Moore Calls Game Discs Ridiculous

Gamespot reports on a Churchill Club panel discussion attended by a number of industry heavyweights. They discussed, heavily, the future of gaming online and what it means for the industry as a whole. From the article: "[MS VP Peter] Moore said that the retail landscape is set to undergo a particularly drastic change of face. Even though he made a point that the current retail model was hugely important to Microsoft's plans for the near future, he sees its days as numbered. 'Let's be fair. Whether it's five, 10, 15, 20 years from now, the concept of driving to the store to buy a plastic disc with data on it and driving back and popping it in the drive will be ridiculous,' Moore said. 'We'll tell our grandchildren that and they'll laugh at us.'"

Ignores reality of broadband penetration

[deuterium]

There are plenty of people in the United States who live in rural areas that aren't served by any mode of broadband, and it looks unlikely that this is going to change. Current boraodband requires either coaxial cable or a close location to a telephone exchange in order to get DSL. With many phone companies dropping the installation of land lines altogether, and rural TV viewers turning to dish-based television, it's also unlikely that cable companies will bother wiring up any small outlying areas.
Aside from this, I imagine that game companies bristle at the idea of their software being pirated more easily over network delivery.

Buying software in tangible formats

[zoeblade]

The concept of driving to the store to buy a plastic disc with data on it and driving back and popping it in the drive will be ridiculous

Isn't that what Larry Ellison, the head of Oracle, said on Triumph of the Nerds [pbs.org]?

I hate the PC with a passion. Me going down to the store and buying Windows 95, I've got to get into my car, drive down to a store, buy a cardboard box full of bits, you know, encoded on a piece of plastic CD-ROM and you bring it home and read a manual install this thing - you must be kidding, you know, put the stuff on the net - it's bits, don't put bits in cardboard, cardboard in trucks, trucks to stores, me go to the store, you know, pick the stuff out, it's insane. OK, I love the Internet - I want information, you know, it flows across the wire.

I'm surprised we're not there yet, to be honest. That show's ten years old now.

Re:People Like to Own Things

[asuffield]

As others have said, digital delivery won't happen until some new uber-DRM scheme comes along to thwart piracy

Yeah, everybody knows that you can't do [totalgaming.net] digital [moonpod.com] delivery [direct2drive.com]. Well, not without strong DRM, anyway.

From http://totalgaming.stardock.com/about.aspx [stardock.com]:

No "Digital Rights Management" type scheme. Once you download it, it's yours to put on any computer you own.

Frankly, I expect the grandkids to look back and laugh at the idea that anybody would ever pay for DRMed crippleware. After all, people like to own things - not be told that they're trying to steal the thing they paid for. The "TV prohibition" years should have come and gone by then. And I find it pretty funny that dongles ever existed.

There will probably still be stores with boxes in them, but internet delivery of games is already here - I haven't bought a PC game on a physical disk in at least a year. Service that good is here to stay.