bojay1997, on Wed Aug 11, 2010 11:54 PM, said:
CD's aren't dying, but their economics and their importance to the bottom line of record companies is undoubtedly diminished. The music industry went through a transformation driven by piracy/P2P sharing and a perception that music had little value as a consumer product. Unfortunately, in the process, the music industry essentially collapsed and it was permanently turned into a system where artists and record companies can no longer make millions of dollars from an album release and physical media was seen as having less value as the desirable product was literally a single track or two on a CD. The record companies are responding by dropping CD prices and including things like DVDs, free digital downloads of the album you purchased on CD and other bonus materials to make CD purchases seem like a better value than paying for an iTunes download of just a few songs.
If the game industry goes through the same transformation the music industry has gone through, there will literally be no game industry to speak of as nobody is going to invest millions of dollars creating games that will instantly be pirated. You may still have small indie releases, but an all digital gaming industry is not just annoying for gamers and collectors, as well as many brick and mortar retailers, but very dangerous for publishers and developers. As such, while digital media will continue to be available and probably grow, I also believe physical media will continue to be around and you will see a continuing effort to make owning the physical product desirable by creating more collector's editions and pack-in bonuses.
Well, I think you are somewhat getting the wrong idea. I don't think discs will be gone completely forever, someone will always cater to a niche I mean hell, they still sell new records. My point more is that we are heading in a new direction, a new state of technology where disc media will not be required anymore for a lot of it. Afterburner Climax is a great example, SEGA would NOT make money putting that out on disc, I'm sorry but there just would not be enough interest/profit and that is why they are not doing it. This will happen more and more weather we like it or not. Most people will not care if they get Madden on a disc, especially if it is cheaper just to download it, EA has already announced instruction manuals will be discontinued soon, and my prediction is current gen game discs will start having the same value as outdated computer stuff when the next systems come out(which is next to nothing, most people just throw old computer ganes away) because of this many people will just prefer downloads in years to come, it will not happen overnight but 20 years from now it will be a lot different. They will find ways around piracy, they always do. Collectors editions might fight it off for a little while but since they are so expensive again many people (not all) will prefer downloads. Give it time, the end is near
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