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Only hard drive size holding 360 back News
Xbox 360 News by Games Industry.biz
Digital releases of Xbox 360 titles are only being held back due to the storage capacity of the console's hard drive, according to Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter.
He also said that retailers will have no choice but to accept a service offering digital releases day-and-date with the High Street, as Microsoft's publishing partners are likely to back such a service.
"I don't see the timing between new release and digital download being a function of anything other than hard drive sizes," offered Pachter, speaking exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz. "I think as soon as we have large hard drives - think the rumoured Project Natal 'new' Xbox 360 with a terabyte of storage in 2010 - we'll have day-and-date downloads."
Microsoft is due to launch its Games On Demand service in August, but will initially limit the series to best-selling older titles including Crackdown and Assassin's Creed rather than new releases.
"I don't think that the publishers care at all if downloads are day-and-date, and in fact, my guess is that many publishers favour such a model. It's true that retail partners wouldn't like it, but it is not necessarily true that they would have much to say about it," added Pachter.
Suggestions that retailers may be unhappy to sell the hardware without software are off the mark, said Pachter, who highlighted Apple's iPod business as evidence of such a market being lucrative for both.
"I don't see how they could scream too loudly about day-and-date downloads, unless the price for the download was lower than the packaged product price," he offered. "I don't see any retailers refusing to sell iPods, even though all the content on an iPod is distributed digitally.
"Much in the same way, while retailers may baulk at the possibility of day-and-date downloads, I don't see too many refusing to carry Microsoft product in retaliation. Should a retailer boycott Microsoft, I think that the full force of the publishers would be brought to bear on that retailer, and they would find themselves starved for product."
Microsoft has promised around 30 titles for the launch of Games on Demand with new games added every week.
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TheRealBadabing
23/06/09 @ 16:14
+15
I could have a huge HDD for my 360 but it wouldn't matter a bit so long as publishers insult our intelligence by offering products through digital distribution at full RRP.
"We didn't want to offend our retail partners by reflecting the massively reduced distribution costs in the price. All that extra profit is lovely though, thanks for a cracking excuse guys." |
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Agent_Llama
23/06/09 @ 16:23
+10
I wondered when this issue would dawn upon Microsoft and co. I'm sure many 360 owners are, like myself, stuck with an original 20gb hard drive, with no wish to fork out £100 on hard drive capacity that would cost many, many times less were it for my home computer. If they want to move digital distribution forward, they will have to address the issue of the prohibitive costs of hard drives etc.
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kangarootoo
23/06/09 @ 16:25
+12
Me too. I'm on an original 20GB HDD. The idea of spending money on a 120GB replacement makes me baulk when I would be able to get 500GB for the same money if I could shop where I wanted.
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+5
@ evilfoxhound
"Selling a £20 HDD for £130, like they are at the moment just isn't on. They should release: " I assume you mean a 20GB HDD, in which case it hasn't been that for years - 60GB is £60, with mic, 3 months Live and ethernet cable: Xbox Live Starter Kit Still far too expensive for what you get though - if that was the 120GB drive in there, that would be better, but they need to start upping the capacities . By all means keep the pricing the same, but Microsoft should keep increasing the sizes - they should sell 120GB (or 250GB tbh) and then a 320GB or 500GB for £100-120. Also, I'm very very wary of these digital downloads. IF it means prices are brought down a little to reflect the far lower costs (and the fact that you don't have suppliers, distributors and retailers taking their cut), then all well and good, but I can all too readily envisage full RRPs for months after physical discs have been discounted by 20-50%. Which also have resale and lending value. And digital downloads will pretty much spell the end of cheap bargains after Christmas or when Play or Amazon have huge crates filling up warehouses they need to get rid of - no competition and no stock issues means no price drops.Yes, Microsoft may be able to convince publishers/devs that fewer sales at higher prices will be roughly equal in terms of monetary gain, but it also means smaller communities, which will die off sooner, resulting in fewer future DLC opportunities and fewer sequel sales. /rant |
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+6
Small problem, not everyone has a fast, uncapped internet connection.
Downloading gigabytes of data is not a problem for many us, but that's not to say all of us. And honestly, when people moan about the 15 min install times on PS3 games, how are they going to take to spending a far greater amount of time downloading the latest blockbuster from XBL or PSN ? |
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reelbigkris
23/06/09 @ 16:58
+4
""I don't see how they could scream too loudly about day-and-date downloads, unless the price for the download was lower than the packaged product price," he offered."
Why on earth will anyone want to buy a digital copy at the same price as a a physical copy? the only way digital distribution is going to work is if it is cheaper than gamestation and GAME. I do buy alot of my games for PC on steam because they have pre purchase savings and gifts while also being generally cheaper than retail high streets. If Microsoft follow this kind of business model, perhaps it will work but i do not think digital distribution will ever be a replacement, just an alternative.... except for the new PSP which quite literally blows my mind with its complete lack of a UMD drive!!! |
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DutchDemons
23/06/09 @ 17:00
+3
I'm surprised to see so many gamers not even bothered by this development.
I for one am a happy bargain hunter; i carefully explore all known and trusted websites within and outside of the EU and then choose the cheapest game from there. This way i have managed to buy almost 60 games for the 360 often 30-40 euro's cheaper than 'RRP'. In some cases i could buy new and sealed games for a mere 13 euro's while RRP was still standing firm at 49,99 or something. With digital distribution i can't see that happen anytime soon (judging by the prices at XBLA right now). also..though i never do it, selling your games second hand is also out of the question. Now i know a lot of gamers here like to sell their old games and get some cash back for new purchases. ...not possible this way (at least, that would be my guess).
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most recently on 23/06/09 @ 18:00
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jaguarwong
23/06/09 @ 17:04
+1
In whatever shape or form it takes Digital Distribution is an inevitability - for games AND films.
Scary first steps for the industry though - look what happened to the Dreamcast when it tried to do the online-console thing before the world (and the infrastructure) was ready.
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most recently on 23/06/09 @ 18:04
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+1
Can't wait for this to be a reality since I have quick internet and no download limits. As for download times I don't see how it's massively slower than going to a shop and buying it. I don't buy second hand games or trade them in so that won't bother me either.
As for the people seriously suggesting that the reason for high digital download prices isn't retailer pressure I think you're smoking crack. |
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+6
You can pick up a 1 TB HDD for around £50 for the PC, granted they're the more common 3.5" type not the 2.5" sort the consoles and laptops use. With the 120 GB HDD for the 360 selling for £100 at GAME etc I dread to think what inflated price Microsoft will slap on it. In fact, I don't want to think about it. :?
Sony did the right thing by allowing the PS3 to be easily upgraded with third party drives. I picked up a 320 GB one over a year ago for around £50. That's almost three times the capacity for less than half the price of the 120 GB HDD from Microsoft (it was £130 RRP at the time). For a company so keen to promote a future of digital distribution they seem oddly keen on making the storage as expensive and unattractive as possible. Even a 120 GB HDD is looking very small these days if you download the larger XBLA games and install games to the drive. Maybe Microsoft should consider selling an HDD shell for the 360 which allows people to slot in as big a third-party HDD as they can afford? Knowing Microsoft they won't because they'd lose out on official HDD sales. |
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0
I'm not holding my breath expecting digital distribution to give us lower prices seeing how expensive the movie rentals on Xbox Marketplace are.
The price in MS points here in France means that renting a "premium" movie is more expensive than buying the same movie on Play.com (if you wait a couple of months). And you have to watch them with crappy French dubbing (and not in the original language which even my French-speaking friends would prefer...) So much for choice... |
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0
I'd buy a new 360 hard drive if they were reasonable money, no problem. I love digital download, XBLA, all that jazz. Can't be arsed to move from my sofa, frankly. But as many others here are saying, £90-ish for the 120GB Xbox drive just looks ridiculous these days. I recently bought a 1TB Buffalo external USB drive from Amazon for under £80.
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kentmonkey
23/06/09 @ 17:52
+4
"I don't see how they could scream too loudly about day-and-date downloads, unless the price for the download was lower than the packaged product price,"
No, but I would. Download MP3's are cheaper than retail CD's, so why the heck can't download games be cheaper than retail games...because the stores wouldn't like it. If an MP3 album can be approx £3-4 cheaper than a CD bought in the shop at £10-12 retail price point, why can't games be £9-12 cheaper off of the standard £35-40 retail price point? If it's the same price, frankly I'm not interested. In the time it takes to download a full retail game, I could have gone to the shop, bought it, done a weekly grocery shop and played about an hour of the game. I would also have a game that I could either trade in or sell on afterwards, meaning that the game actually ends up costing me about half of the price I actually paid for it. |
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AphoticCosmos
23/06/09 @ 18:10
+1
IMHO, the 120GB needs to be bumped down a LOT in price. I'm glad to have one, but frankly it should be the basic 360 HDD. 200GB, even 400GB HDDs should be a priority, I mean it's not as if HDD components are anything but dirt cheap these days.
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makeamazing
23/06/09 @ 18:22
0
MS do seem intent on pushing digital downloads and movies, but the cost of disks is pretty prohibitive. I purchased a PC HD 1 TB for about £80 a couple of months ago. Just taking a quick look on amazon and 120GB is around the same price (not sure of MS price). So there is ALOT of scope to drop the price, just wonder if there is any will to drop it.
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StooMonster
23/06/09 @ 18:41
0
kentmonkey: MP3 or AAC is lower quality audio than CD, ergo it is cheaper.
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0
Hmmm... not sure about the iPod comparison. I mean as draconian as Apple gets called out with DRM etc, I can move my iTunes purchases from one PC to another PC to Mac to different iPods etc and rip CDs from my purchases. Microsoft does allow you to transfer purchases from one 360 to another 360 but what happens when they have their next console ready. Will they still honour your purchases with backward compatibility and free transfers?
Hmmm.... |
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0
"Microsoft does allow you to transfer purchases from one 360 to another "
Yes, they do. If I swap the discs between my consoles, as long as I login with the account which bought the content it is available. The only diference is that in that 2nd 360 only that user can access. And, if you just change 360's - and just have one - you can permanently transfer all the content licencing to that *new* 360, via xbox.com, that way, all the users will be able to access. (I hope I made myself clear, though I kinda doubt it...)
Edited 2 times,
most recently on 23/06/09 @ 20:02
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MightyMouse
23/06/09 @ 19:48
0
I must be missing something, because if MS bundle Natal with a 1TB hdd then surely we're talking well in excess of £400 and this would seem totally at odds with their pricing strategy. The launch games would have to be a generational leap for people to consider early adoption.
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local_celebrity
23/06/09 @ 19:55
0
Pachter must have been out on the golf course too long, the sunstroked idiot. As long as you can trade in your disc, and recoup half your initial outlay, there's no way I'm switching over.
BTW, have you seen the prices of games recently? £55 RRP on Modern Warfare 2? Even with Amazon, you're going to have shell out a galling £45 to preorder it. Thanks v much, Activision. I now know that it feels like to be anally shafted with a broken bottle. |
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-3
"Selling a £20 HDD for £130, like they are at the moment just isn't on. They should release: "
I don't know where you do your shopping but that's just utter rubbish. You'd be hard pressed to even find a 20 gb hdd, let alone for 130 quid. Especially when 120gb HDD's go for about 60 to a 100 euro. It's the top end of the laptop HDD market but not abnormal for propriety hardware. A quick look at tweakers shows me that they go from 30 to 110 euro with most of them being at 40-60 euro mark. Also, ms have never hidden the fact that their peripherals is a very lucrative market for them. MS suckers people in with a cheap console and then sells some peripherals, sony just sells the whole package. All in all, they even each other out. |
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+3
I also have the 20GB drive... I don't use it for downloading many demos or multimedia, so I had plenty of room and thought I'll never need more... But then XNE arrived it gave us the chance to install games on the hard drive. It is just a must for me now: faster loading, quieter and cooler (less prone to hardware failure, after all). DLC makes the issue much worse as the tendency towards heavy downloads increases in time. We need bigger drives but most people (including me) won't pay MS overpriced drives.
Sony decition making on PS3 has it's ups and downs, but 2 things they got just right was making online play for free and allowing people to upgrade the hard drive freely. MS should do just that, any other option is bad for their market approach of "digital distribution is good".
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most recently on 23/06/09 @ 21:23
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0
Meanwhile why do I have to pay more for many new games on Steam than I do in not particularly cheap stores like GameStop?
Other than avoiding a few daily disc changes there still often seems to be preciously little advantage - and sometimes the opposite - to digital distrubution of games for us consumers. No disc, no case, no printed manual - surely they could cut a few bucks off the price, or at the very least avoid the tempation to add them instead? |
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kentmonkey
23/06/09 @ 21:11
0
StooMonster, that's not why they're cheaper at all. Vinyl can be more expensive than CD, but (in terms of pure 'quality', as I actually prefer the sound of Vinyl over CD, but in terms of actual audio quality) the CD is far superior.
MP3's etc. are cheaper due to the format. That and because they needed to be to try and get people legally downloading them rather than pirating them. If something is cheaper to produce (as digital downloads are; no printing costs for manuals, no cover printing, no boxes, no DVD/Blu-Ray disc and no third-party taking a huge chunk from the sale of the game (usually a distributor and a retailer, taking about 40-50% minimum of the final sale price) then why shouldn't at least part of that be passed on to the consumer. If I could purchase a game knowing that 100% of the cost (or as close to as possible) went to the people who actually made it, and that it was a few quid cheaper to acknowledge the fact that they're making a lot more of it, I'd do it. I'm not paying the same price for something that is going to be an inferior product though (no manual, no re-sale value, no ability to loan it to a friend, no ability to take it around a mates house, nada). |
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Praetorianer
23/06/09 @ 21:14
0
Does anyone really doubt that in the future there won't be any packaged games at all? There will only be games available on download and I bet that for most of them you'll need a steady internet connection just to fight piracy, and the publishers will maximize profits by keeping the retailers out of the line while minimizing production costs. It's inevitable, just like Mr. Smith always said.
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0
You all realize that they can't hardly sell their HDDs for less than the price difference between consoles, right?
So, if they were to drop the price of the HDDs, the 360 itself would have to drop as well. I'll let you all do the logical maths for yourselves. :) Do this maths while you're at it - difference in price between an 80gb PS3 and a 160gb PS3. Amazingly, they charge about the same price per 80gb as MS! |
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kentmonkey
23/06/09 @ 21:23
0
I'd like to think that it will only be that way if people allow it to be that way. If people continue to purchase games from online (or even high street retailers) for the same or cheaper price than digital download content, they'll have to lower the price in order to make it attractive.
I'd actually rather buy a digital download if the price was right, as there's less packaging and it's more environmentally friendly. But I'm not paying the same RRP for something that I know has cost a lot less to get to me. |
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aphexstwin
23/06/09 @ 21:36
+1
i, for one, hope that i can still buy physical media for my consoles and music blur-rays, whatever.
mainly because they make up a large percentage of the gifts santa brings people on my behalf. i can see the divorce now, when i say to the missus: 'hey babe i got you a shiteload of downloads for chrimbo. sorry theres nowt to unwrap!' my point in the ipod thing is, the ipod has been marketed as being THE thing to have, its been that way for years with walkmans and discmans etc. i cant ever, except for handheld gaming devices, see home consoles being seen as a must have accessory outside of our circles. and finally, what of those with no consoles? if this download larky happens to film, how are they going to get movies? whether ms like it or not, physical media is here for a long while yet. |
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kentmonkey
23/06/09 @ 21:37
0
(in response to Ronud) It wouldn't make a blind bit of difference. As already mentioned, MP3's are cheaper. Some retailers get bigger discounts than others due to their buying power and can therefore discount the product more; it doesn't stop other retailers buying games.
What people are missing as well is that they're also totally different products. At the end of the day one is a retail boxed product, and therefore carries a premium. The other product is a digitally distributed product. It may be the same game at the end of the day, but the actual product is entirely different, thus the price should be. If they sold the retail boxed game from Microsoft.com at less than RRP, retailers may (and only may, as online retailers tend to be cheaper anyway) have a point. But they're not.
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+1
I highly doubt that boxed retail would ever disappear. It would simply alienate a far too large a user base. There are plenty of people like me who are perhaps willing to spend small amount of money on small things but won't ever consider buying full games over DD.
I reckon that DD will eventually end up with a healthy but 3rd place in sales, behind stores and webshops. It's nice for those into it but the masses couldn't give a rats arse or even know about it's existence. And then there are the obvious legal and technical problems that can't be solved that easily. |
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Praetorianer
23/06/09 @ 21:39
-1
I think so, too. The only way you could convince me to buy a game as a download would be through the save-our-environment argument...or not making it available in packaged form. But then again, what about all the energy costs for servers running, using possibly toxic materials etc...jeez why can't anything be simple and easy nowadays :)
By the way, never trust HDDs, because that's why Panzer Dragoon Saga's source has been lost :) |
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SixFootHalfling
23/06/09 @ 21:40
0
"Microsoft is due to launch its Games On Demand service in August, but will initially limit the series to best-selling older titles including Crackdown and Assassin's Creed rather than new releases. "
I thought Crackdown couldn't be installed to HDD? "It's the top end of the laptop HDD market" The problem is, if Microsoft allowed 3rd party 3.5" HDDs, then you could buy a 1.5Tb HDD, for only £5 more than their 120Gb one |
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kentmonkey
23/06/09 @ 21:53
-1
Totally agree xerx3s
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 23/06/09 @ 22:53
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