Game Distributed Online Forgoes Publishers

KrackHouse writes "A group of developers from Black & White got together and used their bonuses to fund a project called Live For Speed. This online racing simulator uses the Internet as its distribution channel exclusively. No retail stores carry LFS and you need to use PayPal or a credit card to buy it.vIf this is successful will game publishers go the way of the RIAA and face irrelevance? LFS is much less expensive than a typical boxed title and if it ends up becoming a profitable venture more devs will surely jump on the solo bandwagon." It'll be a long time until this sort of thing becomes more common, and there's still a lot of consumer reassurance that comes from buying something in a box and having the disc laying around. It's a nice case study for what will inevitably become the way things are done, though.

Comments

This is nothing new

[Tuxinatorium]

Ambrosia Software, Inc. has been exclusively using this distribution model for its excellent line of mac shareware for 10 years, (somewhat) successfully. They're not exactly becoming the next microsoft, but they're not going out of business either