Sony Putting the Kibosh on Downloading Full PS3 Games

[DCSholtis]

http://www.gamesabyss.com/news/1186-...full-ps3-games

In a recent interview with IGN, Sony's senior vice president in charge of the PlayStation Network, Peter Dille, had some bad news for gamers who prefer their titles via digital download rather than physical disc media. According to Dille, the company is all but finished offering full games like Burnout Paradise for download, mainly due to broadband restrictions and the amount of size such games take up on owners' hard drives.
"We have an advantage with PlayStation 3 from an optical media perspective because a Blu-ray disc contains 50 gigs," said Dille."Maybe this point will come at some time, but today to download 50 gigs of data before you play a game, you could probably go buy a car, bring it home, put your family into it, drive to the store by and bring the game home by the time you [could download it]. I think we're on the forefront of digital distribution.

"We're working very hard to evangelize it," he continued. "I think we've got a hardware platform that continues to grow with people's appetite in digital distribution. And we've got multiple units with hard-drive sizes up to 50 gigs. We're also working very hard to make sure we do this thoughtfully so that retail has a part to participate in the ecosystem with us. But, the notion of getting all your games digitally, I just don't see it happening. There's games you're going to get at the store, there's games you're going to get on PlayStation Network and there's some you'll get in both places, and then there's also opportunity to enhance the micro-transactions and add-on content, of course, but getting God of War III digitally? That's just not something you'll be seeing anytime soon."
So it seems that the all-digital future of gaming which company execs seem to salivate over might be a little further out than originally expected. The suits are coming to the realization that mass market broadband penetration isn't quite where it needs to be, and the relative size of games in relation to hard drive space is just too far out of whack to work for this generation of consoles. While we're still inevitably headed in that direction, it's still easily a long way off.

[Rike255]

I don't get it...when have we ever had a 50GB game on the PS Store?

[Shin-Ra]

According to Dille, the company is all but finished offering full games like Burnout Paradise for download

Burnout Paradise isn't such a game that made use of Blu-ray's higher capacity, which is what he's trying to differentiate so this point about not offering similar low-GB, fullsize games is BS. It's not like they're preventing third parties from releasing stuff like Record of Agarest War which is meant to be around 10GB, either.

[Rike255]

Originally Posted by Shin-Ra

Burnout Paradise isn't such a game that made use of Blu-ray's higher capacity, which is what he's trying to differentiate so this point about not offering similar low-GB, fullsize games is BS. It's not like they're preventing third parties from releasing stuff like Record of Agarest War which is meant to be around 10GB, either.

That's how I read it too. Seemed like they were jumping to conclusions about the Burnout thing. The interview just suggests that they won't be releasing any really big games on the PS Store for a while (which they never have anyways).

[androvsky]

Originally Posted by Shin-Ra

Burnout Paradise isn't such a game that made use of Blu-ray's higher capacity, which is what he's trying to differentiate so this point about not offering similar low-GB, fullsize games is BS. It's not like they're preventing third parties from releasing stuff like Record of Agarest War which is meant to be around 10GB, either.

From what we can tell (and hints from Aksys), they're requiring Aksys to put Record of Agarest War on PSN.

There's other weird stuff in this interview. Like they're trying to be an example to third parties to encourage putting PS1 and PS2 classics on the store, or quoting a low sales estimate for Sony vs. a high one for MS.

[saprano]

Hmm, i thought sony encouraged this. I thought by now we would see games like uncharted2, GOW3, Heavy Rain, basically most of their first party games up on the store.

I still prefer disc but the option would be nice.

[Shin-Ra]

Originally Posted by saprano

Hmm, i thought sony encouraged this. I thought by now we would see games like uncharted2, GOW3, Heavy Rain, basically most of their first party games up on the store.

Sarcasm?

Can't imagine why anyone would think that.

[saprano]

Originally Posted by Shin-Ra

Sarcasm?

Can't imagine why anyone would think that.

Ok maby not those games but i did think we would have more of their own games.

Doesn't bother me ether way as i said i like buying disc.

[hellmonkey]

This is what I have been saying for a while. The infractructure for high speed is not there yet for everyone to be downloading games and movies, especially in HD. Also, storage is an issue. Dont forget that ISPs also have a download cap as well before they charge extra. I would need a couple TBs of storage to hold all my games and movies, PASS. Ill keep disk based media for the time being.

[DonRSD]

downloading games is a waste

what if i want to bring my game to someones house.......i cant if its downloaded only
what if i dont play the game anymore and want to trade it it........i cant as there is no physical copy

this is why ill never touch a psp go. i want physical discs

[dereksworl]

Originally Posted by DonRSD

downloading games is a waste

what if i want to bring my game to someones house.......i cant if its downloaded only
what if i dont play the game anymore and want to trade it it........i cant as there is no physical copy

this is why ill never touch a psp go. i want physical discs

agreed. and having only a 3mb/1.5mb connection, you can imagine i hate DL'ing stuff lol

[boxterduke]

I love owning physical copies of anything.
Movies and games etc...
I like going to the store and picking up a copy rather than downloading.
At least if an online service went down, owning a physical copy does not prevent you from playing that game.

[aphex]

I agree about physical copies except on the psp-go. I love having my psp-go with 10+ games on it. I only play psp when I travel and I hate changing games or bringing a bunch of crap I might not even play.

[Terjyn]

Originally Posted by aphex

I agree about physical copies except on the psp-go. I love having my psp-go with 10+ games on it. I only play psp when I travel and I hate changing games or bringing a bunch of crap I might not even play.

I agree, as I hate slugging around portable Games. Now I don't have to.

[ryoohki]

Games generic size are about 16gig uncompressed and 7-11 gig compressed. But yes many region are limited to a X number of gigs and speed. Max speed here is 50mbits, for 11g it would take about 30 minutes to download if the server is giving max output. A lot of PS3 games use more space because they use reduncdancy of files to speed up the loading from the media. But it's not real file space..

[Shin-Ra]

There really isn't a generic size for PS3 games, good luck maxing that 50Mbit connection with PSN and so far I've seen no proof that PS3 developers dedicate any more effort to redundancy/duplication than DVD game developers.

[SoCalTiger]

Yeah I have no idea where someone would get the idea that there is a "Generic" game size considering there are PSN games that are 100 MB and disc-based games that are almost the full 50GB. To imply that any balance is mostly redundancy is foolish also.

[KB24SD]

How many gigs was Uncharted 2 ?

The article more is pointed at Microsoft because Microsoft for the longest time has been preaching that digital downloads for games, movies, music, news, data and everything is the future.

[Proteus]

Seems 50mbit is getting quite common across the Comcast network now. Comcast is kicking ass in the broadband department at the moment. I don't even know of fiber offering that to any residentials!

That said, it's a sign of things to come. 50mbit will make larger size downloads way feasible. But, I still probably would never do it when the store is just right there and I could have a hard copy.

It would be nice; however, if you could copy the game onto your HD to play, etc., if you wanted rather than always playing off the disc.

[Shin-Ra]

Highly optimised games may benefit streaming assets from the HDD and BD simultaneously and a BD check for ownership is always going to be required so copying stuff like music and video is definitely a waste.