The Friday Debate – Boxing Clever

If we’re not exclusively talking PS games. Grand Prix 2 for the PC had an amazing manual, about 130 pages about the game and how to overtake and so on.

There’s a lot to be said for the physical act of unwrapping a brand new game that you’ve been anticipating for ages.
Downloading doesn’t have a distinctive smell, or anything tangible to get excited over.
Regardless, I’m all for digital distribution, but currently publishers take the [Deleted]. Despite removing the packaging and logistics costs, they still price the games at the same price, or often more expensively than the physical copy with shops/online retailers.
You only need to look at a few of the prices for some of the full download games on the PS Store as examples.
It helps nobody when publishers treat customers like mugs.

For me there is one problem with downloadable content that I have realised when buying games for my PSP Go. And that is that when you finish a game with little replay factor, you can’t trade it in or sell it.
However it is great that when i’m going out, for example on holiday, I don’t have to bring lots of UMDs with me.

As for PS3 I will continue to buy the BluRay version, because its great to have a collection of games on my shelf.

I’m always worry about manual and box. And I have to say, that with this generation of hw, they’re always more ugly and they also look “cheap”.
Oh, and I really hates to see a white back cover on the games (but ps3 exclusives has also a back cover printed like heavy rain or gt5)

I take good care of the box and manual but not because I specifically care for them… just because I am like that with video game material – I treat it like hardcore religious people treat their holy books. I don’t read the manuals anymore and honestly, I think they shouldn’t even add manuals to game cases anymore.

The manual should be something you can access in the game digitally. I mean, think of the amount of resources those things take up when you combine them all together. It kind of goes into the disc-gaming world that is now actually obsolete and waste-producing and resource-draining when we could switch to completely digital gaming but we’re not ready for that thanks to the out-dated monetary system.

I hide money in game cases myself. I have two copies of Tekken 6 because the first got stolen with my first ps3 (thanks, Monetary system) but only the disc. What I done with the second case is take out the graphic art and display the inner art on my wall near my nerdy figurines.

I do like having the via disc, I still get the same excitement when opening a game and smelling the freshness of the contents that lies within.

But I also like digital as I know it would always work (Steam Back-ups for example) as to compared to discs which can break, but the problems with digital is it isn’t as instant as with a disc, it is a waiting game for it to finish downloading.

I worry for the manual the most. Even physical games get only minimal manuals these days that barely contain the basics.

Take AC:Brotherhood for example:
It only contains the control settings and disclaimer. The only solution they offer you to view the manual is go to pauze the game and read the manual in the menu.

I prefer physical media (including a descent manual that I can have right next to me while gaming) above digital download any day

Ah yes and the cover should not have all that advertisement (PSN, 3D TV, 16 players online, game-rating by a magazine etc.) printed on it.

It destroys the boxart…

I personally wouldn’t care if I never saw a game case again, so long as I can always re-download my purchases.

@Sp4reNL:

Agreed, I missed the game cases which had them as stickers so you can peel them off.

if they lower the prizes of downloadable games with 20-25% i dont need a case/manual

but downloadble games will get expensiver becuase you then are forced to buy the game if you like it, instead of trying to get it second hand.

my biggest downfall i always rtead manuals before i play god knows why even if its like a sequal still read it. Even tv manuals AHHHHHHHHHHh help me im weird

Digital distribution will kill gaming retail.

Publishers would also like to see the end of 2nd hand games, however it is vital consumers can take solace in return investment in such expensive gaming equipment. As not all of us are wealthy enough to pay for day one games, taking away 2nd hand games won’t suddenly make the poor rich enough to afford 100% of the day one price. That’s why people “Trade-in” in the first place, to help them make up a little of the difference.

Personally I am against digital distribution, if the game shops go, the older generation will be even more alienated from this genre of entertainment and you’ll get a backlash effect and the potential volume of future gamers decreasing. We’ll be in our own little shell almost, it won’t happen straight away but gradually people will be more influenced by the new content on the high street. Than the “You must have a PS3(4?) to browse” content online (who is to say we will have the internet in 20XX).

“Mum and Dad” won’t be hip and trendy enough to buy presents digitally, and at the end of the day game cards with “x” amount of money on them make terribly impersonal presents, the hard case, the heavy feel, and ability to rap them up are what makes receiving and purchasing games real. The bus or car ride home where you read the manual in anticipation. I have a bookcase in my study will all my games lined up from generation to generation. I don’t want to lose that ability, I frequently visit old hardware shops and rummage around 10p cartridges.

Nostalgia won’t exist in this digital format. With Sony pushing remakes and HD versions at the moment I’m surprised they would harm future investments this way. I have already felt the golden age of gaming pass us, and fear digital distribution might be the final nail in our coffin for the die-hard fanatical gamer. The people who write up these games with vibrancy and help bolster sales, not for themselves, but just because they have Passion for the game, they held and loved.

i don’t really care about boxes and manuals but you can’t trade digital content or resell it (not every game is worth keeping it forever).

Give me a box and manual any day. Even without the ability to sell on your used games, games purchased through digital distribution never feel ‘safe’ to me.

Okay, they load quicker from a hard drive, and obviously take up no physical space. But then if the hard drive (or worse still, your PS3) fails, you lose what you have – or at least have to spend ages downloading it all again. And as games get bigger, that downloading takes even longer to do, especially as many/most ISPs still impose caps of various kinds, whether it be a cut-off or a speed decrease.

If my PS3 failed tomorrow, even on my 20Mb connection it would take me days to re-download my PSN purchases, since my backup wouldn’t restore to a new system. Whereas with a disc, you just pop it in, and away you go. Plus, if you take care of a disc, it will last you a lifetime, or until you get tired of the game.

I think video game covers have become much of a nothing, the large majority just showing the main character in some sort of action scene, it would be alot more interesting if they had a classic style like these: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ollym/sets/72157612646893506/. However of the current crop of video game covers the littlebigplanet 2 collectors edition has caught my eye the most, with the simple zip being show. It will be sitting proudly atop my game collection when it arrives

I used to like having the box etc but as with DVD’s eventually space becomes an issue. I eventually took all my DVD’s out of their boxes and have them in a massive DVD wallet. I’ve done the same with games now but generally the only reason I’d buy boxed games is because, surprisingly, even with the extra costs involved with packaging and shipping etc they’re generally cheaper than digital downloads. When digital downloads are generally cheaper (Dragon Age Awakening I’m talking to you) I’ll always buy them over boxed games. Digital space is much easier to manage than having actual boxes.

I never liked Unlimited Saga, but the box really stuck in my mind. That was one hell of a nice box! It’s a real shame to me about manuals getting slimmer, I always like a good, beefy, manual. The Blazblue: Continuum Shift manual was a bit of a shock to me, that only had about four pages to do with the game. In short; yes, I do worry for the good ol’ box and manual.

@ShadowFlex:

The 2nd paragraph of yours was very true indeed, reviews now days tend to lean towards “It must have multiplayer and the worlds best graphics” to even be a game they recommend, reviews don’t rate games on how fun they are to play.

This makes every review I read feel generic and as if it was copied and pasted from the last minus a title change, the industry (Except for some developing studios) are losing the enthusiasm to create exciting and different games.

Hi James,

I’m a bit sucker for Collector’s Editions. My favorite one has to be Metal Gear Solid Limited Edition for the PS1. It was really great.

The Assassin’s Creed 2 Black Edition, I also think it deserves recognition for being a great package for a neat price. The ezio statue is really high quality, and the artbook is hard cover and there’s the other stuff it has.

I also love the God Of War Ultimate Trilogy Edition for the loads of content it has.

That said, I also enjoy digital a lot. If there was an option to send in my boxed copies to get the digital version, I would do that for a few games. And Steam made sure I never need a PC retail box again.

For us back then, having this great big box (NES lol) with a colourful manual and screenshots, always used to set the mood for us and would always get us excited on the train ride home. I’ll never forget looking through the manual of Links Awakening (and being completely oblivious to my surroundings) and looking at all the enemies, characters and items you could collect through your adventure. Nowadays the internet has taken the shine off some of this by having info fed to us everyday (wouldn’t change it though) but you cant beat – physically buying a game and moaning then to your parents or spouse that your bored as hell and wanna go home.. just to pop that puppy in \m/

Considering the difference in price between Physical and Digital games, I’ll take Physical copies anyday now.

Cheaper and the feeling of un-wrapping can’t be beaten sadly.

Until storage hits the cloud, I think physical games are still the way for me.

It’s nice to see someone from Sony bring this up and give some honest feedback. I do really like the convenience of a digital download but the knowledge I can own the disc gives me the piece of mind.

Plus certain games do have decent manuals, I always like reading the manual for certain games where movelists etc are printed in them and those that have a decent layout (rather than just plain text) such as some of the resident evil games.

I do think that the price of download only games can tend to be top-heavy, I wouldn’t want to pay the same amount for a digital game as a Blu-Ray version of it as it does not feel as tangible.

Times have changed.
A lot.

one of the main games that still in my mind had one of the best packages was the game Mercenary on the Atari ST/CBM Ami, etc etc.

The box looked liked any game, but it contained pretty every prototype of extra content: Posters, buttons, back-story, ship descriptions, some of packed in another sealed envelope to open in case you needed any spoilers to finish the game. It also came packed with proto-DLC in the form of extra missions.

It felt really great to have something ‘real’ in your hands, but in reality, most of the contents just would not make any sense anymore in the age of the internet.
(especially the 16 bit ST/Amiga time had such great packages, box-art or other enticements like plug-in modules to buy the game. I guess they really had to offer something extra to counter the rampant piracy from that time.)

How did u stash money in an unopened game?! Impressive..

nah i dont miss boxes on the vast majority of games.
they are all generic plastic cases these days.

i would miss the special collectors edition boxes though.

i remember some good old boxes were Elite on the Spectrum – lovely big black box containing all sorts of goodies.

OCP Art Studio on the Amstrad had a good box with a big manual.

Oh God; that snooker thing isn’t one of the ‘highly requested PSOne classics’ that’s coming soon is it?

Some of the best gaming boxes for me were not so much the box artwork or the manuals but the form of the printed materials and other information. Maps of course were a staple, like the cloth map that came with Ultima Online. The two that stay with me though were Frontier and Hired Guns.

Frontier had a wonderful booklet of short stories highlighting some degree of the variety of the universe and framing some of what you could achieve perfectly. It also including one called The Gazetteer which was an informal tourist brochure.

Hired Guns took it to another level providing around 5 booklets. Detailing Character Backgrounds, Weapons, Enemies, Location Guides and once again short stories.

1) Frontier – Elite II

Info – http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Frontier
Gazetteer – http://www.frontierastro.co.uk/Gazetteer/intro.html
Life on the Frontier (stories) – http://www.lotf.co.uk/lib.shtml

2) Hired Guns – DMA Design

Moby Games – http://www.mobygames.com/game/hired-guns
Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hired_Guns

The wikipedia article links to an excellent polish site if you wish to find more, google does a respectable translation job. In brief searching I could not find replicas of the Hired Guns manuals and my copies are long gone.

To be honest I prefer the hardcopy over to the digital. To be honest they might as well call it virtual content. Even my new Laptop ha it… Windoze 7 Backup is installed on the HD. You dont physically get a copy of windows 7. you infact as crazy as it seems recieve an ISO of your defaukt when new HDD to transfer onto DVD’s. I made this my first job after installing a few important programs. Me I prefer to have something that I pay money for that I can physically touch with my grubby little mitts. call me old fashioned but thats how I like it. I mean I would love to back up my entire PS3 add ons to an external drive but I cant. So its fingers crossed until thats been invented.

Yeah I still like physical copies better, although digital is definitely more convenient. But most covers are full of stupid logos now so I don’t really give a crap even if the cover art’s good. When the game’s good I take a look at the manual, but rarely before playing.. sometimes there’s stuff that isn’t explained in the game so that’s pretty cool.
I’ll still prefer physical copies over digital because if a game sucks I want to be able to sell it back (and I only kept 12 of the +30 PS3 games I bought since march 2007). You can’t do that with digital copies.

I’d like this to be answered.

Why is it that retail games, when made downloadable off the store, are the same price as retail games?

They have no manual, disc or case.

Definitely love my physical copies. I like seeing my collection and being able to always have it.

I have never used the notes page on the manual, hell… I keep advertisements and “feed back cards” in the case, unused as well…

Only page on the manual people read now is “This is your online pass” or “Redeem this code for crappy exclusive DLC for you limited edition” or something like that.

I used to display some of my game boxes in my shelf before. Now its just a bunch laying around the tv.

I do tend to stay away from Platinum because of the fugly boxes.

I love my physical copies. Don’t get me wrong i love the convienience of having something on my HDD so i can play it without getting off my bum (lazy), but nothing will ever beat a new box for me.

Besides, how could we sniff the new box and manual? Or is it just me that does that as soon as i open a new game?

Hard copy all the way! Don’t ever get rid of my hard copies, Sony. Staring at your Download List isn’t the same as looking through your library shelf of games/Blu-rays and pondering what to play or watch.

That said, I do download a lot of stuff from the PS Store. I’m close to 500 items on my Download List – think you guys should add a sort/filter or search option to the Download List, because it’s annoying having to find stuff when you’ve bought and downloaded so much. For example, if you decide to buy the unlock code for a game that you played the trial of ages ago and have since deleted the trial version of the game off your HDD, you have to go back and find that trial version in amongst all the other stuff you have. Perhaps have a drop-down box where you can select: Show All, Show Paid-for Content, Show Demos, Show PSN titles, Show Add-ons, Show Plus Content etc.

Great debate question!

For me I am already missing how game box’s used to be. I still keep and collect the old big box PC games. I think the original release GTA games are some of the best. Even when they changed with Vice City, they still made it awesome! Not like these crappy plastic cases.
And to think one day they might be gone for good I do doubt that somewhat, collectors etds seem to make the big bucks these days with the stupid price tags publishers attach to these things. Again GTA sets the standard for a boxed collector’s etd with GTA IV. Loads of actually useful stuff and only £60.

What I’ve always wanted was a proper boxed product with all the proper artwork on the cover, a physical copy of the game and a code for a digital copy, so said disc/umd/cartridge can say in perfect condition in the box!

And like others have said, new game smell…. don’t get that with the digital copy!

The notes page – where i right down all the cheats for a game for when i feel like mucking about in the ps2 days. Then writing funny messages before trading them in and hoping whoever buys it next will see them

I really wouldn’t mind digital or non digital tbh, just as long as prices are not silly…cough cough..prototype cough

Mind you i have recently sold all my psone final fantasy games as well as some resident evil games because it is so much more convenient to have digital copies

Also after reading comments above about games being downloaded then realising the game sucks: maybe it would be a good idea for Sony to offer demos of new games and allow free game trials of older title releases before being purchased for download

I remember in the days of the Amiga and Atari ST the dev’s had box wars. Each of them started putting their games in bigger and bigger cardboard boxes to get more shelf space and more attention. The bigger the box the bigger the game but they only ever contained a 3 1/2″ floppy and a small manual. The rest of the box was empty. Indeed budget games always had the same small slimline plastic case. I seem to remember all Codemasters games like Dizzy being budget releases in those cases.

i’ve always liked physical games. i really like to see the artwork, screen shots etc, as you say, it used to be the deciding factor on games in ‘the old days’ but for me it still is, and when travelling home from buying a game, i notice myself glancing in the bag to have yet another peek at the screen shots on the back eagerly awaiting to play it.

obviously they take up space though. i also like to browse through the manual, though there are hardly any pages in them these days – but games like final fantasy put extra bits of artwork in there.

but i don’t really think downloadable games will really take off, not in the immediate future anyway. i prefer to have things physical, as i find myself forgetting about things i have downloaded, where as a physical copy will always be a reminder of whats to play etc.

The way I see it – digital distribution is the future as the publishers and developers can claim more cash once the retailers slice is removed.. the catch 22 at the moment is that downloadable games have to be sold for more than their retail counterparts because the same publishers don’t want to annoy the retailers and undercut them, losing their orders in the process.

I don’t expect the price of downloadable games to drop until the companies solely distribute their games digitally…

O/T – James – will the eu blog be getting a mobile version like the US blog??.. it takes an eternity to load on a smartphone at the moment!

All the old PC game boxes were amazing, I remember loving the open up flaps with all the awesome art work going on around it
God bless Blizzard for keeping this up.

When it comes to playstation, I love when they do special edition boxes with cool designs relevant to the game, always makes me want to get it.

Oh man, its got to be a physical copy for me because i love the new ame smell lol, the only game i didn’t like the new smell of was God of War Ultimate Collector’s Edition, that felt inside the Pandora’s Box smelt abit funny lol and the old PC game boxes were amazing, i remember the first one i had was the original Prince of Persia and the box is huge but then so was the manual and it had a $#!t load of floppy disks. Now i’m waiting for my Killzone 3: Helghast Special Edition to open, physical copies FTW!

James, with the ps3 hack, are our PSN accounts even safe? Things like credit information etc.

Is this your way of telling us that the next version of the PlayStation Portable does not have a Universal Media Drive on-board, James?

…and yes, I favour physical media:

[ http://fanpages.posterous.com/tag/virtuallyphysical ]

(16 May 2008)

Perhaps downloadable titles could also bundle the box-art images & a Portable Document Format file of the manual/inserts issued with the full product packaging.

BFN,

fp.

I love physical media… and I hate that the best Tekken in the series (as of yet) is the only one missing from my physical collection… yes I’m talking aobut Tekken 5:DR

Long live physical Media…

also… WE HATE B&W MANUALS! give us full colour god damn it! Uncharted 3 I’m looking at you!

I do love some box art, but now thanks to the rise of the digital era, I think it will no longer be required, although an image of some sort would be needed to confirm the right game