Sony's optical driveless digital version of the PS5, in the bad place of the network, I am afraid that 1 unit can not be sold.
Some time ago, the US market research agency NPD Group released a survey report on all industries in the United States, which showed that the physical game in the United States has produced a significant recession in 2021.
I think this is normal in the new crown era, there is no need to discuss it and write a column... But there seems to be something wrong. I am reminded of a post on the Reddit forum about a young man in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, hiding in the basement of his house playing the Ring of The Ring of Law and praying for an early end to the war.
This spirit of misery is indeed moving, but on second thought, many places on earth do not even have the conditions for this old brother. War-torn and underdeveloped areas do not have a smooth Internet, and it is impossible to buy new physical games in the first place. Even if you can connect to the Internet, once war breaks out or the Internet is interrupted, cloud archives and online games will dissipate like the wind, becoming the so-called "unreachable shore". People may even suffer property damage as a result, an uneasiness that is difficult for residents of developed countries in the midst of prosperity to empathize with.
I'm curious to see how different the single-player game industry can be in developed and backward regions, so I carefully read npd's U.S. home console market report, foreign media Ars Technica's analysis, and the state of the single-player game industry in some third world countries. Unexpectedly, in the game industry, the difficulties brought about by the gap between rich and poor, political turmoil and geographical estrangement are not light at all, and even produce some kind of indescribable sharp contrast in individual regions.
This column lists the differences between the United States and some third world countries, just to prove that we can still connect PSN and Steam more smoothly today and even discuss which is better, digital and physical, which is good. I hope that everyone can cherish the convenience and beauty of the present, come out of the dispute, and quietly enjoy the virtual world in the game.
>>> NPD U.S. Home Game Console Industry Report
Let's start with NPD's U.S. home console industry report, after all, it all started with it. However, this report is too long, and I can't understand many places (the financial degree is out of line), mainly for industry insiders and analysts to see, so I will simply pick a part out for everyone to see.
First, the chart above shows the release of new works in the physical (red) and digital (green) versions since 2018. It's not hard to see that the number of physical versions of games is decreasing year by year, but the situation in 2021 is quite special: in the case of an explosive increase of 62% in the number of digital releases compared to 2020, the number of physical versions of the release is still "thunderous" by 3%.
The following column chart should be more intuitive, green is only a digital version of the work, red is a digital and physical version of the work, blue is a pure physical version. Apparently, the number of digital-only games released in the United States in 2021 has accounted for 89.1% of all games, which is beyond my expectations.
It should be noted that this number includes the Nintendo Switch platform, and the Switch is not a home machine in the complete sense. Not only is it highly portable, but it also has the characteristics of plug-and-play cassette and play without networking, so the number of physical games on the Switch platform has increased compared to 2020.
Of course, the digital version of the game on the Switch platform has also increased significantly, soaring by 63% in one year, so the proportion of physical games on the Switch platform has still decreased by 5.9%.
Correspondingly, the number of digital games on the traditional home console platform PlayStation and Xbox rose by 32.7% and 46%, the number of physical games fell by 12.5% and 12.8%, and the proportion of physical games fell by 6% and 5.2%.
From these data, it is not difficult to find that the number of physical games has not decreased too much, but pure number games have produced a spurt in 2021, so it seems that the proportion of physical games is much less.
It's easy to think about it, as the COVID-19 outbreak of 2020 has brought dramatic changes to the global gaming industry. First of all, the epidemic has caused a large number of capital to leave the loss-making traditional industries to join the game-related track, and these companies can not immediately get started with the cumbersome and complex physical game publishing work; the traditional game companies are experiencing chaotic online office, so that many games jump tickets or decline in quality; this in turn encourages small and medium-sized enterprises and startups to take risks to develop more games; and finally the demand for digital games at home is far more than the physical version...
If we throw aside these changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and focus only on the major publishers who have been working in the industry for many years, it is not difficult to find that the decline in their physical game sales is not serious, and even more than half of the games in 2021 will have both physical and digital versions.
Note: NDP ranks U.S. game market publishers by revenue and designates Activision Blizzard, Bandai Namco, Capcom, EA, Microsoft/Bethesda, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Square Enix, Take-Two, Ubisoft and Warner Bros. Entertainment as "Primary Publishers."
Once we filter out the major publishers, brick-and-mortar games become a rare species on the market, with non-major publishers releasing even 8.1% of physical games in 2021.
This is also easy to understand, after all, pressing the game, designing the packaging and delivering it to the channel provider is a very challenging job of the marketing department, and the main publishers who are familiar with this are also at a lower risk than small and medium-sized enterprises. Small and medium-sized enterprises are more inclined to release pure digital versions of games, after all, their only cost is the development cost, and there is no marginal effect brought about by physical packaging after release.
However, the above data is only the number of released games. NDP doesn't publish accurate sales of physical and digital versions of the game in the United States (they may not be able to count it), and major publishers will prepare more promotional resources for popular games, so we don't really know how the sales of the entire industry are.
Here I list some information from other places as a reference, such as Capcom in 2020 said that 80% of its new sales from the digital version, Sony's 2020 financial report shows that "most" games on the PlayStation platform are digital versions, and this generation of PS5 and Xbox Series have pure digital versions without optical drives (even the digital version of the PS5 sells below cost)...
There are signs that the digital transformation of console games in the United States has become unstoppable, and it may be that in a few years, physical games will have become a niche hobby.
>>> those who can't access the Internet, how do they play games?
Even if we don't watch online games, those stand-alone games often need to be networked and certified, and the first day of patches can be downloaded to work properly... Obviously, these services are not available to all players.
Research shows that even in developed regions like the United States and Western Europe, millions of households are still behind the times. As of November 2019, 13.4 percent of U.S. households have no internet at all, 0.6 percent are still dial-up, 4.1 percent are still connected by satellite, and only 88 percent of households in Western Europe have broadband, which is equivalent to a massive loss of potential consumers for the gaming industry.
Even if you can connect to PSN, Xbox Live, and Steam, their experience is not very good in most parts of the world. If you want to find a small corner of the earth to hide in the future, remember to first understand the internet speed of this place.
In the southernmost part of South America, the Malvinas Islands (Falkland Islands, British Falkland), 500 kilometers off the coast of Argentina, have a maximum download speed of only 5.25Mbps (656KB/S) and latencies between 500 and 800 milliseconds to connect to Call of Duty's South American servers. In order to obtain this quality of network service, players must also pay 120 pounds (about 1016 yuan) per month, and the traffic limit is only 57GB, which is directly pinched when used up, without negotiable.
It is the island on the arrow in the picture below, and a little further south is the South Pole.
Sure South Atlantic, the island's only internet operator, later introduced a package with unlimited data from 0 to 6 o'clock, so every netizen on the island began downloading things in the middle of the night, and then the "small water pipe" was only 100KB/S. If downloaded only at night, falkland residents won't be able to play the digital version of Eldon's Ring of Law until the end of March. Incidentally, there isn't even a brick-and-mortar game store on the Falklands, and the only viable option for buying a physical game is to airlift it from the UK mainland, which takes about half a month.
Good evil is faster than downloading, hmm.
If the Falklands are still well developed, but the location is too remote to play games, let's take a look at what Côte d'Ivoire is like on the southwest coast of Africa.
Côte d'Ivoire is one of the richer countries in West Africa, and the capital Abidjan is known as the "Little Paris of West Africa", with a theoretical download bandwidth of up to 31.42Mbps (3.9MB/S). However, the average family can't afford such an exaggerated package cost of $40 per month, and high-end game computers and genuine PS consoles are often hundreds of dollars, so young people in Côte d'Ivoire generally choose to play games in Internet cafes.
With the cracking of the 2018 PS4 version 5.05 firmware and the ivory coastal passion for football for many years, a whole new business model is sweeping across Abidjan: "PS4 Bar". To put it bluntly, some business-minded Internet café owners have replaced their computers with TV + cracked versions of PS4, which are designed to run Pro Evolution Soccer, or some other PS games that local residents like, such as Naruto: Ultimate Storm.
Like domestic parents who have a headache with their children running to the Xbox 360 video game store for 5 yuan and 1 hour, many Ivorian parents are also skipping class for their children to run to play "Pro Evolution Soccer" headaches. These cracked games are so popular among young people in Côte d'Ivoire that the local esports industry has even spawned a serious esports industry. Last November, FEJA 5 (the 5th Annual Abidjan Video Game Festival) featured projects such as FIFA22, Tekken 7, Street Fighter 5, Call of Duty and even Full Dance, attracting more than 100,000 local visitors.
Organizer Sidick Bakayoko said: "This year we have successfully established partnerships with Ubisoft and Bandai Namco and hopefully next year we can go further. The more we can partner with influential publishers in Africa, the more we can bring growth to the African game industry. That's good for everyone. ”
At present, the entire African game industry is worth about $1 billion, accounting for only 1% of the global scale, but no one will underestimate the enthusiasm of Ivorians for games due to the cracked version of PS4, and no one will accuse them of disrespecting copyright.
Finally, there is Iran, a country that seems slightly mysterious to us.
In fact, contrary to many people's stereotypes, Iran is not a closed economy that regards video games as a flood beast, at least there is a "back door" to go. There are 32 million gamers in Iran today, or 40 percent of the population, and at least 1 million of them are big fans of PS4.
However, because PS and Xbox have not been officially released in Iran, Iranians generally smuggle game consoles through Bahrain on the other side of the Persian Gulf, and then connect to the UAE servers of PSN and Xbox Live to download digital games. In fact, you can find affordable PS5 and Xbox Series consoles in many stores in downtown Tehran, just as convenient as grocery shopping.
What you can't imagine is that the hottest game in all of Iran is the "Three Men and One Dog" series full of American adult elements. Not only that, but young people in Iran's big cities are also keen to smuggle or browse all kinds of Western culture and digital products, such as K-pop, iPhones, a website that starts with p... Even Marxist books, know that Marx was a staunch atheist.
However, all this changed after the massive sanctions imposed on Iran by the Trump administration in the United States in 2018.
Although the sanctions do not directly target the gaming industry, the United States has banned some Internet service providers from doing business in Iran, resulting in PSN and Xbox Live servers being almost inaccessible; in addition, Iran has also been blacklisted by VISA and the MasterCard banking system, so Iranian players must compile an address from another country to use their bank cards to spend normally. Most critically, Iran's own firewall has led to a lot of DNS pollution and IP blocking, the network connection has become very unstable, coupled with Iran's increasingly strict Internet regulations... In the words of Iranian player Amir Golkhani, this is:
"I just want to play a game, is it that hard?"
But disputes between politicians often overwhelm smart gamers.
First of all, yes, game accelerators are not patented by Chinese. Many Iranian VPN companies have added dedicated acceleration channels for UAE servers on PSN, Steam, Xbox Live and other platforms in their software, which perfectly offsets the risks that May be brought by Iranian IP addresses.
As for the bank address can not be used? A small thing! There are many e-commerce sites on the Iranian Internet selling game activation codes and gift recharge cards in Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and other regions, and even a fool's service of registering + recharging + subscribing to Xbox Game Pass, even forging overseas billing addresses can be wrapped up, and I have to lament that the creativity of players is unlimited.
Considering that the salaries of the working class in Tehran are generally around 21 million rials (2021), and the new digital version of FIFA22 costs 2.5 million rials, the price of the physical version smuggled into the country under strict inspection by Iranian customs is more than 10 million rials... In this case, the Iranians also made products similar to domestic Steam offline accounts, allowing several players who respect the genuine version to use the same account, reducing people's morality and wallet burden.
But in a country where it's not legal to play European and American games, "offline sharing" doesn't seem like a very reprehensible thing, right?
>>> So, do we still need physical games?
This question sounds a bit stupid, after all, even in places where the Internet is not developed, people also have cracked versions and cross-regional recharge and other ways to play digital versions of the game, it seems that the physical version is not just needed.
However, let's not forget that the massive development of the game industry in Côte d'Ivoire and Iran was after 2010. In China, where the Internet industry has been developing for more than 20 years, which has the world's most developed broadband network and the largest e-sports market, Western game companies are also squeezing their scalps to please Chinese players, hoping that their games can explode in China – even so, we are still a flock of frightened birds. The earlier "console ban" and the 2015 Liu Ruizhe incident are still vividly remembered, and Steam always has the news that it is going to be banned, making a large number of PS users buy physical versions of the game because "in case one day they can't connect to Hong Kong service".
If there is a PC physical version this year, I am afraid that many people will start with the reason of risk avoidance... Maybe we're like the PS4-like houses in Death Stranding, and the only way to escape reality after the world has become devastated is to run games that don't require the Internet.
I recently bought a brand new PS5 CD of Dragons among Men 7: Where Light and Darkness Go, and I thought I'd collect it.