Slashdot Mirror
MS & Game Rentals
pin_gween writes "Technology News says Microsoft has entered an agreement with Exent to provide On-Demand Video Games. So far, only 6 Microsoft games are licensed to the on-demand service (which costs from US$4.95 to $14.95 a month for access to anywhere from 50 to 300 titles). MS titles are "Age of Empire," "Age of Mythology," "Dungeon Siege," "Mechwarrior," "Rise of Nations" and "Zoo Tycoon." Exent lured MS with the "the shelf life can be prolonged and create additional revenue for the publisher not generated by the retail channel"."
Hey, it's made valve a fortune, I'm sure.
This is going to be like that Quake shareware CD, free games for everyone!
when you can P2P for free! :-)
Java Oracle Linux Enthusiast
Because you all know you want those 3-4 year old games for $5-15 month charge when you can buy then for $5 bucks...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
"Because it's better for your customer to be a sharecropper than a freeman," sayeth the Baron.
has capitalism really come this far, when one can rent a game that no one plays? i see it perfectly, "no one buys this game, so lets see if anyone rents it and forgets about it so we make MORE money!" it's like the days of video rentals.... so so sad.
How much farther can geeks beat a joke into the ground? The Microsoft Borg joke wasn't funny to begin with, yet slashdot keeps flogging it to death for some reason. Our of all the topic icons on slashdot, only Microsoft gets the crappy, derogatory icon. Why is that? There's no good reason you guys can't use the MS logo just like for all the others. It's also funny how many Microsoft ads there are on slashdot. You guys hate them so much, yet have no problem taking their advertising dollars. Nice hypocrisy there.
In the 90's there was a thing here called "SegaChannel" by the local cable company (Rogers). It was $30.00 a month, and you got access to about 50-100 games, that changed about half of them every month.
We need that back! It was probably the most value that I have ever gotten for my money to do with games. (excluding free)
Age of Empire. It's like Age of Empires, but with just one!
Or don't. Whatever.
Personally, I like "all-you-can-eat" models for entertainment, since I have a large appetite and a short attention span. First music, then video, and now games. Logical, but I have to give MS some credit for being the first to enter this space in a significant way.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
I'd rather download a program via my broadband in a few minutes to an hour sometimes than go to a video rental store only to find the copy they said was available over the phone is not able to be found. However, the titles MS is offering leaves much to be desired.
Oh ya, I can't wait to shell out 14.95 for a solid MONTH of Zoo Tycon. Where does the time go?
suck my ping!
I'm not very familiar with the Microsoft game line, but are not most or all of the games offered ones that there has been a follow-up sequel to? Might Microsoft not see this as a way to gain revenue while at the same time use an old version of a game to promote a newer version of the game? I noticed the obvious absence of the Microsoft "Train Simulator" here, the game that even beta testers reported in bug reports "Unable to have fun with this game" and suspect it's because there is no sequel (the game rapidly lost it's shelf space). So while other companies sometimes release an older title into the wild as a way to promote a newer version, Bill has decided to charge users a reoccuring monthly fee for people to receive such promotions of new games. Nothing new there from the way Microsoft normally views their customers.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Maybe is just a purchase in anticipation of a valve's steam like download service for the new xbox 2??
--
Dreamhost superb hosting.
Kunowalls!!! Random sexy wallpapers.
Hosting 20G hd, 1Tb bw! ssh $7.95
I think I actually have to credit MS here with doing something fairly original. I think at the right price a game subscribtion service would be a good thing for people like me who play games for 2 weeks and shelve them.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
No item about the fact that Carmack chooses the Xbox360 as his main development platform ?
Microsoft needs to release their god forsaken windows vista instead of focusing on all this other dumb shit.
Wasn't this supposed to be the service that would draw customers to Infinium's vapo.. Phantom console?
Anyone still investing in Infinium after hearing this news deseves to lose their money.
Sure, very nice, keep pumping air into a product as long as possible since you don't have to compete for shelf space with other games, or heck even your newest offerings, but there's an opportunity here -- The opportunity to keep your bloddy piece of junk bug-fixed. Do you suppose they'll seize the opportunity?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
These games are old. How about a selection of newer games?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Why would anyone rent games online when you can just... uhh... nm :P
Give me a $40/month subscription, with access to 10-20 games, keep the games updated and current, and I'm in. I don't spend anywhere near $480 a year on games (more like $60), but I might be willing to if done right.
That said, I don't think the retailers have anything to worry about immediately, as you'd have to be an idiot to pay $14.95 a month to rent a game you can buy for $20.00.
I just bought a copy of Dungeon Siege, which included the Legends of Aranna expansion pack, for $20.00 at Fry's. Not only do I own the damn thing and not get dunned every month, but I also don't have to install some insidious piece of spyware/copy-protection enforcement sh*t which phones home reporting my usage and any other damn thing they "need" to know about. Mechwarrior 4 can also be found on the cheap rack for $20.00. And if you really want an amazing bargain, grab Loki's Descent 3 for $4.95, which includes the Mercenary expansion pack.
This is a really, really dumb idea.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I much prefer this service to Microsoft's.
As other posters have mentioned, we gamers do have the desire to get games over the net. Not only that, a lot of games that don't have much replayability and I'm satisfied with a rental.
Why are there only old games? What about even selling games digitally (yeah, I'd accept some DRM crap for the convience)?
So what's the holdup?
Theres no market for this kind of service. Most of the people into games enough to want to play games in quantity, are "hardcore" enough that they've already played games from a few years ago (or later versions of them); got bored of them, and have them still on the shelf somewhere. If youve played Red Alert 2, Starcraft, and C&C Generals, why would you want to play the original Command & Conquer? Or better yet - would it even run properly? It might run better on Winex than WinXP ! LOL! Anyways...
The less-hardcore gamers likely dont want to pay monthly fees for games, when they already pay monthly fees for various other services. Not to mention how pirating of older games has probably rendered this whole thing utterly useless anyway. People might balk at copying new games, but older ones just feel like fair game once they're off the shelves of stores. People often just borrow old games, and movies from friends/neighbours, and return the disc later. ANd with old games/movies, there is no "copy protection"; so they actually last for a while.
Then theres the whole preventing piracy of games while using the service - its quite likely this thing will go up, everyone will download and crack tons of games, then cancel their subscription.
"So, I gave you money but I don't own this game? Hmm."
But this one at least sounds like it didn't suck a fortune out of investors.
Nice karma whore post. The wikipedia article just repeated everything the grandparent had to say. Now I could see if it actually added more information to the conversation, but you just wasted my time. Thanks.
The article compares this move to the video rental market, whereas here these old game get a second chance at life (and revenue). But I get the distinct feeling Microsoft is leasing these games to Exent simply watch what happens before taking over this market.
Folks who follow the gaming news should realize that Xbox 360 is being set up almost entirely around the "Live" service. J Allard even admits this is their current strategy. Anyone with more than a couple brain cells to rub together should realize Microsoft is going to use the new Live service to nickel and dime their customers to death. Xbox 360 Live will be a delicious post-purchase revenue generator for MS. Monthly game rentals would seem a good fit with all the other Live revenue-enhancers and, if this experiment pans out with Exent, I wouldn't doubt these type of "rentals" will also begin showing up on Xbox360 Live.
{ - Generic Guy - }
This was just a report about a business deal that happened. These games are some of the games that microsoft wants to license out to this company. For g-d sakes peope, this was just decided upon! I think microsoft sees the success that sega had with their service and I think that he plans to do the same, but keep in mind that he too will have to license bigger, more popular games that he doesnt own, so thats another reason. Within a year or two, for up to 30$ a month people will definately do this service. I'm sure gates knows to expand the library further than what he has so far...
Pretty Damn Far, I personally try to beat on or two a day.Hipocrisy?
The Microsoft Borg joke wasn't funny to begin with, yet slashdot keeps flogging it to death for some reason.
Ask Bungie, Rare and a list of thousands. May not be funny but would be stupid to ignore. All I can say is, assimilate me Bill, I could use the money.
Our of all the topic icons on slashdot, only Microsoft gets the crappy, derogatory icon. Why is that?
I dunno, why don't we have a derogatory SCO Icon? Isn't the MS logo some kind of trademark, We'd have scientology lawyers all over the place, no way, no thanks.
It's also funny how many Microsoft ads there are on slashdot.
What do you mean funny? Funny like a clown! Are we here to squeak our noses and amuse you? (Ok I'm here for that anyone else? /squeak)
You guys hate them so much, yet have no problem taking their advertising dollars.
This is the easiest to explain. We hate them so much for a lot of VALID reasons. But I think #1 is they have all the IT/Software money. It's a bitch to make a buck writing code. Guess what, if they wanna give me cash because I say they suck, right under their logo, How could I refuse? They are funding this conversation about why we think they suck Right now.
Nice hypocrisy there.
You're new here, hunh? We stand for what we stand for and nothing else. MS has a right to sell software/meeses/KBs/XBOXS/CellPhone/ADVERTISING and we have the right to bitch about, well, pretty much whatever we want. (as witnessed by your troll) And take whatever scraps they feed us.
As I click my bright orange Microsoft Optical wireless mouse on Submit I ask are you full yet?
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
"It's just another baby step toward the death of retail, that glorious day when we're not paying $20 for a box and $20 for a game. Instead, we'll probably just be paying $40 for just the game, but at least it'll go into the developers' pockets rather than a publisher."
Yeah that's what Microsoft, as a publisher, is trying to do. I do hope he is right though as a developer.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
I know, it's a stupid little detail, but it still pisses me off. P.S. MechWarrior 2 was the best.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
I knew a bunch of people doing this in the Boston area back in '98. Of course that was before enough people had broadband and then cam eteh tech crash and they got laid off and I lost touch... but still.. wonder if this is the same crew.
That being said, it's only a matter of time before some clever programmer finds a way to break the encryption and extract that data. Yes, this is very illegal, and the games may need to be further tampered with to keep them from reporting you (I'm sure these "rental" versions will be partially rewritten to hook up to an online server for validation and perhaps other things), but they don't have to find out about it.
What would make the system harder to break is if not all the data were there, but in fact mostly kept on the server. For example, you've downloaded the game engine, which then goes to request small packets of game data from the server on a case-by-case basis as the are needed, deleting them when they are no longer needed. Games will consume hardly any hard drive space, but at the cost of your ability to pirate them (and pirate them you must).
I remember the '90's. I remember that it was actually legal for people and businesses to lend or rent, or even re-sell the software they'd purchased to other people. The only condition was that it wasn't allowed to be run in more than one place at a time. Locally, we even had rent-by-mail companies that would take out full page advertisements in magazines, and post you software to use for a limited amount of time before you were (legally) required to uninstall it and return it.
Software companies -- not even Microsoft, but especially Microsoft -- went to great lengths to inform their customers that they were allowed to install Microsoft Word from their work onto their home PC, as long as it was only being used on one PC at a time. After all, it was clear that the software was licenced for use to the person who'd paid for it, so they were allowed to use it wherever it was most convenient for them without having to pay multiple times.
Some software had basic copy protection (eg. flight simulator games that asked you to quote a random word from page 215 of the manual), but there was rarely serious DRM. Software companies were quite clearly concerned about software piracy, but they weren't trying to wipe out customer's existing rights to solve that problem. On the contrary, most software companies and consumers actually acted as if they "trusted" each other, compared with today.
Somehow, this whole attitude has been lost in recent years, at least in commercial software. A major part of it seems to have been about when the media barons leapt to digital and brought all their annoying views on draconian copy protection with them. There's no way in hell you'd be allowed to casually install a work copy of MS Word on a home PC today, unless your company had a special agreement that they'd paid extra for. Even with this, there would still be DRM loopholes to jump through. You'd probably end up in jail for 15 years as an example to other "criminals" if the Microsoft-sponsored BSA lawyers had their way.
Times change, I guess.
Wintendo!
Smirking, crouching, and fleeing...
6. Loss!!
Who cares if four year old games are pirated to heck and back? They already have been, four years ago. And they're worth ZERO to the IP holders right now, because the only sales happening are happening in the secondary market where you won't see a penny. The subscription service is a way to resuscitate those rights to some degree. Another would be a download service like iTunes for games -- our entire back catalog (of, say, games older than two years -- until two years keep releasing Greatest Hits SKUs), $5 per game, no support and no warranty. And then just let the Long Tail go to work for you.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.