What does that have to do with what he said?
Because he put forth his comment as a counter to the idea that this is the best time for gamers. In order for this to not be the best time for gamers, the old great games would have to no longer be available. The vast majority of them are, with more coming out and being re-released all time.
Well, I'd hesitate to say without qualification that modern games are better, but ootherwise, yeah.Name an old game that isn't available today that you would want to play.I could list a number of them, largely older console games. A few PC ones come to mind as well. Skies of Arcadia, Snatcher, OGRE, etc.
You're completely missing the point though. Lots of the games on the release schedule for 2016 have been and look like they will be awesome. Lots have been horrible disappointments. Lots have been total garbage. This has always been the case, but to say that modern games are better without qualification means, for instance, that you're saying the rather mediocre Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is better than Star Ocean: The Second Story.
Star Ocean Second Story, available new on PS4.
Skies of Arcadia I can agree with. That game was awesome and from what I can tell hasn't been re-released since the gamecube. Never heard of Snatcher or OGRE.
Well, I'd hesitate to say without qualification that modern games are better, but ootherwise, yeah.Name an old game that isn't available today that you would want to play.I could list a number of them, largely older console games. A few PC ones come to mind as well. Skies of Arcadia, Snatcher, OGRE, etc.
You're completely missing the point though. Lots of the games on the release schedule for 2016 have been and look like they will be awesome. Lots have been horrible disappointments. Lots have been total garbage. This has always been the case, but to say that modern games are better without qualification means, for instance, that you're saying the rather mediocre Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is better than Star Ocean: The Second Story.
Star Ocean Second Story, available new on PS4.
Skies of Arcadia I can agree with. That game was awesome and from what I can tell hasn't been re-released since the gamecube. Never heard of Snatcher or OGRE.
SKIES OF ARCADIA WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
STARFINDER, ARE YOU WATCHING THIS THREAD?!?!
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Well, I'd hesitate to say without qualification that modern games are better, but ootherwise, yeah.Name an old game that isn't available today that you would want to play.I could list a number of them, largely older console games. A few PC ones come to mind as well. Skies of Arcadia, Snatcher, OGRE, etc.
You're completely missing the point though. Lots of the games on the release schedule for 2016 have been and look like they will be awesome. Lots have been horrible disappointments. Lots have been total garbage. This has always been the case, but to say that modern games are better without qualification means, for instance, that you're saying the rather mediocre Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is better than Star Ocean: The Second Story.
Star Ocean Second Story, available new on PS4.
Skies of Arcadia I can agree with. That game was awesome and from what I can tell hasn't been re-released since the gamecube. Never heard of Snatcher or OGRE.
SKIES OF ARCADIA WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
STARFINDER, ARE YOU WATCHING THIS THREAD?!?!
Have you looked as Sundered Skies (Savage Worlds), yet?
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Could not agree more. Games are delivered to my PC, patches applied as they are released, from a gigantic ever-growing library. Want old games? Head over to GOG and get them dirt cheap and ready to run on modern machines. As Scott says, better in every way from the old days (and my "old days" go back to Apple ][ machines in 1980).I grew up purchasing games from brick-and-mortar video game stores. There is literally nothing about that experience that I miss. Absolutely everything about gaming is better today than it was fifteen or twenty years ago. I mean everything. The games are higher quality, the community is much stronger, the logistics are a cakewalk, the variety is insane, all of it is better.
And I've never thought that gaming sucked. It was always fun. But today's world is a g~#$%#ned paradise for an active gamer. The children we were could not have even imagined having it this good.
Installing from a physical medium is faster and doesn't eat bandwidth, and doesn't stop you from DL'ing updates/patches afterward.
I kinda have to agree about the pre 1995 "old days" part.
You have limited bandwith? Does anyone really still have limited bandwith?
Installing from a physical medium is faster and doesn't eat bandwidth, and doesn't stop you from DL'ing updates/patches afterward.
I have a 150 megabit internet connection with no bandwidth cap. That isn't even the fastest available in my area. The Witcher 3, with both expansions, clocks in at 50 gigabytes installed (I've deliberately picked a larger game, because this scenario actually favors physical purchases more the larger the game is - the trip to the store and back is a static time value, no matter the size of the game on disc). It would take me probably close to an hour to drive to a physical game store, purchase a physical copy of the game and its expansions (were its expansions sold in physical form), drive home, and complete the lengthy installation process (swapping out DVDs no fewer than five times, after all's said and done). If, instead, I purchased and downloaded the game from Steam, it would be completely installed and playable - expansions included - less than 45 minutes after I clicked the purchase button.
And that hour that it would have taken to buy a physical copy? That hour is now mine to use however I want, because I'm not required to do anything during the download and installation process. I can go for a run, play another game, go out to eat, or anything else I care to do. If I really cared to, that hour that I get back could be used to catch up on work, which would pay for the entire cost of the game in the first place (or damn close to it).
So not only is it literally faster to buy and download online, it also returns an hour of my own time to me.
Now, I understand that this doesn't hold true for everyone. Plenty of gamers don't have a high-bandwidth internet connection. But that could be said for any number of things - high end computers, specific consoles, fancy peripherals, etc. The point is that today's world allows and enables that kind of experience for gamers, should they choose to participate.
(As a neat bit of side trivia, your typical DVD drive has an optimal read speed of 21.12 megabytes per second, or about 170 megabits per second. Someone with a 150 megabits per second internet connection can download files from a sufficiently beefy content server, like Steam, at very nearly the same speed they could transfer it off a DVD. In practice, due to optical drive seek times, transferring from discs would probably end up being significantly slower than downloading.)
All of this says nothing of the other perks of using a digital service - automatic handling of patching, no fear of losing or damaging discs, frequent and significant sales, etc.
Well, I'd hesitate to say without qualification that modern games are better, but ootherwise, yeah.Name an old game that isn't available today that you would want to play.I could list a number of them, largely older console games. A few PC ones come to mind as well. Skies of Arcadia, Snatcher, OGRE, etc.
You're completely missing the point though. Lots of the games on the release schedule for 2016 have been and look like they will be awesome. Lots have been horrible disappointments. Lots have been total garbage. This has always been the case, but to say that modern games are better without qualification means, for instance, that you're saying the rather mediocre Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness is better than Star Ocean: The Second Story.
Don't misunderstand me - I wasn't trying to claim that every game released today is better than every game released 20 years ago. My claim is simply that the average quality of a major game release today is higher than it was in "the good old days." There are a lot of reasons for this. Massive development budgets. Huge internal QA teams. Lengthy public testing periods. Decades of additional game design thought and experience.
Also digital stores don't have the same shelf space limitations that a GameStop would have.
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I believe Australia and New Zealand have metered Internet as the norm.
Also, 20% of the US does not have access to anything other than dialup, anyone using a cellular broadband option has a metered connection, and average download speed is on 12Mbs. Oh, and we pay some of the highest rates for it in the world, so lots of folks who have access to broadband can't afford it due to normal line costs or because they live somewhere that only technically has access but they'd have to pay a rediculous connection fwe to start service because the lines don't go to their house. Also, that 80% figure? Broadband, for that, is defined as 3Mbs or faster.
Jesus Christ. And I thought my uncapped 25 MB/s was mediocre. I mean My country is next door to Romania. They have INSANE intenrnet speeds.
We can't go higher than 2MB/s upload though.
We have about 75 megabits download/ 82 megabits upload. I also use this connection for work 4 out of 5 days a week.
I am guessing you rarely need to reinstall anything...Installing from a physical medium is faster and doesn't eat bandwidth, and doesn't stop you from DL'ing updates/patches afterward.I have a 150 megabit internet connection with no bandwidth cap. That isn't even the fastest available in my area. The Witcher 3, with both expansions, clocks in at 50 gigabytes installed (I've deliberately picked a larger game, because this scenario actually favors physical purchases more the larger the game is - the trip to the store and back is a static time value, no matter the size of the game on disc). It would take me probably close to an hour to drive to a physical game store, purchase a physical copy of the game and its expansions (were its expansions sold in physical form), drive home, and complete the lengthy installation process (swapping out DVDs no fewer than five times, after all's said and done). If, instead, I purchased and downloaded the game from Steam, it would be completely installed and playable - expansions included - less than 45 minutes after I clicked the purchase button.
Occasionally, but if I do it takes the click of a button. No hunting for DVDs, no swapping out discs. Just a click. My Steam library is accessible to me from any computer, I never have to fear losing access to a game I've purchased, no matter how many times I've installed and uninstalled it. And, as I noted, it's often faster for me to download and install a game from Steam's servers than it would be to install a game from a disc anyway.
I don't have very fast internet (it's fast, but not that fast) and I still prefer downloading to installing from a disk. I like not having to keep track of disks, not having to go to the store to buy disks, not having to deal with and replace damaged disks, and so on.
It is different from when you could walk into a store and check out games arranged on shelves for your potential consumption but I find that I get more than enough games via Steam and GOG as it is.
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Also I have so many fun games I never would have found in a game store.