Do you think video game streaming will replace physical and digital download?

[x7q3]

Video game streaming services are coming out soon, like Google Stadia.

When streaming, there's no such thing as updates or installs, no such thing as hardware requirements, and no such thing as using hard drive space. You just press "play," like on YouTube. And with YouTube and other streaming services, you use them across various devices.

Do you think that someday, perhaps in the distant future, streaming will be the main way people play games?

Streaming is 100% Internet. To stream HD and 4K content, without buffering, it requires a very fast and stable Internet connection. Many people say the U.S. doesn't have the infrastructure to support it yet, but with 5G on the way, that should start to change. The mass adoption of 5G is another story entirely, particularly in more rural areas.

What are your thoughts? Do you think streaming will eventually replace physical games and digital downloads?

[Petra_Kalbrain]

I doubt that internet infrastructure will ever be consistently advanced enough across a big enough geographic percentage of the planet to make the business decision to go only streaming a viable one. There will ALWAYS be a good chunk of money to be made from gamers who aren’t able to support a streaming option.

[AikonEnt]

It would have to be the very distant future. Speeds now are probably ok but for it to be viable it would have to be a rock solid guarantee of 100% internet service 100% of the time for people to accept it. And that's not likely to happen anytime soon if we're talking worldwide.

[Derb]

If Elon’s satellite program (one of the Space X things he does) turns out to be 10’s of billions $ of fail, then physical is here to stay. If it succeeds, it won’t matter where on earth you live, you will have awesome internet 24/7.

Guess we will have to wait & see.. but game developers are not waiting. It’s funny looking back at what MS promoted back in 2013. ( “The power of the cloud” ) We were like riiiiiiggggghhhhhhtttt.

[John The Grudge]

Given the cost to develop AAA games I can't see how cloud gaming could possibly be a viable alternative to selling individual games. Music costs a fraction of the amount to produce and Spotify's £9.99/month membership fee doesn't provide much direct profit for artists. So for the equivalent service for games to pay dividends it would need to be very expensive. PS Now is viable because it seems to apply mainly to games that have sold the bulk of their potential already.

I do think sales of games on physical media will be decrease in favour of digital downloads. I think backwards compatibility of future consoles could be a factor in that happening because games you've bought on PSN for PS4 should be available to download on to the PS5.

[BallyTheDog]

It makes sense on paper. Games are frequently updated (especially "live service" games), but no one wants their games to be held hostage behind a manditory internet connection. If streaming is the future, then it should be optionial. I still want my games to be installed on my system, and I don't want a server telling me when I can and can't play.

[renegadeviking]

Not in the American world of bandwidth caps. In 5 years, everybody will have RetroPie or they own a disc or both.

[Steedeel]

I have a bigger concern than whether streaming will take over the gaming landscape. I worry that the concern over carbon footprints and peer pressure will lead to less people playing on consoles and TV sets. Consoles and TV sets are electricity guzzlers. I hope that renewable energy can be introduced early enough to offset these concerns.

[Batman90]

Honestly I don’t see why movie studios and video game companies would want to push digital. Not everyone has limited high speed internet. They would lose millions.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by Steedeel

I have a bigger concern than whether streaming will take over the gaming landscape. I worry that the concern over carbon footprints and peer pressure will lead to less people playing on consoles and TV sets. Consoles and TV sets are electricity guzzlers. I hope that renewable energy can be introduced early enough to offset these concerns.

TV sets are NOT "electricity guzzlers." My 85" 4K Sony LED TV has an annual operating cost of just $52. That's just 14 cents a day.

My average daily cost for electricity over the past year was $4.72. This means that operating my 85" TV was just 2.97% of my daily expenditure for electricity.

The electricity guzzlers in my home are my furnace, my air conditioner, and my appliances. My toys barely impact my electricity usage in comparison to these. If I want to save money and the environment, I will grab ahold of my thermostat, not my TV's remote.

[emailking]

Originally Posted by Vilya

TV sets are NOT "electricity guzzlers." My 85" 4K Sony LED TV has an annual operating cost of just $52. That's just 14 cents a day.

My average daily cost for electricity over the past year was $4.72. This means that operating my 85" TV was just 2.97% of my daily expenditure for electricity.

The electricity guzzlers in my home are my furnace, my air conditioner, and my appliances. My toys barely impact my electricity usage in comparison to these. If I want to save money and the environment, I will grab ahold of my thermostat, not my TV's remote.

Plasmas are a lot more electricity though. Plus my plasma would raise the temperature in my apartment a few degrees leading to more air conditioning needed. My current Oled isn't as bad, in both respects.

[Vilya]

Originally Posted by emailking

Plasmas are a lot more electricity though. Plus my plasma would raise the temperature in my apartment a few degrees leading to more air conditioning needed. My current Oled isn't as bad, in both respects.

Plasma TVs are not all that common anymore, but according to this CNET article from 2013, the most power hungry plasma TV that they tested was a 65" Panasonic TC-PC65VT50 with an annual electricity cost of $81. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $89.60 today or 24.5 cents per day to operate.

https://www.cnet.com/news/what-you-n...r-consumption/

Another model of plasma TV, the 64" Samsung PN64E7000 has an annual operating cost of just $37 or $41.57 when adjusted for inflation. That's 11.4 cents per day and less than the 14 cents per day to operate my 85" Sony LED.

https://www.crutchfield.com/S-JNy0yK...PN64E7000.html

The electricity cost to operate a TV is trivial compared to that of home heating/cooling and the usage of major appliances.

[SillyG]

Nope. Once they go all streaming, they lose my business. I'm already extremely put off by almost every other game having software updates and DLC. Enough is enough. Fortunately, I have a sizeable catalogue of games to tide me over for the rest of my days if the streaming apocalypse hits.

For everything else, there's GOG. Apart from the odd VR title, I have no intention of buying any further games via Steam. I want to be able to at least back-up and package my own games to Blu-rays if distributors aren't going to press their games to disc. The recent release of Wolfenstein: The New Order and The Old Blood was a very welcome surprise. I had already grabbed the official PC release sometime last year for dirt-cheap, but I have yet to install them, and now I won't need to use them at all now (they include 4 DVDs each, which is welcome, but they're still restricted to Steam, and would also take hours to install as a result of them being stuck on low-bandwidth DVDs).

[Talal86]

of course, but not anytime soon