Harrison confident young'ns 'will never buy a physical media product'

[wraggster]

In his position at Atari, Phil Harrison – former Sony figurehead and outspoken Blu-ray backer – is using his intimidating height to see clear past the competition and straight into the future. What does Phil see? First: We can only imagine he sees an Atari more deserving that "best opportunity" in the industry praise from earlier this year. Second: Phil sees "a generation of kids being born today and probably already alive" that "will never buy a DVD, they will never buy a CD, and they will never buy a game in a box."

We know Atari's gambit is in online gaming, and we're sure Phil's dead-on in his assessment (we're surprised it's taken this long!) but now we'd just like to see how Atari is going to contribute to this new, disc-less media landscape. It's done with "huge-budget, single-player games," remember?

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/04/ha...cal-media-pro/

[Poem58]

This WILL come back to bite them in the end (sorry for the pun) but as soon as the ISP's who are toying with or beginning to implement the maximum monthly download caps spread to all of the ISP's then Online distribution will be held captive and they sure better be still making physical media or they will have a very small and more constrictive Distribution model then they think....after all downloading TV shows,Movies and games all through the net will add up to the cap much faster than they realize...show's how short sighted the corporations really are...hire a few people from the 35 and younger crowd and let us consult and see how high you can go....

I think the vision of nearly anyone on this board could revolutionize a company like Sony (just one example) and bring them back to relevance....they need to think of the user experience first and then innovate to it.

[CoderX]

This WILL come back to bite them in the end (sorry for the pun) but as soon as the ISP's who are toying with or beginning to implement the maximum monthly download caps spread to all of the ISP's then Online distribution will be held captive and they sure better be still making physical media or they will have a very small and more constrictive Distribution model then they think....after all downloading TV shows,Movies and games all through the net will add up to the cap much faster than they realize...show's how short sighted the corporations really are...hire a few people from the 35 and younger crowd and let us consult and see how high you can go....

I think the vision of nearly anyone on this board could revolutionize a company like Sony (just one example) and bring them back to relevance....they need to think of the user experience first and then innovate to it.

The internet services industry is driven by costumer demand. If a provider where to cap their costumer bandwidth limits customers would simply switch to another provider. And with the loss of market share the original supplier would recall their policy. Same Idea as AOL getting the boot for being to slow.

Also if you think about it, one game is the same size as one blue-ray as far as the PS3. And HD-Digital video is on the rise why not digital games?

[Hypershell]

While it's surely true that digital distribution is getting a bigger piece of the pie, I don't think that'll be the *ONLY* method of distribution any time soon. Certainly not in 5-10 years.

First of all, as much as it pains media big-wigs to admit this, not everyone is a techno-junkie. The fact that those DTV converter boxes even exist ought to have made that point clear, and accommodating rabbit-ear TV sets is a long way down from rendering DVD, much less Blu-Ray, obsolete.

Secondly, there are a fair share of people who prefer owning their entertainment on a physical medium, due to issues of freedom and security among other things. Digital distribution invites the distributor to meddle in what the consumer is and isn't allowed to do with their purchase, something they have no business doing. In many circles, including Nintendo's Virtual Console, when you download something you are not buying it. You're buying a "revocable license to play", and you are constantly subject to the manufacturer's terms of service. If digital distribution is to become the mainstream distribution method, that kind of bull has got to stop.

[osgeld]

The fact that those DTV converter boxes even exist ought to have made that point clear, and accommodating rabbit-ear TV sets

HEY i have a rabbit ear tv set! (and a dtv box)

reality of that is i barley watch broadcast tv, even when i did have cable i mostly watched the histroy channel and discovery channel. and i really dont have 100$ a month to piss away on the same 9 reruns of "how its made"

so for football, CSI, and greys (which my wife watches) it does more than fine, + with the dtv box i now get 2 pbs stations, a weather channel and a cartoon / kids channel for when that comes ... and some other crap i never look at

BACK ON TOPIC

im not sure what to think about the new era of downloads only, i personally hate them, plain and simple I dont like paying for something that i cannot touch

let me expand on that, music, do i go to i tunes or whatever, no i go and buy the cd, most of the time used (notice the riaa doesnt bitch and moan about used sales), i usually play it in the car on the way home, and when i get home i burn 2 copys

1 copy as a audio cd for my car, 1 copy as mp3's for my computer / psp / ipaq, the original gets put back in its case and stuffed on to the cd rack

no drm making me play russan roulette transfering files, no worries that next year EA isnt going to have the game i payed for and theoretically own avaliable for download

and no RROD to take 100$ worth of games and throw them in the trash forever

just plain and simple, i own media, and i use it within my rights under fair use, nothing more nothing else

and if anything ever screws up, i dust off the original

how $*@!ing hard does it really have to be?

ALSO
on the subject of internet caps, a lot of countries already have them, pretty hard core not just isp's go talk to someone from Australia about streaming 192kbs + radio stations