/ati 200m). It is, however, ridiculously enormous - the original game is 11gb, and the expansions add another 5gb.
While I'm at university I'm lucky enough to have ludicrously fast internet (actually limited by my 100MB/s ethernet port...) but it would still take me a good while to download something of that size.
Games have been getting larger for a long time now (remember when they came on CDs, not DVDs?) and it's probably going to keep happening. GTA4 was on two DVDs, will the next game in the series be on blu-ray?
Internet speeds ARE getting faster, yes, but the increase isn't always as real as we'd all like. The numbers get bigger, but often the service just isn't any faster than it was before, despite being more expensive. Unless lots of cable gets replaced, I can't see any huge improvements on the horizon - at least none that will allow download speeds to out-accelerate the increase in game size.

Sorry Darryl, I don't think we'll be all digital for a long while yet. ISPs complain we use too much bandwidth as it is - all this "fair usage policy" nonsense. It's all very well paying hand over fist for "unlimited" internet if the first time you download a game, you get told you're downloading too much. So much easier to order a real disk online, it only takes a couple of days in the post... just order in advance!

Surely a better solution for PC games in 2011 would be the distribution of them on BluRay discs. Please bear in mind this is for 2011 when I am justifying this, but already games in Q4 2009 are easily occupying 15Gb of space. I bought GTAIV in the Steam Holiday Sale because it was so cheap and had to wait days to download this. Now admittedly my PC wasn't on 24/7, but fluctuating speeds meant it took a long time to download.
Now, although internet speeds should also have increased as national averages by 2011, the demands of those those using the Internet and the number of people using the Internet will have risen too. Theoretically, this means that internet speeds will be around the same.

Whilst the Internet has not come on in sudden leaps and bounds, or certainly not for everyone (we cannot ignore speed differs by geographic location) the size of games will easily be reaching 20Gb and above I would predict. That's a greater size than two dual layer DVDs, but a size that will fit quite happily onto a single layer BluRay disc.

And I for one would happily pay a little extra to purchase a game from my games retailer in town and play it as soon as installed than click a download button, and hope it arrives within a couple days.

Don't any of you use services like Steam? You're making too big a deal of the wait time for downloading. I live in a rural area in the UK with mediocre Internet, when I purchase a game from Steam it's downloaded and ready to play the following day or by the time I'm home from work if I were to purchase it in the morning. That's considerably faster than buying a retail box from an online retailer and without having to pay postage and go through the hassle of an install process and putting a disc into a drive.

I'm not really one of those people that absolutely must play a game on the day of release, but if I were I'd just preorder the game and have it downloaded on my PC and ready to be unlocked the second the release date comes. There really isn't any issue with waiting unless you have a terrible connection or can't leave a PC running unattended for some reason.

I'll concede it might still be faster to go to a physical shop and buy the game there, but again, who the hell really bothers doing that in this century?

Plus, from experience I've learn that buying from a physical store has ALWAYS been more expensive than purchasing on-line.

It's friendlier to the environment as well instead of creating unnecessary plastic which potentially can't be recycled :] (ending up in fishes stomachs D

I personally think they should carry on with retail bought pc games, then after so long, they should then make it accessible to download only unless there's a retailer who has excess stock of a game.
Also i'd like to see hundreds of older games available on services like steam but available at reasonable prices.

Over christmas time I bought quite a few games using Steam... RedFaction Guerilla was one of them.... 15GB of a game. with my download speed of aprox 230kbs at the best of times. I then had to patch it. and I was playing the game 3 days later, lucky nothing went wrong!

I was Also given Starwars Force unleashed as a gift for christmas... thats 2 discs and 25GB plus the patch at 403MB. It took longer to download the Patch than to install the Game from the discs. And though I do trust Steam... I dont have Redfaction as a hard copy, only as a password... Starwars is mine forever, Ill also point out that I can buy COD MW2 for around £20-30 in a retail store. Its still £39.99 on Steam.

Come on guys... you know the real issue, not the facade is that they wanna tighten the grip over "piracy" by making it all a highly/tightly controlled, bandwith-dependent, control system. Steam can just arbitrarily black-list your valid SN if believed to be pirated etc. Making hard copies of YOUR software your PURCHASED is a right, but they don't think so. No way I'm supporting any business that tries to lie and trick people into giving up their right of physical control over software you bought and should own on that disc.
__Not be required to have an internet connection in order to play a game, unless it's online based. No way, I want hard copies and no connected-line required so they can check in on me or th software tattles if you alert it how you see fit (mods and hacks for fun etc.)... Don't buy into this stuff people; keep your RIGHT to have hard-copies of YOUR purchased software, and not some stupid arse LICENSE to play, but NOT TO OWN.

Think logically and you'll be alright...

Damn grammar & spelling nightmare up there! My bad...

Imagine getting your kid a digital copy of a game for Christmas / Birthday. Easy to wrap.

I live in Norfolk, UK, and though I'm lucky and get 7.6 Mbps Broadband because I live over the road from a Broadband enabled exchange, huge swathes of Norfolk are unable to get Broadband at all, and won't get any Broadband for AT LEAST another 2 YEARS.
So do my friends move house, just so they can get Broadband, or are they not allowed to be PC gamers ? Maybe they should switch to consoles ? Or Should they spend several months downloading using download managers ? Have you ever tried downloading 4 Gb on a 56 Kbps connection ? I didn't think so.
How about this ? Instead of BT pouring millions into improving already fast exchanges, why don't they pour millions into bringing this digital age to the rest of the country that is being left behind ?

Don't you guys see... it's not about content, it's about CONTROL! The more games that require folks to be on-line, the more services and accessories (which should be standard) they can push on you. The more CONTROL they can exercise over your gaming preferences and accessibility. Just look at Steam, and the control they can wield over us all. A simple "mistake," or boardroom decision can LOCK YOU OUT of YOUR game. Telling you which and how many machines you can install YOUR paid for entertainment. All in the name of fighting "piracy," which accounts for just how much alleged profit loss? No it's not about piracy; that's a red-herring, this is about controlling consumers down to the type of medium they store "their" software on. Pretty soon you'll be locked from even using the game unless you meet some pre-requisite hardard/broadband standards.
__Any type of intended "convenience," for us the consumer, is merely a well thought-out ADVANTAGE for them. You don't think they've spent 100's of hrs in a boardroom devising scenarios about how and what users will do with their (theirs, not OURS!) software/hardware? You think that they are putting in place all these conveniences for our benefit or are they really designed to set the stage for further and future profit gorging of us? It's their business to PROFIT from us... the "convenience" of disc-less software, is the aggressive/cunning and conniving ideals of the boardroom managers and CEO profit hogs...

Ever notice how with each advance in game, there's an even more advancing protection scheme used to hassle and condition us to accepting it as "they way it is." Piracy, haha yeah right the profits from piracy are so low and unproven; it's a strawman/dead horse issue.

Be serious kids, the more you complain, but still financially support this type of control implementation---the more they'll continue to encroach on your right to "own" anything they produce.

I prefer to have a hard copy of all my PC games (this is ALWAYS BETTER THAN HAVING A DIGITAL COPY for obvious reasons) but Its much easier to pre-order online than download digitally or go to the shops.

If you pre-order from Game (uk), you receive the game in the post the day BEFORE its released in the shops!!! they never deliver late either!

[quote=v12v12]Don't you guys see... it's not about content, it's about CONTROL! The more games that require folks to be on-line, the more services and accessories (which should be standard) they can push on you. The more CONTROL...etc[/quote]
I don't think that there's any inherent evil going on, Steam has always seemed to suffer much more from ineptitude than malice.
Personally I don't fear them locking me out of things and as far as I was aware backing up the main files in whatever form it is they come in was perfectly allowable/encouraged.

As people have said, the reason this chap in the article is wrong (for the UK) is that the alternative to the shops (which do mostly seem to have a small selection of PC titles) is the online shops rather than downloads. There must be a smaller base cost for the digital providers (well that's speculation as there's hosting/bandwidth costs and advertising still for them) per unit but the prices at least on steam have never seemed competitive other than during some brief offers.

Right on brother! You've just voiced your concerns with the MOST POWERFUL form of dissent---Your WALLET!

Just like people who complain about the Govt, but then continually VOTE (or not, which is even worse) these idiots in office, to only end up with the same kind of lies and deception, but from a different face/person/voice... Still the SAME corrupted system continuing to thrive and survive b/c of uninformed and lazy citizens.

People PLEASE vote out this kind of non-sense control with your wallet... You can always play the game later once they drop the measures, or if you cannot control yourself, get the cracked version, geesh.

Rab1d-BDGR: Couldn't agree with you more... You know the more you try and tell people about this stupidity and obvious refurb'd attempts (like they haven't tried in the past?) at control, by repacking the control measures behind "convenience." Just like cameras/mics everywhere in UK/USA listening to your every biological move/function. They're already setting up Bio-Scanners in other venues aside from airports! These machines literally assess your physique, then create a BIOLOGICAL mapping of your body (that means your genitalia TOO!), and unless you lose serious weight or change height = BOOM they can use that image along with smart-cameras to actually physically track your unique shape and bio-rhythmic (aka walking strike, cadence etc.) movement through crowds. Look it up if you doubt me...

Here's what one of the Internet "Kings" thinks of YOUR privacy Vs his:

tinyurl.com/ye953ek

I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines — including Google — do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.

Hey maybe some of you want to be controlled like chess pawns, or have your concerns scoffed at like a shining knight looking down upon a dirty, uneducated drone; NOT ME!
__Hell I'd be willing to take some crazy ass measure of aptitude to get myself OUT of this stupid mass of idiots out here... too bad in the USA take and passing that "test" is basically striking it rich and thus moving out of idiotville into another idiotville full of affluent drones. But ya got the freedom that money affords—I guess. As much as I don't wanna segregate society by "class," there's GOTTA be a way to take away the power of these idiots, spending away in pure ignorance, setting precedence, which eventually harms the smaller group of persons with common and logical sense to know when they are being lead-on, conned and played like fools. Thus doesn't spend on obvious control-schemes like this!

WAKE UP NAVES PLZ. Ya'll have a nice day now (on camera)...