Slashdot Mirror
Sony Plans Digital Distribution?
Along with Sony's plans to take on Xbox Live, they may be planning a move to counter the Revolution's classic gaming library. GamesIndustry.biz reports that Sony may offer digital downloads of classic PSOne and PS2 titles. From the article: "In Sony's case the challenges may be significantly more difficult, since PlayStation titles were customarily several hundred megabytes in size, and PS2 titles spanned multiple gigabytes - compared to just a few megabytes or less for NES, SNES and N64 titles in the Nintendo back-catalogue. However, as Internet connections speed up downloads of this size will be far more reasonable - already, several Xbox Live demos for the Xbox 360 are over 600Mb in size - and our sources indicated that Sony may also be investigating the possibility of remastering certain PS2 titles to allow them to stream later content over the network while the player is already playing early parts of the game."
I think you misunderstand. The "streaming" of old games that was suggested would most likely be similar to Steam's function where you can start playing Half-Life 2 once you've got the first level downloaded. The later levels download to your PC as you play so you don't have to wait for the whole thing to finish before you start. It's not so much "only getting to download part of the game" as "only having to download part of the game".
I doubt any prices will be quoted for months, especially since this all rumour anyway. For my part, I've pretty much played all the PSX and PS2 games I wanted to (a few future PS2 releases aside), but I really hope Nintendo make a lot of their SNES and N64 games available - I've never owned a Nintendo console so would love to catch up on some classics with a Revolution.
It sounds to me that Sony is considering this as more of a checklist item then a headline feature. They have not been pushing their online component very hard at all, compared to say, the power of the cell processor.
If this was meant to be a serious feature, it would have been mentioned and covered long before now. But since Microsoft has proven its self with Xbox Live, and Nintendo has been talking about the access to their back library for some time, it sounds like Sony is getting a bit worried.
First, a week or two ago, someone brings up a story about a possible Revolution like controller scheme. Now were hearing about downloadable games. It just reeks of damage control marketing to me.
It also does not help that Sony does not have all that much in teh way of classic, evergreen titles to draw on. Most of their monster hits have recent iterations available, and those iterations are often in the vein of Gran Turismo, where the new ones are just going to be better then the old ones. I am sure they have some titles that qualify, though. You cannot get into Sony's current position without having any enduring hits.
END COMMUNICATION
The PS2 is still out there and you can get a ps1 with all the games you'd want for a couple of bucks second hand.
By the time the PS3 comes out the second hand ps2 games will go down in price as well, I wonder if it won't be cheaper to buy all the ps1 & 2 games you want second hand than through their online service.
Nintendo's catalog is much more interesting in that respect, the originals are often hard to find and expensive, heck even microsoft's offerings on marketplace are more interesting, where else can you get those classic arcade games, legally?
4.9GB games (a few PS2 games where even dual layer disks) pose another major problem - unlike the 1MB SNES games, where are you going to store them? The cost of the PS3 is already huge, do they really have the budget to include a 200GB harddrive? (and at that size they can't even use the cost cutting measure Microsoft used - to provide 10GB harddrives, they'd just bought already cheap 20GB units where one platter was uncertified, essentially B grade units that could be salvaged for the required storage space at a fraction of the cost)
This is technically a great idea, and the right way to go! However:
I may sound like a broken record here, but think about DRM. An online download could easily require authentication and even automated patching to play each time (especially on a closed hardware platform). Steam, anyone? This esentially means that whether you can play a game or not is entirely up to the mercy of whoever flips the switch somewhere out there.
This will never happen, you say. What about the following:
1. Can Sony find a reason why you shouldn't be allowed play the game? Forced obsoletion for instance? Yes.
2. Does Sony even need a reason to prevent you from playing? No.
3. Can Sony break the game with a patch that you'll be forced to install? Yes.
4. Can Sony be trusted to implement fair and reliable DRM? Hell, yeah! Right!
That's why this technology is dangerous as it is cool.