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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.
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.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
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.....
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