This article is from the first edition of The Video Game Librarian website I published between 2008 and 2010. It was originally written on April 1, 2008.
Last Friday, Sandy Duncan, the former head of Xbox Europe was interviewed by That VideoGame Blog. During the conversation, Duncan was quoted as saying that game consoles will disappear in 5-10 years and that everything will be piped into your TV as “web services.” Here’s the full quote:
“I think dedicated games devices i.e. consoles (and handhelds) will die [out] in the next 5 to 10 years. The business model is very risky and the costs associated with creating new hardware are incredibly high. There is a definite “convergence” of other devices such as set top boxes. There’s hardly any technology difference between some hard disc video recorders and a an Xbox 360 for example. In fact in 5 to 10 years I don’t think you’ll have any box at all under your TV, most of this stuff will be “virtualized” as web services by your content provider.”
But don’t worry, the idea is absurd on its face, and I’ll tell you why. Consoles aren’t going anywhere, and you’d think a former Microsoft bigwig would know that. But then, you’d think the current bigwig of Sony would know that too…
About two years ago, Sony CEO Phil Harrison told Wired that he’d be “amazed” if the PlayStation 4 has a “physical disc drive.” This is very similar to what Duncan said, but only slightly less absurd (at least Harrison assumes there’ll be a box). The fact of the matter is that it is currently impossible to deliver every game to every gamer without most of the games appearing on a physical medium. Technical limitations make a mockery of the 5-10 year claim while also making it likely it might not be possible in the next 50 years.
The Bandwidth Problem
The biggest problem that would be created by removing the disc drive is without a doubt the bandwidth problem. There’s just not enough of it to go around. Allow me to mention a few numbers.
In America, most DSL/Cable services have stated download speeds of 5-10 megabits per second (Mbps). It should also be noted that these speeds are theoretical and are (usually) not attainable in the real world. This service will run your average user between $25 and $40 per month. Verizon, and a few other companies, have begun experimenting with a new flavor of broadband known as Fiber To The Premises (FTTP) that features download speeds between 30 and 100 Mbps for a much higher price. Between these services, broadband penetration in America among Internet users has reached about 75%. This number does not include the millions of people who either don’t have a computer or don’t have an Internet connection.
Now let’s look at the games, and let’s use a major recent release as our example. Super Smash Bros. Brawl sold 1.4 million copies in its first week of availability. The game comes on a double-layer DVD, meaning it takes up 5-9 GB on the disc. The average “arcade” title on the Xbox Live Arcade, Virtual Console, or PlayStation Network is in the 50-250 MB range, so a full sized game is a much larger drain on bandwidth resources. Also consider that the launch of Brawl caused Nintendo’s online network to buckle under the weight of all the new players. Adding full game downloads for a title like Brawl would increase network load to a crippling level. And that’s only one game, total game sales routinely reach 10-15 million copies a month.
Mr. Duncan’s “no box scenario” also doesn’t take into account controllers. Without a box, the controller inputs would have to be read by the device that is supplying the game. Namely, the television. The signal would then have to be sent to the computer serving the game and interpreted there before being sent back to the screen. This would cause considerable lag and create many frustrated gamers. Not to mention that current TVs are not built for that kind of two-way communication. It is currently handled by, wait for it, a cable box.
On top of all this, a download-only game system does not exist in a vacuum. Add in all of the of the “extras” that game companies have added to these networks including HD video and CD-quality music, as well as the MySpaces and YouTubes that make up the rest of the Internet, and you’ll have one very clogged Information Superhighway. Bandwidth capacity is just not there yet and with ever-growing file sizes of games, it may never be. This leads directly into our second problem…
The Library Problem
Navigating the current iteration of the Xbox Live Marketplace can be considered frustrating at best. For a system that only includes 122 arcade games and over 100 retail game demos it is already almost too difficult to browse. Between the use of abbreviations and non-standardized titles, it would make any librarian wince at the lack of an ordered system. But what happens when the download library grows to the size of the current Xbox library (which Wikipedia pegs at 573 games)? It will be even more difficult to quickly navigate all of the titles and impossible to browse through them all the way someone can quickly scan boxes at the local game store.
But let’s say someone solves the browsing problem and the XBLM is flooded with hundreds of quality titles. If you’re a publisher, how do you make gamers aware of your product over someone else’s? The current static ads of the XBLM would quickly make way for something more elaborate as publishers tried to gain a little bit of an edge over a rival. It would be a nightmare for smaller games as they would be steamrolled by a new crop of must-haves every week. And without the money to advertise, their little corner of the XBLM database would sit lonely and ignored for years.
Fianlly, let’s assume that Mr. Duncan’s “no box scenario” is a ridiculous pipe dream. So that means you’ll a box, which has a hard drive. And space is not infinite on a hard drive. The Xbox 360’s 20 GB hard drive can hold 3-5 retail games, while the PS3’s 60 GB hard drive can hold around 15 to 20 (using current average file sizes). And neither hard drive would have room for demos, videos, music, or other “microtransactions.” There would be a constant need to upgrade the hard drive to bigger and bigger sizes. I think the average gamer would not stand for such a practice.
And then worse yet, what happens when one of those drives decides to stop working?
So don’t worry, consoles aren’t going anywhere for a very long time and any prediction of their death in the next 5-10 years is greatly exaggerated made up out of whole cloth.