Will The Bandwidth Cap derail the Digital Distribution Freight ??
I know most of you have heard or read about Digital Distribution to rule the future of movie and game distributions. An year ago we all would have agreed wholeheartedly.
Microsoft exec Aaron Greenberg talks about Digital distribution here.
Of course Microsoft has lots of content available through digital distribution via XBLM and it is fair to say that it is there dream to push all the content through this channel. Lots of profits to be made without the need to shell money out to manufacture/distribute in the traditional way.
- You cannot let a friend borrow digitally distributed games/movies.
- You cannot buy a used game through this channel.
This enables the pulishers to capture more of the revenues that would have been lost due to rental/borrow/trade in schemes.
Not just Mircosoft, Sony has its own DD network via PSN, making movies/games and demos available to end users. Blockbuster,Amazon and Cinemanow have a boatload of Digital movies/TV shows available for sale/rental. It would be a mistake not mention iTunes store from our beloved Apple.
What made write this article is the announcements from ISPs to cap bandwidth usage of the broadband internet subscribers. Here is a link to Comcasts Acceptible Use policy here
Time Warner confirms the bandwidth cap test here .
More ISPs to follow…
With the amount of bandwidth needed to download HD movies/Games (1.5 GB to 8GB) not to mention downloads of demos (demos on PSN range from 500MB to 1.5 GB) the allotted bandwidth would be consumed in no time.
I almost forgot to mention streaming TV/Shows and movies via Hulu, ABC.com and netflix.
Dont you think it digital distribution is a facing a Giant in terms of Bandwidth cap ? May be the major corporations should step in make this work, probably they can subsidize the internet costs for the subscribers or invest into ISPs to enable unlimited bandwidth ?