Shelf Life revisited

[cliffbo]

a while back i was making the point that games need to have a shelf life. i pointed out that if every game went online and had DLC then the next game could get overlooked or ignored because people preferred the first game and have invested so much in DLC. take a look at RFOM2 to see that this is quite possible. it all boiled down to arguing that games should concentrate more than they have on singleplayer instead of beefing a game with new multiplayer packs.

well i have reconsidered this. i still believe that a great singleplayer is necessary for a game to get more people to play it and to give it legitimate shelf life. but i have reconsidered my reasoning with online and DLC.

no matter how big your HDD is, there is going to be a point that you can no longer support the DLC. take LBP for instance. Sony know that there are lots of PS3 owners out there with 20GB/40GB/60GB, and even the 80GB will eventually run out of space. the 160GB could pave the way for further sales but that will also eventually cause problems going forward... especially when you consider a possible ten year lifecycle.

now take FPSs with new map packs and movies from the movie store, then figure in HOME content and PSN games (which appear to be getting bigger in size) i think that the reason Sony allow us infinite downloads on a PSN games and DLC is because eventually they see us (either wrongly or rightly) storing our purchases server side and downloading them again if we feel like playing them again. but this is not going to happen any time soon because as consumers we can't get our heads around not having something more tangible, even if it is only sitting on our HDDs.

so, like i said, our HDDs are going to fill up rapidly in the coming years and potentially start to eat into the profits of new PSN games or new DLC from devs. 1st party will obviously bite the bullet on this one but will 3rd party? once the market is flooded with new content, how will these devs convince you to delete older games off your HDDs and install newer games? one way they could do this is to make sure that the newer games are far far better than the older games.

the only answer is for Sony to convince us that you are only deleting the game from your HDDs and not losing it, but can they do that? so in effect, even PSN games and DLC and map packs give a game a shelf life, it's just that in the short term it will increase usage of a certain game... but that time has a limit and that limit is set by the size of your HDDs. unless we become comfortable with keeping our games server side, i can see major problems ahead for the downloadable future... but at least we can enter into it for a few years before this problem hits. i can possibly see Sony mentioning this aspect of saving games and installing bigger HDDs in the not too distant future because what i've pointed out is inevitable.

would you delete a major title in order to download a newer game when you know that occasionally want to replay SSHD or PJM? would you upgrade your HDDs every time your HDDs are full? or would you trust in the fact that you can download them again if you felt like playing again? bare in mind that broadband will increase in speed over the coming years and that download won't take 45 minutes to an hour, it may only take 5 - 15 minutes. i know i would, but i think it's a big issue that Sony will face in the future.

[Kiwi]

I think Sony have underestimated just how many games the more hardcore gamers were going to buy. For example, I got to the stage where I had to start deleting game data to be able to fit other downloadable games onto my PS3, and we're, what, just under 2 years into the PS3's life? (at least over here). I think the more casual gamer will have a hard time filling the hard drive on any of the models.

But, they've also been clever in giving us the option of installing a larger hard drive, so I guess they knew that some people would fill them quickly (heh I just shot down my own argument, but whatever :D) I think if you were to get a large enough one to start with, then you wouldn't have any problems like this in the future. Something like 500GB (which I'm sure someone on here has) will be perfect for those kind of people who buy most of the games that come out.

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is, the people who don't buy a lot of games, they probably won't fill a drive up, so what you've mentioned above won't apply to them, and the people who do buy a lot of games, they'll most probably upgrade their drive to something large enough to keep them going for a long time.

Edit: I think that one thing that could be done to lessen this problem, would be to try and reduce the amount of games that need 3-4GB installed onto the hard drive just to work. Games like DMC4, Lost Planet etc. never needed to be installed on the 360 version, so why is it neccesary on the PS3 version?

[cliffbo]

Matt, the objective Sony are pursuing is to make 'downloadable' mainstream. i've been saying that this is the next strategy for Sony for ages now and the new advert bares this out. 'It's a downloading machine'

one solution is very simple and i think because of what i have said is also inevitable. Sony could release PSN game compilation discs and games under the 'complete' brand that was rumoured for Motorstorm1. the only problem the latter faces is that Sony will have to keep the servers open longer and it will cost them more to do that. there would be little point in releasing Motorstorm Complete if only a month or so later the servers are closed down. that would surely annoy a lot of late adapters. but a LBP Complete would be acceptable because that game will run and run.

[Kiwi]

Yea, I remember that we discussed that option maybe 6 months ago. As well as reducing the amount of space they take up on the drive, it would also bring those games to a much wider audience, because there's still a huge amount of PS3 owners who aren't online.

With the games that have had loads of add-ons released afterwards, like Motorstorm, I don't see why another version of the game couldn't be released. You see plenty of other games getting "GOTY Edition" releases with extra content, like Call of Duty 4 and Oblivion.

[BahnNZ]

Well all the need to do is make it easy to store your game on external media for archival purposes, you can do it easily on Wii.

Something Wii does that PS3 doesn't, how many times do you hear that a day?

[cliffbo]

Yea, I remember that we discussed that option maybe 6 months ago. As well as reducing the amount of space they take up on the drive, it would also bring those games to a much wider audience, because there's still a huge amount of PS3 owners who aren't online.

With the games that have had loads of add-ons released afterwards, like Motorstorm, I don't see why another version of the game couldn't be released. You see plenty of other games getting "GOTY Edition" releases with extra content, like Call of Duty 4 and Oblivion.

yes it would also serve to introduce PSN to gamers without broadband and for those who only ever use it for multiplayer games and nothing else. what i mean about 'complete' meaning Sony having to spend more money is that because games have beefed up in online mainly, people who buy that 'complete' game would expect to be able to play it for a couple of years and they would be pretty upset if the servers stopped soon after their purchase and all they were left with was a few extra tracks and vehicles... although i suppose that could suffice a lot of people

[PSXBatou]

I am using slightly over 100GB of my 500GB HD, most all of it is Game data, and PSN games. I have 4 videos on it that I downloaded from PSN.

I have 46 physical games, and 24 PSN games. If there is a install feature I use it, even if it isn't forced.

I think I fall out of the "norm" though when it comes to the average amount of games purchased by a single consumer.

[Kiwi]

Well all the need to do is make it easy to store your game on external media for archival purposes, you can do it easily on Wii.

Something Wii does that PS3 doesn't, how many times do you hear that a day?

Can't you back up the games onto an external hard drive?

[BahnNZ]

Not the way you'd want to, it's all or nothing. What would be nice is zip-move-delete onto an HDD, flash card or whatever.

[Kiwi]

Yea, it seems a bit odd that they have all of the different memory card slots, and there's not a lot you can use them for, and I imagine it wouldn't be that hard to add on in a firmware upgrade.

[cliffbo]

Well all the need to do is make it easy to store your game on external media for archival purposes, you can do it easily on Wii.

Something Wii does that PS3 doesn't, how many times do you hear that a day?


Can't you back up the games onto an external hard drive?

you see what i mean about people not thinking in terms of allowing your game to be saved server side. it's so difficult to sell this to people because they don't trust not having something that isn't in their own homes. if you think about it, your game is both on your HDD and on PSN just sitting there. i would be quite happy to delete a game i haven't played for a while in order to fit another game on my HDD, and just download the older one when i felt like playing it again. it won't come to that yet for most people, but in another year or two it will become a major problem and this is the perfect solution

[Kiwi]

I think saving the data on the server side would lead to a lot of problems. Like having a decent enough connection to be able to constantly stream that data, server problems due to the amount of people playing the game. You do have to remember that the service they're providing is free, so they would have to spend a ton of money for something that they'd be making absolutely nothing on, which probably isn't the brightest idea, given the current climate.

[cliffbo]

I think saving the data on the server side would lead to a lot of problems. Like having a decent enough connection to be able to constantly stream that data, server problems due to the amount of people playing the game. You do have to remember that the service they're providing is free, so they would have to spend a ton of money for something that they'd be making absolutely nothing on, which probably isn't the brightest idea, given the current climate.

but the game is already saved server side and we are game sharing regularly without a thought... no? so why not take that philosophy to it's inevitable conclusion. if no-one shared the servers would be stressed a hell of a lot less if you just downloaded the game when you wanted to play again later on.

[Kiwi]

The installation files are saved on their side, but then it's unpacked and installed onto the console. So it's essentially like having a .zip file on their end. I know what you're getting at, I just don't think that it will happen.

[cliffbo]

The installation files are saved on their side, but then it's unpacked and installed onto the console. So it's essentially like having a .zip file on their end. I know what you're getting at, I just don't think that it will happen.

yeah, but the main point is that if you decide to delete it and find it gets Trophies you can reinstall it from PSN. backing up on an external HDD is one solution but not as neat as seeing PSN/PS3 as symbiotic... and many people will just want to have one purchase that enables them to do both