So there's quite a few people out there who want Fallout 4, but haven't got a copy yet due to the mandatory 20GB+ download being impossible/very expensive due to the monopoly of their local ISP or even the local infrastructure.

It's quite clear that future manufacturing runs of Fallout 4 will need to be done differently if Bethesda wants all of their potential customers to buy the game.

Let's clearly and concisely (through this poll) tell Bethesda what format future manufacturing runs of Fallout 4 need to take in order to reach their entire audience.

is there actually a reason for not using flash drives? °_°

are they too expensive, once you go above 30gb?

I don't really care about the 20GB download, but having a flash drive would be an interesting change

CD's are outdated :/

"Playable" would be nice.

Flash drive usb, of course. Microsoft is already doing it with Win 10.

Anything that doesn't involve a massive download for a physical copy that I have to pay a premium to get.

Multiple DVDs are pretty inexpensive, and all modern machines are guaranteed to have at least a DVD reader, and it's what other more serious companies do with their humungous games.

Meanwhile the flash drive option seems pretty interesting: as with the above, they are getting less and less expensive, and if the developers really worry about "piracy" (instead of using it as an excuse for their poor decisions) it can double as a security dongle.

Don't see how flash drives are rational for relatively low-priced consumer software. $100-200 business & professional stuff, sure. But games? Can't see it.

Sure, the price is coming down compared to how it used to be. But discs cost peanuts in comparison.

An additional factor is the size of the software. Just looked up a Win 10 installer guide, and it says if you want to make your own USB installer, you need a 4GB stick. That'd be much cheaper than the 32 or 64 you'd need for today's super-big games. (Given that the retail/business version will have 32 and 64 bit options, it might be on 8GB. Still much smaller/cheaper.)

While searching for that, I also noticed articles that suggest the USB version of Win 10 could cost ~$25 more.

So, yeah.....

And it's what Bethesda themselves did for their other large releases in the last year!

Well, maybe the physical copy should actually include the physical copy? Just an idea

As for the format, multiple DVD's ought to be method that pisses no one off. Or alternatively USB drives, though that would increase the price, and piss people off

Anything but what they did to Fallout 4

Usb stick would be great but I can bet Bethesda will not pioneer anything in this regard, maybe other publishers will do this in the meantime and make it a trend before TES 6,

Multiple dvd's would be the smartest solution now.

If I had to, I would buy a blu-ray too.

Really, the software industry should have transitioned to BluRay years ago. The problem is likely that no-one wanted to be the sacrifice who lost sales on their game release to force the issue. And with so many already-installed DVD drives out there - especially many of them on PCs owned by people who wouldn't go crawling around inside the box to switch hardware - it just gets harder. (which means that they'd have to take it to a store to get it done, which means Even More Expensive)

So even if the computer manufacturers switched to just using BD drives in their pre-builts (given how they pursue the cheapest price possible, not likely), there'd still be buckets of computers out there who couldn't buy your game.

what to change? at first Fix Bugs / make companions killable / and get back KARMA system / and give us back good old perk and special system [this is nice but not for fallout]

Personally, I have decent internet, but when you go through the trouble of making a physical version of the game, then I think you should actually make it have a point. Cutting way down on download size... Otherwise I don't even see the point in even having a physical version.

I don't really care which physical medium is used. I just expect a physcial copy to provide a physical copy.

I'd also be interested in seeing which options were preferred by folks who actually bought physical copies/chose not to buy the game because of the sizeable download/bought digital copies.

Whats wrong with disc copies? They not available for PC?

The discs for PC only contained about 20% of the game. Depending on their internet connection, that left many with multi-day, post-release downloads and some just unable to play since a 20 GB+ download wasn't on for them.

A product code to play it would be nice.

This is not something that is going to change, not unless something seriously major happens to change it. Not only is this NOT new for bethesda anyway (Skyrim did the same thing), but this is the way the PC gaming market is going. Less and less companies are doing the full game on Disk(s) anymore.

No, actually, they aren't. For example, my wife's laptop, which is a *gaming* laptop (made specifically for gaming, not just a laptop with good specs, just to be clear), does not have an optical drive of any sort. Nor, for that matter, did her previous gaming laptop (because the second video card took up the slot the optical drive would have used).

Our primary gaming PC has a DVD drive, but that's because it's been carried over as we upgrade; the previous incarnation had the DVD drive unplugged for quite some time as we needed the SATA port for an additional hard disk, IIRC.

That said, USB DVD readers are cheap enough that it's probably not a realistic blocker for most people.

There was a time when downloading worked for most. The problem is that games have gotten so much larger that downloading isn't feasible (either impossible or a significant hardship) for many. My Skyrim folder is 13.7 GB, including DLC, the official high res texture packs, and mods. My Fallout 4 folder, with only the vanilla game, is 25.2 GB. Bethesda may get better at compression, come to their senses and do away with voiced protagonists, or can decide that they only care to sell to the subset of the market for whom huge downloads are workable--or higher speed connections may become may become more widely available/affordable. What won't happen is for current trajectories to continue without lost sales.

And the trend toward huge downloads is not universal. The game certainly has its flaws, but Dragon Age: Inquisition was issued on 4 discs for PC. It's amazing to say, but in this particular instance EA >>>>> Bethesda.

Currently downloading 20 GB, ETA to completion 40 hours. I am going to be furious every minute.

When I buy a physical copy of a game I expect to get the entire game (or atleast +95%) in the package. This is nothing more than a 5GB booster and +20GB download.

I know most will simply download the game but those who bught the disk for their own reasons may feel cheated. I feel that the disk was false advertisment. I wanted my 25GB game to come in the box not have to download over 80%.

I like having a CD/DVD/Blueray drive, because it is something physical.

I have seen entire sites down for days due to reasons (hackers/hardware issues/etc).

Personally I think this decision was a bad decision from inception to execution. There was no warning on the box that said "Only 20% of the 25GB game is included." Yes there were news releases and twitter releases but I tend to avoid the "Social" sites and I tend to avoid gathering information other than release dates for games I am hyped on playing.

Call me old fashoned when developers treated their customers with some respect.

might as well learn to live with it, it's the wave of the future, well, the current actually. and I still find the "bad business decision" and "they are going to miss out on lots of sales" argument kind of, um, laughable.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/fallout-4-ships-12-million-copies-in-one-day-break/1100-6432277/

http://www.shacknews.com/article/92158/fallout-4-sales-to-be-in-excess-of-750-million-with-12-million-copies-on-launch-day-alone

http://screenrant.com/fallout-4-sales-records/

http://www.ibtimes.com/fallout-4-sales-record-breaking-12-million-copies-worth-750-million-sold-launch-2183997

game on disks or no, I think they'll be alright

so.....not only the above, but yo urefuse to do any kind of research on the game....and then blame the devs for your lack of knowlesdge.....yeah..........

also, bethesda did the same thing for skyrim, so...not sure why ANYONE is actually surprised.

Put the damn game on them. Gigabyte size files takes a long time to download.

I never said "they are going to miss out on lots of sales." But it is a bad business decision because 80% of the game has to be downloaded and it is implied that over 90% of the game is in the box when you buy a hard copy. I bought the physical variant specifically for the disks.

5gb disk 7gb download size, comes to around 70% of the game is in the box. 40% of the proposed second disk would be empty. That is excuseable on an economic standpoint but still a bad decision. If there were 4 disks for a 5 disk download, or 5 disks for a 6 disk download then my complaint would be less. But once you have over 80% of the game needing to be downloaded why bother with a hard copy variant in the first place?

The way I see it, Bethesda Softworks wanted to save on money and did not care for the groups that buy the game specifically so they do not have to download the entire thing.