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Games on Demand
Laurens Simonis writes "Yesterday, the Dutch ISP Planet Internet introduced a games subscription service. For a small monthly fee, about $10, you get unlimited access to a growing list of (sort-of) current games which you can legally download from them. Currently, you can pick from 20 titles including Tomb Raider Chronicles, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare and Commandos 2. New ones are added monthly. To my knowledge, this is the first time an ISP offers this kind of service. Personally, I'm all for the idea. Could this be the future? Half-Life developer Valve Software seems to think so." This looks really cool, but I'm curious as to how well it will catch on. It feels about 5 years too early to me, but here's hoping it performs well.
Given that I generally play a good game for at least a year, I'd hate to drop $120 on it. Although it'd be nice to have only spent $10 on something like Neverwinter Nights.
- Consult the dictionary frequently to avoid mispelling
Unfortuneately, there has to be tolerance to piracy built into the policy or it won't work.
If you download a game, you have the install media. It's a simple matter of building a app or a device to circumvent the copy protection it has at that point. There are no hardware controls like broken CD specs built into this kind of system, so I can't see it depending on hardware copy protection either.
For online games, using an account tied to the download account will keep people from using piracy that way, but look at all the people who downloaded Warcraft3 and then never played online.
Long and short, there has to be a margin built into this business model that's tolerant of a certain level of underground distribution. If the system is not tolerant of this, and tries to depend on legislation, litigation, or user controls to keep users from distributing copies then it won't work.
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I don't think its too soon for games on demand.. Look at all the people who play on sites like pop-cap games, yahoo games and msn zone. There are many games that are available on demand, and as thus are played on demand.
I think the factor that will truly bring this idea success will be when you don't have to download to play the game. You visit the URL, and the game plays... Maybe that would require the game to install on demand... or maybe it already exists with languages like java and flash, where all you need to download are some datafiles (And a small amount of game code).
An online browser-based Starcraft RPG? Only at
In soviet russia, all your us are belong to base!
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
... Like me.
Wouldn't this plan allow me to sign-up, download all the games available for $10 and then quit. I could then play those games for a few months without paying monthly. Then, later if they had more games I could sign up and repeat. If I can work it that way, this company will not get the recurring cash flow they expected.
On the other hand it is still a win. A bunch of games that otherwise were getting dusty in the bargain bin or bit bucket get another go round because they are available easily and cheap. $10 for all the games I could download in a month: Sounds GREAT!
This space for rent
Interesting games indeed.
"Caution: Exent Technologies Ltd asserts that this content is safe"
exent.. exent.. where have I seen that name...
Yahoo! Online Games Contain Spyware, the story on Civ3 downloadable from yahoo.
So they just moved to another platform, right?
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
Suppose the ISP finds that there were 1,000 downloads of a particular title one month. How do they pay the software companies royalties? I mean, what if the user downloaded it, realized it was a mistake, then deleted it without ever playing the game. Does that count as a "sale?"
I use the Yahoo Games on Demand service, and honestly, I'm thrilled with it. They have several different payment options, up to $15/month for 10 games. Some games you can only rent for 3 days and that costs $5. Usually the newer stuff.
The selection is pretty good, again, mostly older stuff like Civ III and railroad tycoon, but also some really interesting games like Legion and Tropico. I'd prolly say I buy about 4 computer games a year, spending about $200...probably more. For me, $15/month is a bargain and I get to try many more games.
The technology isn't quite 100%, but it's good enough and getting better. I think everyone should try it out, especially considering you can get started for $5.
Does any one remember the Sega Channel? Basically, your sega genesis was hooked up to the cable and you downloaded games and played them that way. I (Being a nintendo zealot) only played when I went to friends' houses, but I was really cool not having to go to Blockbuster to get a game.
I wonder what ever happened to that.....
What, me Tweet?
The reason you see alot of older games is that publishers are hesitant to make games availiable in a G.O.D format at the same time they are released to retail stores. The reason being, G.O.D is perceived as a threat by retailers, and given that currently retailers are the biggest channel, publishers might prefer not to upset them. (this may or may not change in the future as broadband becomes more prevalent as a delivery channel).
As for piracy, the games on demand technology being used here is probably based on the exent system (http://www.exent.com). Application data in the exent system is encyrpted and compressed before being delivered to the consumer, a connection is maintained with the media delivery server at all times, without this connection you cannot start the application or decrypt its data. The user also never has the full application on their computer at any time, its streamed as its needed (they use application profiling to make sure you have downloaded the data you need ahead of when you need it). Its not unbreakable, nothing is, but publishers have signed off on it being secure enough for them to use.
G.O.D probably isn't ready for the market yet (or perhaps the market isn't ready for G.O.D), the technology works fine, but broadband just isnt in enough households for it to be a big market (You need more then just the "hardcore" gamers to use this to see any profit). There is also the reluctance of the publishers to release new titles to G.O.D at the same time as retail holding it back.
Just like the others, I want to have the software on a disk. With the way things are going with DRM and streaming software I really do not like this idea.
The main reason is that it gives the company more control over the software. At least when I own the physical disk, cd, dvd, etc, I know that I can keep using it as long as I like, have the security knowing that if something goes wrong I still can reinstall it, etc. Then there is with some exceptions (mmorpgs, virus protection, etc) the fact that they can't charge me anymore for the software that I paid.
With something like a streamed game for example, what would happen if the company goes out of business? I would probably not be able to use it again. The business could also put restrictions on the software, with the usual EULA that allows them to disable and even take away the software for what ever reason they feel like. I sure wouldn't like it if the game I legally bought this way was removed by company and just happens to occur when they start introducing new fees scheme.
I also wonder how much it will cost me to keep my software, it may cost $10 a month for a similar service but I would rather pay $50 and use a disk that they can't take away from me or charge me more for later. Besides, most of those listed are so so bargain bin titles that you can own them for $10 and less.
The only good thing I can see in this is that by having the game streamed it might reduce cheating.
Unfortunately, Planet Internet is an awful ISP in every other respect. When I stopped using their services after three years of frustration with their unreliable SMTP, their lack of SPAM wave filtering, and having to put up with their customer service SPAM as well as a completely ignorant help desk service ("You have problems sending large e-mail? OK, let's run through your ISDN hardware configuration first."). They dropped their monthly fee, and then started luring customers with all kinds of add-on services, without improving the quality of the actual connection service. Then they started billing dial-up cost (pay per minute) instead of the telco with no opt-out regulation, so I could not separate Internet use between private and business anymore. And THEN I had just about had it, and switched to an ISP that simply runs a decent service, doesn't offer (too many) entertainment add-ons, and doesn't offer those written out in SPAM.
Interesting is, that this ISP simply *has to* offer these add-on services, as their fee is much too low, but also because they are the daughter company of telco KPN Telecom, and they (need to/ have been ordered to) generate interest in KPN's broadband services this way. You simply wouldn't download a 500MB game over a dial-up connection, so this is just another scheme to drive people's interest in purchasing broadband connections.
JeR