I am one of +650,000 subscribers on the Exede Satellite (Viasat 1) with a medium grade connection to the Internet and a 25Gb per month data allowance. It is free data from 12 AM to 5 Am. Having said that, it still took 4 and a half hours to download 20Gb (5.2Gb DVD + 20Gb Steam download= 25.2Gb) to get the remaining BA2 archives + 14 BK2 video files used in the game.
Did Bethesda advertise that a 20Gb download was required if you purchased the boxed version? No, not unless you followed the "behind the scenes info" from
Pete Hines Twitter feed, or followed the gaming Blogs. Unfortunately, I don't normally do that, so I was in the dark until the boxed version of the game arrived. On Amazon where I purchased the game and on the box it states: "Requires Internet Connection and Free
Steam Account to Activate"
It does not state anywhere on retail distributor site descriptions or even the box itself that 80% of the game data needs to be downloaded from Steam. You can make up your own minds on that issue, but this is what one Blog had to say about it:
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/2...llout-4-will-still-require-a-digital-download
Well, the simple fact of the matter is that not many people have a BD drive in their computer, and many don't even put any optical drive at all in their computer anymore. Physical copies of games are being phased out, at least on PC. It probably didn't make sense to them to ship three or four DVDs just to accomodate the few people who have a shitty Internet connection when a growing majority can download the game in about two hours, with even less problems if they pre-loaded it.
First, define "few". I don't have a bad Internet connection, nor am I against Steam's DRM, but I don't have fiber or cable either, so I would have happily used 4 dual layer DVDs or one dual layer Blu-ray disk. Fallout 4 is being released
world-wide and that means that more than a "few" will have issues with their Internet connection unless they live in a urban area within their country.
Blu-ray technology has been commercially available since 2006. Current sales for Blu-ray are stagnant as "streaming" data has become an option for
some consumers. Current tech for Blu-ray is the new 4k format. See:
http://www.extremete...ard-transition�
While not many people's PC may have Blu-ray optical drives (mine does), there would be nothing amiss with just releasing a Blu-ray version for the PC and putting that in the "System Requirements" portion of the description for the game. As it stands, many PC owners are scrambling around to upgrade their PC rigs to be able to handle the game's demanding graphic requirements, that is, if they wish to play it on the "ultra" settings. This behavior is not new for PC owners as we have been doing it for over 25 years now, that is, upgrading or building new PC rigs to handle the latest game titles. FYI: a dual layer Blu-ray disk can hold 50Gb of data. Quad layer or 4x Blu-ray disks can hold 128Gb of data.
As for Physical copies of games being phased out? By who? The software developers and publishers? or the consumers? And which game titles are sold as a boxed physical copy that only contains a small portion of the data required to run the game? I can tell you the answer to that: One.
Digital download only versions for AAA title games is a long way off for the simple reason that the market is consumer driven, not based on what is technically or economically feasible or cheapest for the publisher.
In 2010:
http://kotaku.com/5447954/most-people-are-still-buying-boxed-copies-of-games
In 2014:
http://www.everybodyplays.co.uk/news/PSVita/Study-reveals-most-people-still-buy-boxed-games/2022
I did like the idea of a USB version, ... that sounded cool.
