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Yoichi Wada says trade must prepare for switch to digital distribution and server-based games
Square Enix chief Yoichi Wada is preparing his firm for the demise of physical media – and potentially the death of home consoles.
In an exclusive interview with MCV that will be published next week, the CEO of the publisher – which now owns Eidos and is famous for its epic disc-based Final Fantasy games – said that a dramatic change will come in the next decade offering more opportunity for market growth, but fundamentally transforming the traditional industry.
“In ten years’ time a lot of what we call ‘console games’ won’t exist,” he said.
Wada warned that “all the distributors and sales firms will suffer a big negative impact” from a new era in which interactive entertainment switches from software run on hardware in the home to server-based offerings, game streaming and digital distribution.
He claimed that format-holders including Sony and Microsoft are already prepared for the shift – and that third-parties must follow suit.
I really don't like this. I hope that consoles and game discs that you buy in stores will keep on existing. Everything is around the web lately...
What do you think?
thats a bad sign. a lot of people have been used to consoles for god knows how long. and now, they expect us to go digital? bad bad bad... i really hate this...
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Hopefully there will be a limit. They should offer games both digital and in stores.
I remember that a small console was announced a few months back that allowed you to download any PS3/PC/Xbox360 game and stream it to your tv. Never heard anything of that though
I dont think anything atm is correctly prepared to become digital only, for example, imagine downloading a game like FFXIII(lets assume for example purpose) with 40 Gb, with my internet speed I know it'll take me about 3-4 days(24 hours downloading), but I also know that some other people still have lousy internets and that downloading 40 Gb would take a LONG time, not only that, but some people still have limits to their bandwidth, in Portugal for example alot of internet packages dont have limitless bandwidth, so if those people downloaded like 2 games, they would use all their bandwidth becoming internet-less for the rest of the month or paying more to the provider...
Long story short, the world still isnt prepared for 100% Digital Distribution, discs will still exist for some good years.
My oppinion on the subject: I like digital distribution, what I dont like is the fact that consoles will stop existing, I love my consoles and my computer too, but if games start going 100% to the computer(no consoles) you'd probably need to upgrade your computer every fcking year to be able to keep up with the game requirements(<- that I dont like)
Quetzalma, you brought up a good point, people with slow like mine would go crazy having to wait so long for a game to download. hopefully if consoles do stop existing (which i hope they dont) they'll creat better computers that will be able to easily play large games. But then those computers would cost a arm and a leg wouldn't they? man, I just can't think of a good solution to this problem. Let's just pray this doesn't happen, OK everybody?
rise, this will happen sooner or later, which I still think it is a good idea, but like I also said, the world still isnt ready for this yet.
in my oppinion, consoles wont stop existing for some time, why? because alot of people actually prefer to play games on consoles, and also, lets face it, a PS3 was expensive when it came out, but if you wanted a computer that could deal with the same thing that the PS3 could at its time of release, that computer would be ALOT more expensive then the PS3.
Why are consoles better then PCs to play?
In my experience as a gamer and as a programmer, consoles are better then pcs because they are dedicated, a console has a very light OS(operative system) that uses almost no memory, now if we compare any computer OS to a console OS(be it Windows, Linux(general), Mac, ...), all of those are very heavy in memory, now if the computer doesnt have enough CPU or memory to handle everything that is going on in the background and the game, it would slowdown the game, which is something I seriously hate, while on consoles its assured that each game is within the consoles limits for perfect playing(no slowdowns), that cant be assured in a computer
I've been around since the NES. IMO, so long as we don't take a hit with lag and media quality, I'm up for it. It's been nice to have a collection, but I don't miss my CD's one bit after having an ipod for a while.
The only real crappy thing is if they try and sell it while it is in any way less than an improvement over hardware. I freaking HATE that vinyl and CD's and ipods sound worse than eachother in that order; yet the order of their invention is the opposite. If it's good, I'll welcome the change.
All the ISP's will have to quintuple their bandwidth without upping the price before this has a chance of flying imo. Even then, lag must be a non-issue before I would drop consoles.
Fortunately for the Japanese, their internet speeds are already up around 60mbps. America is in the stone ages in terms of broadband.
Ten years? I'm sure we're all used to the traditional way of just using a disk and a console. I doubt the world will adapt this quick. I also doubt the industry will be so quick to change.
I dont think anything atm is correctly prepared to become digital only, for example, imagine downloading a game like FFXIII(lets assume for example purpose) with 40 Gb, with my internet speed I know it'll take me about 3-4 days(24 hours downloading), but I also know that some other people still have lousy internets and that downloading 40 Gb would take a LONG time, not only that, but some people still have limits to their bandwidth, in Portugal for example alot of internet packages dont have limitless bandwidth, so if those people downloaded like 2 games, they would use all their bandwidth becoming internet-less for the rest of the month or paying more to the provider...
Long story short, the world still isnt prepared for 100% Digital Distribution, discs will still exist for some good years.
My oppinion on the subject: I like digital distribution, what I dont like is the fact that consoles will stop existing, I love my consoles and my computer too, but if games start going 100% to the computer(no consoles) you'd probably need to upgrade your computer every fcking year to be able to keep up with the game requirements(<- that I dont like)
Your also forgetting about one thing, internet is getting faster in major cities and countries. Download a 2GB file in less than 10 minutes and thats me living in NZ where its still underdeveloped. In asia, you can get up to somewhat 15GBPS.
Stated in the article, Wada expects this in 10 years time which I think is plenty for the internet speed to increase it's peak and that HDD's to go into Terabytes for the average household.
It's a basic principle, when the branch gets big, the root gets bigger to support it.
Basicly, this world with the technology is ready enough to recieve all of this in 10 years time. Not to say it's already started.
They're already trying to do it but it won't work because cloud technology isn't quite there yet. I forget what it's called but they showed something at E3 where they were running Crysis on several crappy PCs and it looked and ran great.
Basically, we play games from their servers. It means that we can play great looking games on a crappy PC because the games won't be using our PC's power. In other words, developers won't have to worry about being limited by a console's power.
The cons?
No more renting games, no more pirating games, no more borrowing games, no more buying used games, and some stores will shut down such as Gamestop and Game Crazy. Electronic sections in retail stores will also take a hit.
All that is good reason why game companies will be all over this. They don't make profit from those who borrow, pirate, and sell used games. If you want to rent a game or try a demo, you have to buy it through them and at their price.
It's not going to just happen with games but movies too.
Basically, this will just suck for those still stuck on dial up. High speed internet has to be a norm first. Everybody should have access to it no matter where they live.
Also, these games have to always be available on their servers and we should be able to play them when we want to. They can't take them down cause we paid for it.
And no more having hard copies of games. Not sure how I feel about that.
i saw the videos of this from E3 this year, looks interesting but home consoles are a thing that will never die out in my opinion, no matter how much of the marketplace digital distribution or game streaming takes over in the next decade there will always be home consoles and discs to put in them.
the i-pod was the way of the future when it launched but cd sales are still very much alive and kicking, in the same way that game streaming and digitally distributed games are the way of the future, they wont kill the home console or peoples desire to own a hard copy of any game.
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If you had told me ten years ago that one day i could play Final Fantasy VII while sitting on the toilet i'd have called you a hopeless dreamer, then Sony gave us the PSP
Everyone was on dial-up and a high-tech set-up was having your modem on a separate phone line so you didn't get disconnected whenever someone tried to call you.
Piracy was borrowing a CD from a friend and copying it to a cassette
The PS2 hadn't been released yet
Final Fantasy VIII had just been released
Mobile phones caused brain tumours and were the size of your head
A hell of a lot can change in 10 years, especially in an industry like this. Wada may seem nuts for saying this now, but in 10 years we may be surprised we ever doubted that this would happen.
Equally so he could still be a nut and we'll laugh at him from our hoverbikes.
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Square Enix: Consoles set for extinction
i really hate this...
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Final fantasy 13 FTW 
