Trends in Gaming: 2009 will see downloads of full-sized retail X360 games via marketplace

In my last post, I mentioned that the Blu-Ray drive has hobbled the PS3 in terms of price competitiveness. I believe that it has also led Sony down what could very well be a dead-end path in the form of game sizes. When the PS3 was announced, Sony emphasised the advantage that the 50Gb of storage on each Blu-Ray disc gave to developers. They exhorted them to fill that space with extra content for their games and pushed a ‘more data is better’ line. Their ‘hardware company’ mentality led them to set great store by their new storage medium.

However, this looks increasing short-sighted. There is a strong consensus in the games industry and in the wider media industries that we are moving towards full digital distribution of media products and that the question is not whether physical media will die off, but just how soon? Like many things predicted to revolutionise the industry, it will probably not happen as quickly as some people claim, but it is very definitely coming.

Viewed through this lens, Microsoft’s decision to stick to the 7Gb DVD format for the Xbox 360 looks quite sensible. Microsoft released an external HD-DVD drive, mainly to act as a spoiler against Sony’s Blu-Ray format rather than through any meaningful belief that HD-DVD would become a leading format. With hindsight, it is apparent that the company felt that it could get by with a DVD drive for now and that the next generation of consoles would not sport disc drives at all.

Furthermore, it is a lot quicker to download 7Gb than 50Gb. MS began laying the foundation for the move to digital distribution in December 2007 by selling Xbox 1 games via the Xbox Live Marketplace under the heading of 'Xbox Originals', releasing a title or two a month through 2008. I predict that we will see full Xbox 360 retail titles sold in a similar manner in the second half of this year. I think that the games will be early titles from the Xbox Classics range, possibly ones where the sequel will be releasing at retail in Q4 2009.

I expect that Microsoft will provide extensive reassurance to traditional retail outlets, emphasising that releasing old titles in this manner will drum up interest for new releases, promising that only games over a certain age will be considered for the service and possibly providing more marketing support to retailers as a sweetener. However, this will be the velvet glove around the iron fist, the decorative sash tied around the handle of the katana. The real agenda will be getting the consumer used to buying full titles by direct download. I expect to see significant price cuts on Xbox 360 hard disks during the year and possibly even a larger size than the current 120Gb drive to support this move.

This year’s move to allow gamers to install games to the hard disc (but still requiring the disc in the drive to play them) can also be considered to further this agenda, in addition to being a good feature in its own right.

So there you go - an easily testable prediction. See if I'm right come 31st December and mock/praise accordingly!