Video Game Packaging - Personal Computer Packages

Personal Computer Packages

Early machines such as the Commodore 64 were tape-based, and hence had their games distributed on ordinary cassettes. When more advanced machines moved to floppy disks, the cassette boxes stayed in use for a while (e.g. Treasure Island Dizzy for the Amiga came on a floppy disk in a cassette box).

In the late 80s and early 90s, computer games became significantly more complex, and the market for them expanded enormously. Possibly in an effort to occupy more shelf-space than their rivals, and attract attention with their cover art, games began to be sold in large cardboard boxes. There was no standard size, but most were around 20 cm x 15 cm x 5 cm (around 8in x 6in x 2in). The greatly increasing box sizes may have been justified in some cases. Games such as flight simulators came with extremely large, thick manuals. Others came with elaborate copy-protection systems such as Zool's circular code wheel, or even a hardware dongle (although these were generally more common on expensive non-game software).

Variations on the "big box" format include a box within a sleeve, such as Unreal, and a box with a fold-out front cover, such as Black & White.

Games re-released as budget games usually came in much smaller boxes—a common format for Amiga budget games was a thin square box roughly 13 cm x 13 cm x 2 cm (roughly 5in x 5in x 1in).

As PC games migrated to CDs in jewel cases, the large format box remained, though to reduce printing costs, manuals came on the CD, as did many of the copy-protection techniques in the form of SafeDisc and SecuROM. Despite the CD jewel case format having been around since the invention of the music CD, very few full-price PC games were released in a jewel case only. A thicker variation with space for a thick manual was, however, used for most PlayStation and Dreamcast games.

Around 2000, PC game packaging in Europe began to converge with that of PS2 (and later, Xbox and Nintendo GameCube) console games, in the keep case format in which to this day the vast majority of games are sold. These boxes are sometimes known as Amaray cases, after a popular manufacturer of them. In the US, most PC games continue to ship in cardboard boxes, though the size of such boxes has been standardized to a small form factor. Special packages such as a "Collector's Edition" frequently still ship with oversized boxes.

In the US, the IEMA played a major role in improving, from a retailer's perspective, the way most PC games are packaged. In 2000, many retailers were becoming disenchanted with the salability of PC games as compared with their more profitable console game counterparts as products. Oversized software boxes were blamed for a lack of productivity per square foot (the profitability of a particular item sold at retail based upon its foot print). The IEMA worked with leading game publishers in creating the now-standard IEMA-sized box, essentially a double-thick DVD-sized plastic or cardboard box, which effectively increased the profitability per square foot by over 33% and appeased merchants and developers alike.

In creating the new box size the IEMA found itself in the unlikely position of platform guardian (where each console platform had a first-party publisher to oversee standardization matters, PC games by their very nature did not). As such, the industry pressured the organization to develop a platform identification mark which would unify the display and focus the customer's brand perception. Again the IEMA worked with publishers to create a new standard "PC" icon, and would provide its use on a royalty-free basis to the industry.

In 2004, Half-Life 2 was made available for download over the Internet, via Steam. A physical boxed copy was also sold, though it also required activation over the Internet. Valve Software hoped this method of distribution would take off, as it delivers a greater percentage of the sale price to the game developer than boxed copies. Valve's belief was not unfounded, as Steam became the most common method of PC game distribution by late 2009: even earlier, internet distribution surpassed physical, and as of mid-2011 is unchallenged. Many, if not most games by most publishers for the PC, not only Valve, are released as "Steam" electronic copies which regularly outsell physical copies. In addition, Steam's DRM remains one of the most secure available, but is very non-intrusive compared to schemes like SecuROM, which, in installing kernel-mode drivers (often somewhat inaccurately referred to as "rootkits"), are often incompatible with certain hardware configurations and many pieces of third-party security software (such as software firewalls and anti-virus applications), a problem that does not plague Steam. Steam also allows consumers to back up their copy of Half-Life 2 as well as other games that are downloadable through Steam onto CDs or DVDs. To complement this feature many fans have created box coverings for jewel cases that can be downloaded and printed, giving birth to a wide variety of game packaging styles and designs.

Java games for cellphones are distributed almost exclusively via the internet. It is possible that the proliferation of home broadband will lead to electronic distribution for all games in the future, leaving physical packaging a niche market, though game developers cite the unsolved problem of digital rights management as the main barrier to this.