4 ms·

Why people are undermining the physical medium for video games? Comparing it to Netflix/Blockbuster? What? Stadia is currently on the verge of flopping and we'

by tmotwu 6y ago

Why people are undermining the physical medium for video games? Comparing it to Netflix/Blockbuster? What? Stadia is currently on the verge of flopping and we're not even sure where other streaming services may go. Streaming video games are literally constrained by the laws of physics and the need for extremely responsive user input. It's exciting but it's also a whole different engineering problem than what Netflix solved in order to edge out their advantage over Blockbuster. Steam, the Playstation/Xbox Stores are the correct comparisons. That said, I doubt Gamestop has been struggling these last few years simply because there has been a movement towards digital downloads. People seem to forget that these digital stores have existed for the longest time and are not at all new innovation. Take a look at the sentiment towards digital only consoles - overwhelmingly negative. Newer AAA games require so much storage space that the progression of networking bandwidth aren't keeping up with the demands at all. I'm not going to speculate where GameStop is headed because they haven't announced those changes yet. However, the speculation of evaluating their future based on digital downloads or the Blockbuster story is absolutely foolish.

Hamuko 6y ago
There's two big issues for GameStop: a) People are getting faster Internet connections, which enables them to actually utilise digital stores. The PlayStation Store is almost 15 years old and I can imagine how bad the average consumer connection was back then. And if you have a slower connection, you can still pre-order and pre-load games. b) Physical medium is not exclusive to brick and mortar. I am myself a collector of physical games (167 games in my shelf at the moment I believe) and I don't really go out and buy games. I just order them online. Basically, they're not only competing against the growing popularity of PlayStation Store, Xbox Live and Nintendo e-Shop, they're competing against Amazon.
- tmotwu 6y ago
  a) Preordering and preloading games from digital stores isn't a new thing either. Internet connections are improving but are they improving at the rate of how large AAA games are becoming? (A little anecdote, I recall downloading video games on Steam 10 years ago and it took me on average a few hours. Now in the present, newer games like RDR2 took me days.) For b), I'm with you. GameStop does have an e-commerce platform, so they're hardly exclusively brick and mortar. Walmart and Target hasn't disappeared because they're suddenly competing with Amazon. But cmon, there are highly upvoted posts in this thread speculating all video games are digital only within 5 years. Do you believe that?
  - sct202 6y ago
    The PC market is basically all download now. Most pre-built gaming PCs don't have disc drives, and then gaming laptops with disc drives are basically non-existent. Imo, the consoles have been stingy on built in storage space and also pricing their games the same for digital and physical, and that is limiting adoption.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      >Imo, the consoles have been stingy on built in storage space Xbox and PlayStation now require you to install all games on the SSD so discs lose out on that advantage as well (unless you're regularly uninstalling and re-installing games, in which case the BD might be faster).
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    >But cmon, there are highly upvoted posts in this thread speculating all video games are digital only within 5 years. Do you believe that? No, but simply because the console lifecycle is longer than 5 years and physical games can't die with the PS5 and Xbox SX around. However, PC games are absolutely digital only already. Even if you buy a swanky collector's edition of a game, you don't get the game in the box. There's just a piece of paper with a download code. And unfortunately Sony and Microsoft have an incentive to kill physical games since they can get more of the profits if everyone just buys from their stores.
    - tmotwu 6y ago
      I don't think we're disagreeing. Looking at this as the worst case, GameStop has 5 years of cash flow to transform their brand - as they should. And this is only for a single aspect of their business. PC was never their primary market for as long as they existed, so I don't think this was the dent to their cause.
      - Rapzid 6y ago
        > 5 years of cash flow Physical sales are way, way, way down from 10 years ago already. It's only going to trend down further. I wouldn't call that a reliable source of cash flow.

by tmotwu 6y ago

Hamuko 6y ago

There's two big issues for GameStop: a) People are getting faster Internet connections, which enables them to actually utilise digital stores. The PlayStation Store is almost 15 years old and I can imagine how bad the average consumer connection was back then. And if you have a slower connection, you can still pre-order and pre-load games. b) Physical medium is not exclusive to brick and mortar. I am myself a collector of physical games (167 games in my shelf at the moment I believe) and I don't really go out and buy games. I just order them online. Basically, they're not only competing against the growing popularity of PlayStation Store, Xbox Live and Nintendo e-Shop, they're competing against Amazon.

tmotwu 6y ago
a) Preordering and preloading games from digital stores isn't a new thing either. Internet connections are improving but are they improving at the rate of how large AAA games are becoming? (A little anecdote, I recall downloading video games on Steam 10 years ago and it took me on average a few hours. Now in the present, newer games like RDR2 took me days.) For b), I'm with you. GameStop does have an e-commerce platform, so they're hardly exclusively brick and mortar. Walmart and Target hasn't disappeared because they're suddenly competing with Amazon. But cmon, there are highly upvoted posts in this thread speculating all video games are digital only within 5 years. Do you believe that?
- sct202 6y ago
  The PC market is basically all download now. Most pre-built gaming PCs don't have disc drives, and then gaming laptops with disc drives are basically non-existent. Imo, the consoles have been stingy on built in storage space and also pricing their games the same for digital and physical, and that is limiting adoption.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    >Imo, the consoles have been stingy on built in storage space Xbox and PlayStation now require you to install all games on the SSD so discs lose out on that advantage as well (unless you're regularly uninstalling and re-installing games, in which case the BD might be faster).
- Hamuko 6y ago
  >But cmon, there are highly upvoted posts in this thread speculating all video games are digital only within 5 years. Do you believe that? No, but simply because the console lifecycle is longer than 5 years and physical games can't die with the PS5 and Xbox SX around. However, PC games are absolutely digital only already. Even if you buy a swanky collector's edition of a game, you don't get the game in the box. There's just a piece of paper with a download code. And unfortunately Sony and Microsoft have an incentive to kill physical games since they can get more of the profits if everyone just buys from their stores.
  - tmotwu 6y ago
    I don't think we're disagreeing. Looking at this as the worst case, GameStop has 5 years of cash flow to transform their brand - as they should. And this is only for a single aspect of their business. PC was never their primary market for as long as they existed, so I don't think this was the dent to their cause.
    - Rapzid 6y ago
      > 5 years of cash flow Physical sales are way, way, way down from 10 years ago already. It's only going to trend down further. I wouldn't call that a reliable source of cash flow.