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Half-Life 2's Multitude Of Purchase Options
Thanks to ShackNews for their post explaining the multiple ways consumers can buy Half-Life 2, summing up a confirmed email/forum post by Valve's Gabe Newell following much false information. The options are summed up as: "...a single-player only mass market version ('sold mainly at the Costcos and Walmarts of the world'), a traditional single/multiplayer version for places like EB Games, and a collector edition's version ('with lots of cool bonus stuff for people who like cool bonus stuff')... [and] Steam pricing plans", which will include one-time download fees, or "...pay a monthly fee and have access to all Valve titles", including Half-Life 2.
Right, so if this game is out at the end of this month, is there any way to get a demo of it?
Probably not, if they have 26 more days to get it to market and they're still playtesting and pondering issues like this.
But how about a one level test? By this I mean - not a demo to get people to buy the game, but rather something running on the Source engine to see whether or not this stupid thing will even run on your system. Make it one of the scientist guys taking you through a tour of some of the things the engine will do, and maybe he could even reccomend ways to uprade your system for better performance. Hell, ATI or whoever could sponsor it.
I just don't want to buy it and then discover I have to upgrade to run worth a damn.
Schnapple
what ever happened to putting it on a dsc, putting the disc in the box, and giving the customers a simple package with a working, non-crippled product in it? this is utterly rediculous, in my opinion.
this is going to confuse the hell out of parents and grandparents buying the game for the upcoming holiday season.
also: is anyone else utterly sick of collectors editions of movies and games? at least they're putting this out at the same time, but still, I don't want to have to choose between a crappy bare bones version and a fancy version with hordes of extras and such.. if anything, make the game you get in all the boxes the same, and put a soundtrack cd, a t-shirt, a map, a pewter ordinator figurine, whatever in the collectors version.. not extra game content.
as for the mod community: I seriously think that with the various rediculous distribution methods, this will kill the mod community for HL2 before it even has a chance of being born.
Some people are complete idiots...
I think you missed the point. He's essentially saying that if you had bought this service in order to get the first Half-Life and its sequels, you would pay up to $720 ($120 a year for six years) in order to get two full games with expansion packs. It's both insightful AND funny.