that is....if consoles are still around in 5 years. Im seeing more of a shift to portable gaming. Be it on a phone, tablet or dedicated machine, the increase is noticeable.

Whether its Steam or the PSN, if I have the option I prefer to buy digital downloads. It makes for much less clutter around the house.

There is no single reason i can think of as why the digital download are so damn expensive!

Why is there still this idea that file types will remain the same as time goes by? If they did then yeah I would agree.

We have seen several new file types come out and virtually replace older ones due to them being equal and smaller more efficient as well.

Expansion in programming already occurred several years ago. Think to the switch from carts to optical. Carts just couldnt hold as much as a disc and now we are seeing a retraction. Things getting smaller and smaller these days. Vita will be a good example of console quality on the go.

To think that there will still be a need for big bulky boxes under the tv to play games is hard to believe but there is some validity to the idea that mobile is where things are going.

Even the complexity of the chips inside the ps3 are being reduced in size due to new manufacturing techniques. You think the same cant be applied to the games themselves? One day your "console" will be on your wrist and can project full screen 3d effects when set on a table.

Yeah that last part is looking into the future but that is what the future is for. These companies create ideas and given the right amount of time can make those ideas come true.

Exactly. That's how it should be. But, like they say, the prices need to be more equivalent to what you can get for physical media, especially since physical media costs more to produce, albeit not much.

BUT digital downloads would be the end of the used market, so there would be no reason whatsoever for them to lower the price since there would be no competition. I would expect them to say something along the lines of server costs actaully cost more than physical discs so the price is going UP $10 & game would almost never go down in price even a year after relsease!

It doesn't cost $25 per disc for the box, manuals and to ship. Considering that games are manufactured in large volumes, the cost of these would be significantly lesser per disc. $10-$15 would be about right.

You're obviously cutting out about 30% of the retailer's share but we also have to include the cost of servers, etc to facilitate downloads for millions of people.

"server costs actaully cost more than physical discs"

LOL

for games that next gen will relaistically be 30gb or more? That would take hours considering most download speeds are crap. Imagine trying to download a 30gb file from lets say EA on launch day that litterally millions of people are also trying to do the same. It could litterally take a week to download a game!

The 30gb is even being generous. Rage that just came out recently was 23gb & that is with current gen tech. Next gen tech will be much better plus without the restrictions of physical media they could make the game files enormous. It would only be disc space on a hdd & since i would assume next gen would have probably 1tb of hdd space or more you could see games be 50gb. They might have you delete games when you hdd is full & be able to redownload them when you want to play them.

With as impatient as most people are i think the low end has to be 50mbps, to really get this going right we might need to serisouly start looking at 1gbps speeds!

@kma2k

I don't think being impatient has anything to do with it if they find a good way for people to preload their games.

And rage is the worst example ever, it was almost 25 gigs and it has some of the worst textures I've seen since the PS2 days. Sure from far away they look great, but up close they're horrendous.

do you think there wont be an evolution in programming over the next several years? What once was big can now become small.

Files that are smaller are quicker to transfer over existing speeds and can come in under the caps as well. You just got to think positive.

I never understood that. I remember a guy that commented on a YT video I saw had said that he uses Cronus because he works a lot and doesn't have time to sweat. Lol, I was like "wtf?".