The Real Reason Video Game Consoles Still Have Optical Drives?

With the rise of online gaming and digital downloads, video gamers in the United States and other developed countries might well wonder why the gaming consoles they buy still come with optical disk drives – and why the next generation of machines will also still have them. The answer, according to recent reports, has nothing to do with protecting retailers.

Earlier this week, ReadWriteWeb reported on the rise of digital downloads and the pressure it is putting on videogame retailers. (See “Game Over for GameStop and Video Game Retailers?“) And this week, The Wall Street Journal revealed that Sony flirted with shipping a 2013 successor to the Playstation 3 without an optical drive, then decided to keep it. Microsoft will also ship its next-gen console with an optical drive.

Why bother?

Blaming Slow Net Connections

The Journal claimed Sony and Microsoft based their decisions on shoddy Internet service overseas, which might mean that players would have to spend hours or even days trying to download large game files, and might incur bandwidth fees from their Internet Service Providers.

That reasoning makes no mention of the struggles of game retailers like GameStop, but no doubt comes as a relief to them anyway – at least for the time being.

Still, the fact that Sony – which co-created the CD, DVD and Blu-ray formats – even considered dropping the optical drive from its next-gen console clearly shows where the industry is heading. According to the Journal, even GameStop’s CEO admits that a move to digital downloads is “inevitable.”

ReadWriteWeb talked to a producer of a popular first-person shooter, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid antagonizing retailers. “We all want the industry to go that way. It gets games to customers faster, and it gives publishers a lot more room for price flexibility,” the producer said. He also noted that smaller publishers, such as Hothead Games (makers of the Deathspank parody series), were “basically built on Steam and the Apple Store,” and suggested that digital consoles could open doors for even more indie shops. As Hothead expressed the situation on its own forums: Digital platforms allow for a much higher level of creativity due to the lower investment required to bring them to market.