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Rent-a-Game
Mwongozi writes: "British broadband users can now rent computer games to see if they are any good before they lay out the cash to buy the full game. This week, BT Openworld revealed details of its Software To Go scheme which lets people rent software by the hour, day or week. This includes games, graphics packages, educational titles and even programs that let you design your garden."
...at least in Columbia, MD. And it was only games. You could actually go in and rent CD-ROM titles just like you would Playstation games. Guess they didn't rent too many because they don't do it any more.
... or the big bad ISDA shut them down :)
Electronic Boutique offers returns on opened packages, for full refunds. They never have a problem with me returning any game, just cause I "don't like it".
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Electronics Boutique launched EB1.COM a while ago. It's the same service, availible to broadband users in the US/Canada. This is old news.
--The space between my ears was intentionally left blank--
This isn't a bad idea. Yes, most Linux users will just use a free piece of software but regular Windows users are different.
I've lost count of how many times people have complained to me about crappy software they were stuck with after buying it blind. This could save them some money.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This looks very similar to the streaming software technology developed by IntoCenter earlier this year. Electronic Boutique has made some interesting titles available through the IntoPlayer. I gave it a try a couple of months ago and it seemed to work quite well - although it only works on Windows 95/98/Me. The other odd thing is that it installs a SCSI controller into your hardware configuration; I suppose that is how they create an encrypted file system.
Personally, I think this concept is great - there's nothing I hate more than spending $60+ on a game and finding out that it sucks. However, I wonder how long it will be before someone cracks the encryption?
"It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe."
Have you seen that site?
Check out "buffer times" for a wonderful joke. It lists "expected start times in minutes" vs your rated connection. Got 1.2 Mbps download? Start time on Thief 2 is 55 minutes! Only have 256 Kbps -- hour about 4+ hours!
Nice idea, but if the implementation isn't better than that, they will never fly.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Those "dummies" got to sell the same game over and over.
Buy once, sell many. Not so dumb after all.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
There are fewer games but it seems cheaper: a game for 7 days for 50 kroner (about 4 UKP), 12 games for 30 days (they select the games) 150 kroner (12 UKP) and 5 games for 7 days for 100 kroner.
All games can be downloaded (they claim to use some sort of streaming technology so they are downloaded on demand rather than everything at once). If you are a CC ADSL customer, you can also temporarily upgrade your bandwidth for a price to speed up the download :)
shhh... don't give them ideas! Actually, you do raise a very good point. What happens when other "rentable" software starts doing this? Like, for instance, what M$ has been trying to figure out with Office. The whole "planned obselecence" crap. This brings it to a whole new level, and it ain't gonna be pretty.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I find it hard to believe that people would not be able to keep the games they download, without modifications to the original game; however, I will not completely discount the idea. Also, being a 56k luser I couldn't help but notice that it takes a broadband connection.
The two things that really concerns me about this, is first, this would be an ideal place for a virus to spread. With high-speed users connecting to the server to download and run games, the whole system invites disaster.
Secondly, (as I see it) what is to keep this company from invading your privacy or compromising your system to the outside world? Anything that is dealing with licenses, registry values, and such is surely advance enough to return to the server what is in those files.
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Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Yeah, I hear that you can .. um .. rent software before you buy it on usenet, although, you are renting the software for free.
it's a sig, wtf?
I won't purchase a game unless it has a demo, or the cool-guys at Wizards of the Coast or Comp-USA open one up and let me test drive in their LAN room. Those are the only to places around here (SF Bay area) that I know of that will let me try before buy. Of course the BEST option is to buy with a credit card and then allow VISA to negotiate with the company if it's a DUD.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Not to mention the fact that a good majority of console makers are planning game downloads (if only demos) for next generation machines. Sony and Microsoft can all but ensure this capability, with ethernet and hard drive support (XBox has this out of box). Of course, there were also plans to have a CD-ROM for the SNES, so who knows what will materialize? :)
You might want to think that one through a little.....
Software rental was made illegal in the US under the "Software Rental Amendments Act of 1990" ... [which] is still on the books.
The citation is 17 USC 109(b). Note that section 109(b)(1)(B)(2) makes an explicit exception to allow software designed for video game consoles to be rented, defining video game console as "a limited purpose computer that is designed for playing video games and may be designed for other purposes."
This may have an adverse effect on rental for PlayStation 2 software, as Sony markets the PS2 console as a computer to get around several countries' import duties and other taxes. For instance, the Japanese PS2 can run a simple GNU/Linux system, and the European PS2 has a Basic interpreter. It could very well be the case that Sony has not released the PS2 Linux kit in the United States because it doesn't want the extra paperwork burden of licensing rental rights to all the game rental stores.
Will I retire or break 10K?
In my town there used to be a co-op that you could join for a yearly fee of $50 or so. In exchange, you could buy and sell games and apps all year long at no loss. You could keep the game/app for as long as you liked, and sell it back for the same price whenever you were sick of it.
Channelware (now called NetActive) used to rent games through a deal with Blockbuster. They also distributed games inside cereal boxes that you could only play for a limited time. If you liked the game, you could rent the software online to "re-charge" the CD the games came on.
Also, from the article: Exent had broken up the rentable programs into chunks that were streamed to a user's PC when they needed them. The chunks sat in the working memory of the user's machine and were never written to the hard disk, making the software almost impossible to pirate
What's that smell? Is the powerful and obnoxious odour of mendacity? I think it is, because either you'd need a Gb of RAM, or you'd need to wait another 20 minutes for each level to load, and anyway, you could still alt-tab, load something massive, and have the whole lot paged to your hard drive swap.
All that said, I might give this a try and see if it's more convenient than trialling games from Usenet (and yes, I do trial them, and pay for what I want to keep, or just wait six months for the title to go budget).
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
erm.. I have NTL broadband, and it's 512kbs downstream and 128kbs upstream.
They do also offer a 64kps service, but don't wrongly assume that's _all_ they offer, as it isn't.
Note that I am paying UKP20/month (less than US$30) and the 64kps service is UKP5/month - including cable modem rental.
Although the NTL cable modem service often sucks for online gaming (due to ping times), in terms of bandwidth and availability it's a superb service and very fairly priced.
Having said that, I suspect I wont be using BTs Openworld service - I can rent games from my local video store, or (my normal tactic) I wait until a friend recommends a game to me before buying.
~Cederic