Great response so far via the emails, keep them coming!

It's a bit strange that Sqaure Enix has made this claim. As a developer, the teams there have pushed the envelope on high-end CG and graphics. They are probably partly responsible for the fact PS3 is a graphical monster - it wouldn't surprise me if Sony Japan built the machine with the idea of attracting the studios' well-known processor hungry development.

So as the industry continues down the path of bigger-better-more, Square Enix would surely just keep ramping up the volume of content it creates. In turn, that requires bigger and bigger bandwidths to relay that data. I doubt Final Fantasy 17 will be distributed from the server to 'any terminal' as Wada puts it - it will require high capacity storage plugged into a console in the home.

@Mark Grey - It's probably a bit early to talk about FF17 isn't it? I imagine you are right about Square's future games demanding high-bandwidth and being content rich, however.

To answer the original article's question, however: I disagree, but only to an extent. Consoles won't die out within the next decade. It's more feasible that the format holders will try to maintain their ownership of the 'walled gardens' they have created. That said, I imagine browser games and content streamed from servers will grow significantly in the years ahead - I think we'll see Xbox Live and PlayStation Network takes on these things too, with those online services instead stretching out from the console to include PC and set-top boxes, but not to the point where they become mutually exclusive. Indeed: I bet big forces like Bigpoint in Germany and other PC-only portals will find a way to get onto consoles/into TVs/Blu-ray players.

For developers, I think the big challenge this raises will come in terms of publishing. We've already seen big names wade into the previously-vibrant Xbox Live Aracde secene. The last thing we need is for Sony/Microsoft/OnLive/whoever to establish new streaming services that a first wave of developers can take a risk on and innovate with - before the market gets overtaken by big, greedy publishers.

Eventually it may be the case but physical media on sale in retail offers many marketing benefits to developers and publishers and in the same way as the music industry has maintained a large revenue through physical media as well as digitally distributed music physical is not yet forecast to dissappear in spite of similar technology availability...

Right, the music industry has been dealing with digital distribution for over a decade, and oh look, vinyl and CDs are not going anywhere.

I'm my humble opinion, the talk of 'the rise of digital' is usually uttered by those who wish to look as if they are ahead of the curve.

I'm surprised that Wada's comments have have been allowed such exposure. He gives no reasoning as to why - suddenly - a thirty year old system of delivering content is going to be completely replaced.

I mean, the biggest victim to digitisation is surely the print industry, and magazines still go strong.

So no, Wada's completely off the mark, and I think SQUARE ENIX itself won't even migrate to digital-only content over the next five, ten or twenty years.

Liamm

I think Liamm above has expressed the facts quite adequately.

Down at the bandwagon depot, whole convoy loads of these "great ideas" are queued up ready to roll, just full of special platforms for people to jump on to. Nobody wants to be left out, so they all jump on shouting "and me, and me" whilst hoping that when the wheels fall off, everyone will have forgotten them getting on it.

When I look at my games collection of disks, cartridges and even tapes, there is no way I would trade those physical items for a hard-drive full of data. Can you just imagine in 3 years from now, that 2TB hard drive suddenly goes down, and your whole game collection with it?

At least I know that if one of my games break, another copy exists in the world for me to buy a replacement. If a digital distributor goes bust, where are you going to replace that game from? Because you can bet your life, you won't have a way of downloading that data to any kind of physical media. At least with something like TV programmes, you CAN record them, save them to disk/tape and watch them on any other player you have. That won't be the case with games based on how music is already handled.

And I'm not even going to mention bandwidth usage, because all this DD talk is based on unlimited usage, highspeed internet, that nobody has... or will have for years to come, especially here in the UK.

If gaming goes totally digital, then there is one bandwagon that I will personally be jumping on, and that's the "alternate hobby" one. Either that or I'll simply write my own games to entertain myself... it'll be cheaper.

In Asia and in Korea in particular; we are already there: in an all digital and online market. There is no retail anymore and hasn't been for about 6-7 years running now. It isn't being "ahead of the curve" it's already there.

We already have most game data even for online single player games being saved server side; and membership in the portals and "Steam-like" clients guarantee that you can access your game from most any pc/device. Many client based games are moving/being converted to a web streamed approach as well. We have become more efficient with our packet traffic and how data is sent and so the base infrastructure required is not too ahead of where you all are now.

Granted the average speeds are about 90 mbps~100mbps and go about $30 USD here. Government here did play a large role in laying down alot of the infrastructure through either direct or partial support.

Anyhow.. Wada is extrapolating from what is already existent in Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Korea, rapidly becoming the norm in China, Vietnam.

But we might be wrong since your mobile networks in the UK and US are so....how do I delicately put this...dysfunctional.

So it may take longer than the 2-3 years alot of us in the industry over here are assuming.

Anyhow he is forecasting your future but its our present right now.

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