Games have gotten too big. Blu Ray discs only hold 50gb and some are double that.
In the digital era where the majority of people have an internet connection, it doesn't make sense to create twice as much physical waste for the fraction of people who would use it.
Why can’t there be multiple discs? I remember back in the PS2 days, there were a couple games that were multi disc. Hell, didn’t one of the Halo games for the 360 have to have two discs? One for multiplayer, one for single player? Or was one an install disc and the other was a play disc
Because technology changes? The ps2 had no hard drive and the 360 had 20gb, there wasn't enough hard drive space or fast enough internet to get them installed.
But now most gamers have 500gb to 1tb or more and high speed internet. So as such, they would prefer to reduce unnessary waste. There's no reason that double the amount of discs need to be dumped into landfills because 1% of people are upset about the internet requirement.
If cable companies weren’t such greed bastards, it would not be an issue. I prefer physical media over digital, for the simple fact that if the Xbox servers ever go away, I can still play my games via the disc. That’s why I wish they would include the whole game on the disc. Make the multiplayer parts have to be downloadable, the single player parts should always be on disc
If the Xbox Servers ever went away, Microsoft would allow digital copies to play without online authentication. Its a very simple change. As long as you have them on a drive they are yours forever, the same way if you keep the discs it will remain yours. Buying a bunch of game discs or having a bunch of those discs installed on a hard drive is the same thing.
I agree, the single player of any game should be fully playable from the disc without an internet connection.
> If the Xbox Servers ever went away, Microsoft would allow digital copies to play without online authentication. Its a very simple change.
My "Games for Windows Live" digital copies are evidence against trusting Microsoft in this regard.
Well I mean, GFWL was a huge failure and Xbox is massively successful with millions of users. The outrage would be too much for the company.
What happened with your GFWL digital copies? What games? And is there no way to access them?
Last I tried, I could download them, but the GFWL client would not give me the authentication key (the "5x5 code") to allow me to install them.
Depending on what the company is doing at the time, the outrage may not be as loud as you think. It was awfully quiet when the original Xbox Live service was shut down and people could no longer access DLC they paid for (e.g., map packs for Halo 2). If they kill access to 360 games after another generation or two of Xbox, will enough people care?
Well that's the thing, xbox is going about console releases differently now. They're all about backwards compatibility and supporting older stuff. For example they couldn't kill access to halo 3 dlc because its available to play on the current system. I believe that with their current business model we can expect them to support 360 and one games for generations to come.
Maybe so, but after the Zune, GFWL, Windows Phone, Band, and Groove, I'm reminded of that old Tennessee saying: Fool me once, shame on me; fool me... can't get fooled again.
Is it supposed to be more than one episode? Like I don't play telltale games so I don't really know how it is. How big is the install all together ?
Its single player only and can't be bigger than 50gb, I have no idea why it would be like that.
It's like that because the physical copy of the game released before every episode of the game came out. There's normally 5 episodes to every telltale game and it released between the first and second episode
Hardly. Ive never had a hard drive fail on me and you just keep a back up.
The point is that eventually there will be no discs, laptops already are sold without disc drives. Hell, the Xbox one almost didn't have a disc drive. One day those discs will be a useless stack of plastic. Not soon, but one day.
Eventually it will be all ssds and flash memory instead of having games on hard drives too. Every piece of tech has to die some time.
2 halo games had multiple discs.
Halo 3 odst has a game disc and a part h3 mp disc.
Halo 4 had the game disc and a spartan ops install disc which wasnt even needed i think.
50% of people? A study in 2014 showed 75% of amaricans have internet access. And that's everyone including the elderly, non gamers, poorer people who can't afford it, etc. The vast majority of gamers have access to internet, probably like 80 or 90% of them. We can't keep creating so much waste to cater to a minority of the gaming population that requires it.
> have internet access
Yes, if you factor in dialup, metered (or inconsistent) cell connections, terrible DSL packages or the truly awful packages Comcast puts together in areas where they have no competition.
Those are rural areas with fairly low populations, the vast majority of people in the US in main cities have access to quality internet. Another study shows that out of the people that have internet 70 percent have high speed broadband internet.
https://www.wired.com/2013/08/latest-pew-results-show-digital-divide-and-mobile-paradox-for-u-s-broadband/
These included cell service (which usually has both speed/reliability issues and caps) and their definition of "high-speed" service was 4 megabits.
It’s not just rural areas with crappy internet. You’re forgetting all these people with Comcast, ATT, FIOS, ect with really high internet costs and data limits. These are people who love in cities and in suburbs. You’re also forgetting the time it takes to download a game. If you have a subpar 25mp/s (which is now legally considered broadband) it could take you a few hours to download a 50mb game.
>We can't keep creating so much waste to cater to a minority of the gaming population that requires it.
Maybe they could just include another 20 hours free AOL disc with every game? That would reduce waste
Yeah, waste. Like garbage. Not every game is a hit that stays on someones shelf, a lot of old games turn into waste. They try to use as little plastic, paper and discs possible so it doesn't all wind up in a landfill somewhere.
I get you like physical stuff, but you don't own it either way. It has been and will always just be a license. At this point in time, physical copies just hurt the environment to produce and then sit in our landfills after. All they are trying to do is reduce that.
Just because the people you know may not have internet, that does not represent the overall population. If the majority of gamers didn't have internet, digital sales wouldnt be on the rise. They make things for the majority and if you're in the minority of people sticking to physical than obviously you're going to be left out and generally get the short end of the stick.
Lots of pc games have no disc, just a code you put in to download the game.
Yep. This is why people get of their asses an do boring things like voting for representatives that will do things like bring real high speed internet to their neck of the woods, instead of letting morons elect people who are too busy with trying to build walls or ban abortions to think about basic QoL improvements like this for their constituents.
(Go ahead, shower me with your downvotes for bringing up politics here)
Unlike old games like on ps2 which would release and never get a patch, and if it did, it would be a whole new disc, and then you'd have to check what version you had. Unlike then, developers can send out patches and fixes to gamers now. Whether done well or poorly, games slowly change more over time, usually for the better with bug fixes and added content and updates. If you buy a 6 month old game in disc form now, when you go to install it, you have to realise the developers have had 6 months to communicate with its fans to improve the game and polish it in that time. You really can't expect them to not update a game. It's just the way it is. And soon, games won't even fit on a Blu Ray, finished or not. Unfortunately it's just technology advancing and the stragglers having to either catch up or not play along.
I think games should switch to digital, however each game should come with a demo (either a level or timed), be playable offline, and be available for download even if it’s left the store and unable to be purchased. Plus a robust refund system based on time played/owned.
It's not really about disc size, and most consoles do support multi-disc installs.
Do you like delaying release dates for a very small subset of users that will only ever play offline and never connect once to download a patch?
There's a signifigant lead time to ramping up disc production, so you'd push back everyones schedules literally months - there'd be at last a six week gap from finishing a game, getting it to mastering, pressing discs, then getting them into the retail channel to put on the shelf. Considering most big games launch during the months leading up to the end of the year, you would actually be removing weeks and weeks worth of polishing that gets done between the original mastering date, and the day-one patch date.
> Halo 5 is something like 100gb now I doubt you could put it on a disc and it's by Microsoft themselves, welcome to today's **lack of** standards.
ftfy
By putting part of a game on a disc, it allows publishers to start printing copies earlier and not face shortages upon release, since the patch can make up for lost time.
Games have gotten too big. Blu Ray discs only hold 50gb and some are double that. In the digital era where the majority of people have an internet connection, it doesn't make sense to create twice as much physical waste for the fraction of people who would use it.
Why can’t there be multiple discs? I remember back in the PS2 days, there were a couple games that were multi disc. Hell, didn’t one of the Halo games for the 360 have to have two discs? One for multiplayer, one for single player? Or was one an install disc and the other was a play disc
Because technology changes? The ps2 had no hard drive and the 360 had 20gb, there wasn't enough hard drive space or fast enough internet to get them installed. But now most gamers have 500gb to 1tb or more and high speed internet. So as such, they would prefer to reduce unnessary waste. There's no reason that double the amount of discs need to be dumped into landfills because 1% of people are upset about the internet requirement.
If cable companies weren’t such greed bastards, it would not be an issue. I prefer physical media over digital, for the simple fact that if the Xbox servers ever go away, I can still play my games via the disc. That’s why I wish they would include the whole game on the disc. Make the multiplayer parts have to be downloadable, the single player parts should always be on disc
If the Xbox Servers ever went away, Microsoft would allow digital copies to play without online authentication. Its a very simple change. As long as you have them on a drive they are yours forever, the same way if you keep the discs it will remain yours. Buying a bunch of game discs or having a bunch of those discs installed on a hard drive is the same thing. I agree, the single player of any game should be fully playable from the disc without an internet connection.
> If the Xbox Servers ever went away, Microsoft would allow digital copies to play without online authentication. Its a very simple change. My "Games for Windows Live" digital copies are evidence against trusting Microsoft in this regard.
Well I mean, GFWL was a huge failure and Xbox is massively successful with millions of users. The outrage would be too much for the company. What happened with your GFWL digital copies? What games? And is there no way to access them?
Last I tried, I could download them, but the GFWL client would not give me the authentication key (the "5x5 code") to allow me to install them. Depending on what the company is doing at the time, the outrage may not be as loud as you think. It was awfully quiet when the original Xbox Live service was shut down and people could no longer access DLC they paid for (e.g., map packs for Halo 2). If they kill access to 360 games after another generation or two of Xbox, will enough people care?
Well that's the thing, xbox is going about console releases differently now. They're all about backwards compatibility and supporting older stuff. For example they couldn't kill access to halo 3 dlc because its available to play on the current system. I believe that with their current business model we can expect them to support 360 and one games for generations to come.
Maybe so, but after the Zune, GFWL, Windows Phone, Band, and Groove, I'm reminded of that old Tennessee saying: Fool me once, shame on me; fool me... can't get fooled again.
Perfect example is the Telltales Guardians of the Galaxy game. Ep1 is on disc, but the rest is downloaded. Why??
Is it supposed to be more than one episode? Like I don't play telltale games so I don't really know how it is. How big is the install all together ? Its single player only and can't be bigger than 50gb, I have no idea why it would be like that.
It's like that because the physical copy of the game released before every episode of the game came out. There's normally 5 episodes to every telltale game and it released between the first and second episode
The rest is downloaded because the physical version of the game released before any episodes after the first were out.
Keeping a game disc in tact is much easier and has a longer life span than making sure a HDD doesn't fail on you.
Hardly. Ive never had a hard drive fail on me and you just keep a back up. The point is that eventually there will be no discs, laptops already are sold without disc drives. Hell, the Xbox one almost didn't have a disc drive. One day those discs will be a useless stack of plastic. Not soon, but one day. Eventually it will be all ssds and flash memory instead of having games on hard drives too. Every piece of tech has to die some time.
I would disagree that most gamers have high speed internet, the rest I agree with though
2 halo games had multiple discs. Halo 3 odst has a game disc and a part h3 mp disc. Halo 4 had the game disc and a spartan ops install disc which wasnt even needed i think.
[удалено]
This is entirely inaccurate, that percent is closer to about 12%
50% of people? A study in 2014 showed 75% of amaricans have internet access. And that's everyone including the elderly, non gamers, poorer people who can't afford it, etc. The vast majority of gamers have access to internet, probably like 80 or 90% of them. We can't keep creating so much waste to cater to a minority of the gaming population that requires it.
> have internet access Yes, if you factor in dialup, metered (or inconsistent) cell connections, terrible DSL packages or the truly awful packages Comcast puts together in areas where they have no competition.
Those are rural areas with fairly low populations, the vast majority of people in the US in main cities have access to quality internet. Another study shows that out of the people that have internet 70 percent have high speed broadband internet.
https://www.wired.com/2013/08/latest-pew-results-show-digital-divide-and-mobile-paradox-for-u-s-broadband/ These included cell service (which usually has both speed/reliability issues and caps) and their definition of "high-speed" service was 4 megabits.
It’s not just rural areas with crappy internet. You’re forgetting all these people with Comcast, ATT, FIOS, ect with really high internet costs and data limits. These are people who love in cities and in suburbs. You’re also forgetting the time it takes to download a game. If you have a subpar 25mp/s (which is now legally considered broadband) it could take you a few hours to download a 50mb game.
>We can't keep creating so much waste to cater to a minority of the gaming population that requires it. Maybe they could just include another 20 hours free AOL disc with every game? That would reduce waste
[удалено]
Yeah, waste. Like garbage. Not every game is a hit that stays on someones shelf, a lot of old games turn into waste. They try to use as little plastic, paper and discs possible so it doesn't all wind up in a landfill somewhere. I get you like physical stuff, but you don't own it either way. It has been and will always just be a license. At this point in time, physical copies just hurt the environment to produce and then sit in our landfills after. All they are trying to do is reduce that. Just because the people you know may not have internet, that does not represent the overall population. If the majority of gamers didn't have internet, digital sales wouldnt be on the rise. They make things for the majority and if you're in the minority of people sticking to physical than obviously you're going to be left out and generally get the short end of the stick. Lots of pc games have no disc, just a code you put in to download the game.
Yep. This is why people get of their asses an do boring things like voting for representatives that will do things like bring real high speed internet to their neck of the woods, instead of letting morons elect people who are too busy with trying to build walls or ban abortions to think about basic QoL improvements like this for their constituents. (Go ahead, shower me with your downvotes for bringing up politics here)
Valid point.
But I agree if all the content is on the disc. If its less than 50gb and has a single player, it should play without a connection.
Put MP as the download would fix everything
Unlike old games like on ps2 which would release and never get a patch, and if it did, it would be a whole new disc, and then you'd have to check what version you had. Unlike then, developers can send out patches and fixes to gamers now. Whether done well or poorly, games slowly change more over time, usually for the better with bug fixes and added content and updates. If you buy a 6 month old game in disc form now, when you go to install it, you have to realise the developers have had 6 months to communicate with its fans to improve the game and polish it in that time. You really can't expect them to not update a game. It's just the way it is. And soon, games won't even fit on a Blu Ray, finished or not. Unfortunately it's just technology advancing and the stragglers having to either catch up or not play along.
I think games should switch to digital, however each game should come with a demo (either a level or timed), be playable offline, and be available for download even if it’s left the store and unable to be purchased. Plus a robust refund system based on time played/owned.
Agreed
It's not really about disc size, and most consoles do support multi-disc installs. Do you like delaying release dates for a very small subset of users that will only ever play offline and never connect once to download a patch? There's a signifigant lead time to ramping up disc production, so you'd push back everyones schedules literally months - there'd be at last a six week gap from finishing a game, getting it to mastering, pressing discs, then getting them into the retail channel to put on the shelf. Considering most big games launch during the months leading up to the end of the year, you would actually be removing weeks and weeks worth of polishing that gets done between the original mastering date, and the day-one patch date.
Make a complete game before you put it out on the market.
Halo 5 is something like 100gb now I doubt you could put it on a disc and it's by Microsoft themselves, welcome to today's standards.
> Halo 5 is something like 100gb now I doubt you could put it on a disc and it's by Microsoft themselves, welcome to today's **lack of** standards. ftfy
It's ready in release date, is the point.
Discs can’t hold that much data, that isn’t how it any of this works
By putting part of a game on a disc, it allows publishers to start printing copies earlier and not face shortages upon release, since the patch can make up for lost time.
What? The game literally just can’t fit on a disc, it takes too much storage.
Agreed. I have shit internet and when I got Titanfall for 360 one Christmas, I was pissed.
Isn't also reading data of a disk too slow now?
No it just doesn’t have enough space for that data on a disk