Is this how PC gaming is like in the future?

[PurpleGaga27 37]

I wish I shouldn't be posting this, but when I read an article out regarding the system requirements of the latest Doom game, I felt livid.

 

First Fallout 4, now the reboot of Doom, one single DVD as a physical copy, and the rest of them to be downloaded from Steam? It's like downloading a huge patch (whether it's real or not) of updated files. I hope EA/Origin DOES NOT DO THAT to their recent games. If it were one single Blu-ray like a dual-layer disc on one release, I am happy for that, and now no PC gamer is happy. No wonder why PC gaming is dying for this reason of new rules involving digital distribution and piracy.

 

Not everyone has the luxury of using the fast Internet broadband to download tons of GB just to play a huge PC game (even patches). It is technically more different for the consoles, like you install the game with a blu-ray disc to the hard drive of the console and play it from there (but few or no patches/DLC/add-ons for the download). Why not the PC? Just to save money of physical media and use digital distribution all the way even for games over 50 GB and beyond? That's not the way to do business. Even as of today I wish I had physical copies of C&C The Ultimate Collection with 2-3 single-layer blu-ray discs.

 

If anyone thinks blu-ray discs are expensive to produce, writable single-layer blu-ray discs for consumers are under $1 a disc and some blu-ray movies are sold for $5-10. If I want to play an excellent-quality PC game with blu-ray disc(s), hell I can pay $70-80 for that instead of the usual $60 on a first release. I know Blu-ray has royality costs and other fees every time a game or movie is released. But that action done on Fallout 4 and the reboot of Doom on distribution is unacceptable.

 

And besides, isn't Blu-ray the future of physical media?

Edited May 7, 2016 by zocom7

[Nmenth 289]

and now no PC gamer is happy.

You speak on everyone's behalf, then?

 

No wonder why PC gaming is dying

PC gaming isn't dying.

 

isn't Blu-ray the future of physical media?

There is no future for physical media. We are currently entering the very uncomfortable transition period between physical media and virtual media. It is a bumpy ride, where things like slow internet and narrow-sighted corporate entities sew misery for the less fortunate. When the transition is complete, stability will develop, but hang on tight in the mean time.

[Lauren 77]

Wait you still have an optical drive in your pc?

 

Any physical medium (if at all) should just be an USB stick by now.

 

Also BluRay isn't even common in most PCs. If there's an optical drive it's usually DVD. I just bought a new laptop, good specs, but basically no chance to get an internal bluray drive. My old laptop has one, but that's because it was just before people realized PCs don't need them (adoption rate is laughable on PC because most people just use USB sticks or teh interwebz).

 

 

(Even on my Wii U 99% of the games I have are digital, only for special editions I get the physical copy (I don't like PS4/XBone much so there's not much sense in getting them, but it wouldn't change my behavior in this regard))

Edited May 7, 2016 by Lauren

[TaxOwlbear 20]

Part of it is poor compression. Wolfenstein: The New Order is some 40 GB on disc. After the installation it's about... 43 GB because apparently the devs were too lazy to compress it.

 

The pirated version, on the other hand, is compressed. Joke's on those who actually bought the game.

[Ravendark 43]

My optical drive broke a year or 2 ago and i still haven't replaced it. I replaced everything in my pc over the last year except my optical drive...because why? i haven't used that thing in ages.

 

Joke's on those who actually bought the game.

A lot of people are feeling the punchline of that joke these days. Half finished games that have to dl the remaining files after launch date. The a fore mentioned bad compression. Not to mention just ****ty games and crap after sale service. I usually have a support dev's with sales mentality...but that **** has burned me several times tbh.

 

Pc gaming dead...zocom something i think you're that homeless guy with the "the end is near" sign around your neck screaming at traffic, when you are not on the forums.

There is a reason console's are throwing big money at dev/publishers for console exclusives or delaying pc release versions. In most cases when a pc version and console version are released at the same moment, the pc version is the better one....given it is not a cheap port ofc.

 

PC gaming is definitely on the rise still...it just suffers from development throttling and bad publicity.

[Sonic 292]

Wait you still have an optical drive in your pc?

 

I still have one my PC. The last time it got any use was to install Windows 8.1 back in November 2014, have since upgraded to Windows 10 of course.

 

Also BluRay isn't even common in most PCs.

 

I was going to say the same thing. If I ever build a new computer chances are I won't adding a Blu-Ray drive.

 

Damn, back in the old days it was a common thing to have a standard CD-Rom drive and CD-Writer installed on the same PC. Got heaps of use all the time. I can remember spending a small fortune an HP CD-Writer. Things sure have changed.

 

The days of physical media are numbered for the gaming side of things. The future (even for next generation consoles) is digital distribution. For all other media (movies, TV shows, music), stream that ****.

[Lauren 77]

For all other media (movies, TV shows, music), stream that ****.

Even with my crappy internet atm (about 1MBps if at all and it disconnects all the time) the time it would take me to take the bus to a store, buy it, and then take the bus back home would take about as long as just downloading a movie in 1080p. So why interrupt what I am doing if there's no time benefit at all... even for 50GB games, well I can still use my PC, or Wii U, to do other stuff, sure other consoles are to dumb to do multitasking (at least on ps3 you had to cancel the update if you wanted to do something else iirc). Edited May 7, 2016 by Lauren

[TaxOwlbear 20]

It's not just your connection speed, though. I have high speed Internet, but Steam caps downloads anyway. Both Gamersgate and GOG are way faster than Steam, at least here.

[Tore 33]

Steam saturates the 50 mbps line I have here just fine. One of my friends which lives in a university dormitory and has a about a 500 mbps line downloads games as fast as his hard drive can keep up.

No wonder why PC gaming is dying

 

If by dying you mean being one of the fastest growing gaming platforms, then yes it is.

[HOPE1134 28]

PC gaming is dying

 

Ah jeez I had to open up /r/pcmasterrace to save myself after reading that.

[jeffnz 23]

Australia and New Zealand will miss out. We're further away from the servers... we're used to being forgotten. Here in NZ everybody is upgrading from ADSL-1 to fibre (we never got ADSL-2) and that will stuff up everything because every yuppie will be streaming movies in the evening. They'll need a new undersea cable which is 2 years away, even then, we may hit another bottleneck.

[Sonic 292]

Here in NZ everybody is upgrading from ADSL-1 to fibre (we never got ADSL-2)

 

Do you mean you never had ADSL2 or all us collectively in New Zealand? Because I had ADSL2+ for a long time. Jumped to VDSL for awhile but I have Fibre 100 now. Streams 1080p video without a problem, even over WiFi.

[PurpleGaga27 37]

When it comes to game installation especially for the games with a large size, a very fast USB 3.0 flash drive will do it for minutes, but flash drives cost more than Blu-ray discs. Same goes to the people using 300+ Mbps broadband Internet which is almost as fast as 8x Blu-ray reading speed.

 

I'll bet at this point of time, developers want you to waste more time installing a huge PC game for hours or days without the shortcut of using Blu-ray or flash drive media, and force you to download the remaining content regardless of what Internet speed you have. I use a Blu-ray writer anyway and the only huge games I put in a Blu-ray disc(s) are Starcraft II (with two expansions) and Battlefield 3. Installation time => less than 15 minutes at maximum read speed (i.e. 8x Blu-ray read speed) if you have a program tool that controls the speed of the Blu-ray writer.

 

I wouldn't recommend anyone buying a PC game with incomplete content even on one or two single DVDs, unless the game is complete with all physical disks storing all game data. Of course this was meant to prevent piracy but it doesn't help for time.

Edited May 8, 2016 by zocom7

[jeffnz 23]

Do you mean you never had ADSL2 or all us collectively in New Zealand? Because I had ADSL2+ for a long time. Jumped to VDSL for awhile but I have Fibre 100 now. Streams 1080p video without a problem, even over WiFi.

 

Telecom sold an ADSL-2 router to a friend of mine in 2006 but I never heard of anybody using it in Christchurch. Are you in Auckland?

[Sonic 292]

Telecom sold an ADSL-2 router to a friend of mine in 2006 but I never heard of anybody using it in Christchurch. Are you in Auckland?

 

Its Spark these days mate

 

I'm in Hamilton. Used ADSL2+ from 2008 to around 2012, then VDSL until November 2015, as I mentioned, been on Fibre since then. I'm sure ASDL2+ was available in the all the main cities across New Zealand for years.

[Doctor Destiny 40]

PC gaming is dying? Since when? Never? Yes, you get to download games now. That's just the transition from physical to digital. I haven't gotten a physical copy of a new game in over a year now. Last physical game I got was Legacy of the Void and before that was Borderlands 2.

 

Concerning raw power, I checked Doom's requirements and they're kinda high, but for any decent graphical fidelity, you need that. No, we can't keep requirements at a single core processor, 512MB RAM and 64MB VRAM forever, which zocom7 thinks we need to do. You could easily play Doom on medium with a fairly new $750 to $850 gaming PC. Pretty clear you don't need a $2500 monster (like mine at the time of purchase) to play the game. It's about damn time big budget titles quit catering to the potato crowd. We have the hardware, let's ****in' use it! There still exist plenty of great games that don't need a top dollar PC to run.

 

And lol, no downloads on console. Not hardly. They're glorified mini-PCs. You still have to download patches, apply system updates, install games... all that wonderful jazz. The benefits of console gaming gets smaller and smaller with each generation. It's not cheaper, it's not easier, it's not very powerful... kinda sad really.

[Tore 33]

And lol, no downloads on console. Not hardly. They're glorified mini-PCs. You still have to download patches, apply system updates, install games... all that wonderful jazz. The benefits of console gaming gets smaller and smaller with each generation. It's not cheaper, it's not easier, it's not very powerful... kinda sad really.

 

I miss the days where consoles were simple as putting a disc in the drive or cartridge in a slot and just play it.

Edited May 12, 2016 by Tore

[jeffnz 23]

I miss the days where consoles were simple as putting a disc in the drive or cartridge in a slot and just play it.

 

And not having to select the game in the system dashboard, like you do now with Xbox and Playstation. It's a game console duh so it should load the disk immediately. But no, we need to scan The Cloud (trademark) for new "content" and friend requests. **** off

 

One good thing about game consoles is that you don't have to run your games in Windows.

[TaxOwlbear 20]

Don't the XBoxes use a Windows-based OS?

[Lauren 77]

Yup xbone is basically a Win10 PC with a skinjob.

[Doctor Destiny 40]

Don't the XBoxes use a Windows-based OS?

The 360 was some wonky version of Windows 8 and the XB1 runs Windows 10 with a dyejob.