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Yes, and I've found the killer application which will essentially _require_ windows to be running for a complete experience on this console. Behold Big City Rigs: Garbage Truck Driver!

Whoever said collecting trash won't pay the bills? Hop in the seat of your very own garbage truck and clean up and collect the trash as you manage your own waste utilization company.

34 missions take you through various environments, including city streets, industrial areas, business centers and more.
Not your typical garbage truck! Choose your own corporate look - vehicle color, name and logo - get ready to watch your company grow!
Solve special tasks like waste glass containers, construction waste, toxic waste and more.

Honestly, I couldn't make this up....

Has anybody had experience with Trygames.com? They don't have the latest and the greatest, but they got Civ IV, Warhammer 40k, Supreme Commander, World in Conflict, Shogun, etc. Also classics like the Might and Magic Series plus a ton of casual games. I'm not sure if their games have DRM.

The idea of Steam is good. Another site that carries downloads of Civ IV ($49) and Civ III ($29)
  is Trygames.com.

There lots of titles, big and small. Big titles like FEAR, Empire Earth II, etc. There are smaller casual-gamer titles like Luxor, etc.

The idea of Steam is good. Another site that carries downloads of Civ IV ($49) and Civ III ($29)
  is Trygames.com.

There lots of titles, big and small. Big titles like FEAR, Empire Earth II, etc. There are smaller casual-gamer titles like Luxor, etc.

The idea of Steam is good. Another site that carries downloads of Civ IV ($49) and Civ III ($29)
  is Trygames.com.

There lots of titles, big and small. Big titles like FEAR, Empire Earth II, etc. There are smaller casual-gamer titles like Luxor, etc.

Some older games do cost a similar amount to new releases. I just checked at gogamer.com and Age of Empires 2 Gold lists for $27.95. Compare this to Age of Mythology at $29.95 and the cheapest (import edition) version of Age of Empires 3 at $36.90. Even Age of Empires Gold still sells for $14.95 - a respectable amount for an almost 10 year old game. This isn't just online, these prices are a bit cheaper than what I've seen at my local GameStop. Other games such as Warcraft 2 and 3, Diablo 2, the original Sims etc. still sell at pricing higher than your average old game.
Why? Supply and demand. These are truly classics and sell well for years because of that fact. You should also note that most of these games have very low system requirements by todays standards. So someone stuck with a 5 year old Dell with onboard video can still enjoy a game of Age of Empires 2.
What's even better is that these old games STILL have active communities of players! I recently purchased the Quake 4 special edition at a discount price. Try finding an online game of Quake 4 - the pickings are slim. On a whim I installed the included version of Quake 2 and opened Gamespy Arcade. What do you know! There are 10 times as many people playing Quake 2 as their are playing Quake 4.
So these older games retain value by being:

1. damn good games
2. having low system requirements (hence appeal to someone without the greatest hardware)
3. still having active online communties

Not every game fills these criteria and consequently not every game is worth even a fraction of full price even 6 months after release. You are right that a game shouldn't lose it's value immediately just because it's a bit old - my point is that in general the BEST ones - the real classics don't. They have a longer shelf life.
I'm also talking about games with a broad appeal. Now niche games have a different problem, they don't appeal to as many players and they may also represent a "risk purchase" for those interested because they are innovative in some measure. This isn't a bad thing, but niche developers need to realize that an entry point of $20 (or even $15 depending on the type of game) is much more comfortable for a risky purchase. I think a lot of them do, certainly in the puzzle game space. I would imagine that games like Bookworm and Bejeweled have done will with this model especially given the reduced cost of development versus something like Doom 3 (which honestly never should have been sold at $50 - that sucker should have been considered a tech demo bundle for video cards only). It should be noted that Bookworm and Bejewelled STILL sell at the $20 price, whereas you can probably find Doom 3 in a bargain bin by now. You could easily argue that a good selling indie game will hold it's price steady for longer than a mediocre big publisher's game.
It's also difficult to find reviews of indie/niche games which means 9 times out of 10 I'm flying blind on the purchase. Hopefully there is a demo, but demos can be deceptive.
I purchased Oasis based on a review in Computer Games magazine. It's a great game and well worth the $20. I may never have heard of it if I hadn't seen the review. I would love to see more reviews of indie/niche games but I also do realize that the big media may not be interested in reviewing the little guys.
Now some games - no matter how classic they once were - just don't hold their value. Should you really pay $9.95 for Might and Magic 1??? I have fond memories of the game, but is it really still worth $10? Honestly, I think games like this are better suited to a GameTap setup then being sold for $10 online. The same goes for the early Ultimas and action games like Karateka or Bruce Lee on the Apple 2/Commodore 64. Fun stuff to download and play for an hour, but hardly worth $10 today.

http://trygames.com/ has big-name titles. You can download the trials, which are different from the "trial" trials, then pay for the keys if you like it. The trials are actually the full versions, but are time-crippled. You can check it out.

What? Steam is the only direct-to-consumer internet-based game delivery service.

In a word, no. Trygames is not only much less intrusive, it also offers far more games.

Several other publishers and developers have also launched similar services. Paradox Interactive (Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis) and Atari are the two I can recall from the top.

Yahoo also offers games on demand, but will only accept customers from North America. I'm sure there are plenty of others, it's just that nobody else has the name of Half-Life 2 to help them market their service.

All of the titles in the list seem to be old DOS and Win95/98 titles.
It makes me suspicious that they got some of the game-names wrong (for example, they attribute Capcom with a "Mega Man X Legends", which does not even exist, although it's quite possibly a typo of 'Mega Man Legends', which was ported to PC around 1998), and even credited the wrong companies with games (an outfit called 'Div Games Studios' is listed as supplying Mega Man X, but that game is a part of Capcom's flagship Mega Man property). Oh yeah, and some of the companies that were listed no longer exist (some haven't for years, some went bankrupt not-so-long-ago), and others are listed several times - note that many of Take Two's various names are in that list, and Disney is listed as both 'Disney' and 'Disney Interactive'. The presence of editions of some software dated as far back as 2000 is also quite bizarre.

The whole list reads like they skimmed through a few lists of games-by-{whoever} on GameFAQs or someplace similar, and shoved it all into one document (and forgot to name it - it was called Untitled Document when it was first up).

(And isn't it odd that nobody has said they have dev-kits for the Phantom, considering when dev-kits arrive for existent new consoles, you tend to hear about it on gaming news sites?)

Incidentally, I've seen quite a few of the listed titles available for purchase on TryGames.com - isn't it curious that TryGames.com's try-and-buy-online service for PCs is so similar to the much-touted broadband-content-delivery-system that the modified-Win-XP (IIRC) based Phantom will supposedly have?

In closing, it just seems to me like it's more a case of "these big-name-big-developer games will run on our modified PC-like box", as opposed to "these developers are making games on our machine"...