Majority of developers foresee a digital-only era, but few agree on when that will come
A cocktail of strong debate and sparkling wit was the outcome of Develop’s first ever Jury Service feature, which resulted in a near-unanimous verdict that physical content is now on borrowed time.
On Monday Develop asked a selection of prominent developers if Square Enix president Yoichi Wada was on the ball when he claimed that traditional home consoles would soon die out as the industry shifts to digital distribution and server-based gaming.
Develop Jury’s verdict – which you can read in full here – was largely in agreement with Wada, citing the consumer convenience of digital goods as well as online games' potential to curb the second-hand market.
“If you look at the model adopted by the music industry, it is getting rarer and rarer that you would physically buy an album,” said Traveller’s Tales director Jon Burton.
“iTunes, Amazon MP3 etc is a faster way of getting what you want. The trick is educating the public to be confident of buying things in this way,” he added. “It is obviously working looking at how many apps have been sold on iTunes for instance. Extrapolating this into Movies and then games, it is just a matter of time before the public confidence in ‘soft goods’ grows to a point where convenience outweighs owning a physical copy.”
John Chasey, of British mobile game developer FinBlade, expanded on the issue.
“There is a vicious circle occurring where retail is seeing a growing percentage of sales are in the second hand market since the margins are greater, which reduces revenue for publishers and developers.
“They will therefore migrate towards online as a method of increasing their margins.”
SO, WHEN?
Though the jury were undivided that digital content will eventually eclipse physical, a larger debate arose on the subject of exactly when this would happen.
Bizarre Creations’ longstanding commercial director Sarah Chudley suggested that games won’t move online until all luxury goods do, while Team 17 studio director Martyn Brown claimed that the revolution was, in fact, happening right now.
Zoe Mode General Manager Ed Daly, meanwhile, took the bold step of quantifying his prediction:
“While games might have been slow to get going they’ll probably be first to vanish from malls and high streets, 15 years I reckon, bar some developing countries and charity shops,” he said.
Daly went on to add that “history gives us few examples of technology standing still”.
Yet the Tag Games founder Paul Farley suggested that the dawn of digital distribution won’t come via gradual evolution, but instead a defining turning point, much like the arrival of smartphones.
“Without an iPhone style revolution,” he said, “the time scale of transition will be a matter of many years and not overnight.”
Meanwhile, experienced industry superhero Gary Penn – who is also convinced that digital will rise above – touched on the cultural impact of a digital era.
The Denki creative director claimed that “as the intangible becomes more rooted in reality, the tangible will become increasingly valued by the cognoscenti to sustain a specialist industry.”
Penn’s broader comments were splashed with a bit of tongue in cheek, though Zoonami CEO Martin Hollis managed to up the stakes with his wonderful fleeting comment, which read:
“There will always be a place for plastic circles. I've put mine in the bin.”
…
“Is that too short an answer?”
Develop would like to again thank this week’s panel who participated. If you'd like to take part in future Develop Jury Service features email rob.crossley@intentmedia.co.uk
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Interesting how so many people mention Apple and the App Store and iTunes.
As with all mediums, genres, and hardware, it still takes one company to drive forward a vision.
I'd say that without Brain Training the self-help genre wouldn't be as big as it is today. And without Nintendo's own in-house games the DS would be directionless.
So the word of downloads may be looming, but it's Apple that shook the tree.
It's funny you should say that, because Apple isn't leading the way at all when it comes to the App Store.
It's not going to happen anytime soon.
Eliot is right, one publisher to make a stand will need to stop 100% of their hard sales in order to move this. But a combination of losing the casual gamer who isn't savvy on this, impulse purchasers, people with poor bandwidth, consoles with HDD's still nowhere near big enough (you're looking at at least 5TB for the hardcore) and most of all pressure from brick retailers losing all their profits through this means it won't happen anytime soon.
I don't think any of the issues you've cited are long term problems;
"Casual Gamers" are increasingly savvy to this thanks to mobile; get a painless mobile type billing model in place (and ISPs love that idea) and the barriers fall away. Bandwidth remains an issue, but once again, the volume hit from stuff like YouTube HD and iPlayer is forcing this agenda with the ISPs, and if you get the bandwidth piece right then the need for huge HDDs also starts to go away (and the success of Spotify etc. shows that customers are a lot more savvy about the need to "own ones and zeros anyway). The retailer concern is a non-issue; the death of high street music shows how quickly retail can be discarded. The biggest concern about a full move to digital distribution is the lack of genuine competition; look at Steam's pricing for a vision of the future if we're not careful.
Physical media will not die entirely but will change and of course this all depends on the timeframe. I think that Yoichi Wada is right with what he says; there is a lot going on under the surface of the games industry as a whole at the moment and he is clearly switched on to this movement. What people should recognise is that there is a generation of children who are very happy to play and buy online and think nothing of buying a hat for their virtual toy, this same generation have iPods (or similar) and get their music online. I hear much about how Christmas will mean that physical must stay, but that was said in music too. If they got given a CD as a present (even at Christmas) it will actually be a pain for them! They now have to get it onto their laptop and onto their iPod, where if they could be gifted it, or given a voucher. I think that this coming generation will be quite happy with getting up on Christmas morning and finding that “Santa” has added a game to their machine, ready to play. As for the changing of physical, well there will be many exciting interim steps but I expect game vouchers on cards to be sold soon as well as other more inventive things.
If we think back 15 years, most people had no email access, had never heard the words internet, online and web browser, nor did MP3 or DVD players, Amazon or Google even exist.
A whole lot has changed in that time, and the pace of change is accelerating. In just a few years Apple (and P2P services) has changed the way people consumer music forever. Now, Apple's done the same for apps/games - and the console owners also have their own efforts which are rapidly gaining momentum.
Considering the speed with which these changes happened - starting from zero, where users could not even conceive of the idea of content not being physical - 10 or even 5 years seems a likely timeframe for us to see significant movement of games/game services online.
Seems like the public, their market, likes the idea of owning a game on DVD as it means it physically belongs to them and retains a value for resale. I'm not sure digital delivery will be accepted in the way the Jury envisages; their response is to their issues and what would be ideal fo them to make more money...not deliver extra value to the customer.
