Codemasters hoping for Digital only next gen consoles – Video Games Update
David Darling, the co-founder of Codemasters, stated in his blog post that he wants the upcoming next generation consoles to go fully ‘Digital’ and get rid of physical media.
"Consoles have become like dinosaurs heading for extinction as their natural retail habitat begins to change,” said darling in his blog post comparing current generation consoles with online services like Steam, OnLive and social gaming on Facebook.
Publishers and developers were all in favour of Digital distribution but it’s very likely that they are giving it second thoughts after the new EU law that was passed two days ago which gives the consumer the right to resell the game they have bought, may
it be retail or a downloaded copy.
This essentially gives the power to the gamers as they can influence the gaming market with second hand sales forcing publishers to reduce the prices of the titles quickly after launch. This will also force developers to add more value to the game so that
the user doesn’t feel like selling it off once he’s finished with it.
Darling claims that a full transition to digital distribution will get rid of people relying on retail and thus make gaming cheaper as a whole. This sounds logical but is unlikely to happen as publishers will continue to charge the most they can for a game.
Proof of this can be found while checking the prices of newly released games on Steam or Origin as they cost exactly the same as their retail counterparts even though they don’t come with the swag that the physical copy will include.
Darling has got a point as all around the world, Digital distribution is slowly replacing retail copies but there are still a lot of gamers out there who would prefer to buy a physical disc with the exclusive goodies to display on their gaming shelf.
There is also the internet bandwidth to worry about as lots of internet service providers (ISPs) all across the world are capping and limiting user download bandwidth in order to combat p****y. This means that if a console was to go fully ‘Digital’ right
now, many gamers will opt for a different one that supports physical media of some form.
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