Sources: Xbox 720 to be 6x more powerful, won't play used games

[KINGOFOOTBALL]

All digital will make piracy easier. One hacked file is all youll need.

Secondly wouldnt it eliminate much of the Gift giving. ALOT of games are purchased for the holidays by moms/pops/grannies who just walk into a store browse and pick. Are you going to just stock an aisle with Gift cards redeemable for said game ?

[JBregz]

Well my hope would be it would be like Steam, where if they went all digital prices would be much more reasonable. We're also asking companies like Sony and MS to have prices as favorable as Steam for digital copies (both of which rarely, if ever, have specials that come anywhere close to Steam's), and that is unlikely to happen either.

Yeah, we could hope for that but I don't see it likely. The PC gaming industry is a lot more loyal to it's consumers because it's a smaller group I guess you could say?

[Swarley]

The whole reason why I think they wont go completely digital is not b/c they give a rats ass about the gaming stores, but b/c not everybody has their console hooked up to the internet. Will they try to implement the digital download more than they do now? Most likely. But I just can't see them going completely digital. Also I saw some article today that was bragging about how the Wii U will be 2x as powerful as the Xbox 360. I found that a little funny b/c if the rumors are true from the past few days about the next Xbox chip, then once again Nintendo will be way behind in that department.

[Ravin]

As someone said, they better take game prices down then. You no longer need to milk the gamers buying the new products while others wait for used, so there better be a fairly good decline in price. It just seems like a fail all the way. People are already not buying your games at full price, and if that is the only option they have, they will just go to something else. So you better hope the PS3/4 is on the same boat as you are, or you can kiss that market share goodbye.

[SethMode]

All digital will make piracy easier. One hacked file is all youll need.

Secondly wouldnt it eliminate much of the Gift giving. ALOT of games are purchased for the holidays by moms/pops/grannies who just walk into a store browse and pick. Are you going to just stock an aisle with Gift cards redeemable for said game ?

Well, it counts on people being internet savvy, sure. But services like Steam offer gift-giving. We're going to be there someday. I didn't leave the house for any of my shopping this year, and in a lot of cases most of what I got for people was digital.

And I don't buy the piracy thing necessarily just based off of the success of Steam in that department as well. Now, again, you can't compare Steam to everything, but it does show that an all digital market can not only work, but can work well.

Swarley -- I do agree about the internet factor as far as consoles are concerned. But that chord is going to have to be cut sometime because eventually it's just not going to make sense financially for devs/pubs to make a disc/case/manual etc...it's exactly the reason why most of the up and coming game developing talent works on indie/XBLA/PSN style download games.

[Goober]

What happens when the xbox red rings after a few weeks? Games are worthless?

[Tengo Juego]

I really don't think it's going to be called 720. And I'm not biting.

[padman59]

If the solution to used games is digital distribution, Microsoft needs to have a better solution to how they handle hard drives. Either their proprietary HDs need to be competitively priced along with higher capacity options as others on the market, or they need to allow the use of any hard drive (both internal and external) to store and/or backup games.

[SethMode]

What happens when the xbox red rings after a few weeks? Games are worthless?

Downloaded games are tied to a Gamertag, not an individual system. You would simply switch your license over from one to another (in fact, if you have it constantly connected to XBL, you wouldn't even have to do that...everything would just be there for you to redownload).

[jms493]

If the solution to used games is digital distribution, Microsoft needs to have a better solution to how they handle hard drives. Either their proprietary HDs need to be competitively priced along with higher capacity options as others on the market, or they need to allow the use of any hard drive (both internal and external) to store and/or backup games.

the cloud my friend..........the cloud!

[Juggernaut]

Is it not done with Steam? Your account is tied to your purchases and you can't give your purchase to someone else?

I barely use Steam and have only ever bought one game from it, but I understood that's how it worked.

So if it's already accepted in a popular service, why can't it be brought to consoles?

You can buy spare copies and trade those away. I.E. Buying an extra skyrim when it was on sale for 40 bucks, wait a week or two when its back to 60, and try finding someone who will trade you 60 dollars worth of games for it.

But yes, once activated, it stays on your account wherever you go.

edit:
This isn't that hard of something to implement, but it would have to go full digital and "live" would have to become free.

[KINGOFOOTBALL]

I can see packaging and boxes still being in the store. I just think this hurts cross selling. Peripherals , gameguides etc all will be hurt.

Forget about "should" lower prices. They better lower prices or face a backlash and increase in desire for piracy. All these years crying about used game market , cost of distribution etc...you cut those things out you better see a 20$+ drop across the board on prices otherwise it will be clear that its a money grab.

Of course with a price drop...the likely hood is now that things dont necessarily have to be "on disc" there will be a big decrease in inital game content. Most of what we enjoy will be pushed into Add-ons to make up for there imaginary lost revenue.

[Leftwich]

I really don't think it's going to be called 720. And I'm not biting.

I was thinking the same exact thing.

[SethMode]

I can see packaging and boxes still being in the store. I just think this hurts cross selling. Peripherals , gameguides etc all will be hurt.

Forget about "should" lower prices. They better lower prices or face a backlash and increase in desire for piracy. All these years crying about used game market , cost of distribution etc...you cut those things out you better see a 20$+ drop across the board on prices otherwise it will be clear that its a money grab.

Of course with a price drop...the likely hood is now that things dont necessarily have to be "on disc" there will be a big decrease in inital game content. Most of what we enjoy will be pushed into Add-ons to make up for there imaginary lost revenue.

Ich...while entirely possible (again, blech), I sure hope not. I personally don't mind the "the content is on the disc but we want you to show you bought it new before you get it for free" take on it, but to suss stuff out gradually just to turn a dollar is seriously gross (I know it happens in a few cases, but I would say most quality devs/pubs don't do that -- granted, there is a fine line in your opinion about day 1 DLC -- I personally don't think that it's a big deal as long as the product I purchased at retail is a finished product).

[padman59]

the cloud my friend..........the cloud!

That would be fine for game saves/settings, but I'm talking about full games in a completely digital marketplace. It's not very practical to store GBs of data for a single game to the cloud as you might as well just redownload it from the marketplace. I think people might prefer to have a copy of the game on hand to avoid having to spend hours redownloading a full title.

If you're referring to a service like OnLive, then the significant hardware performance upgrades seem be unnecessary since the games would likely be running from a server. I would think the major restriction would be the owner's internet connection.