Console Makers Pushing For More Network Reliance

There's a story on Joystiq about the convergence of games consoles and network play, suggesting that the industry is slowly moving away from physical media, preferring the control and simplicity of online distribution. The article points out that Microsoft's Games for Windows Live, despite being relatively unpopular, has seen continued development with an eye toward interacting with Xbox Live. Quoting: "While it's unlikely that the next generation of consoles will completely forgo disc-based media, downloads are quickly becoming a much bigger part of the experience. Some games, such as Rock Band 2 and Gears of War 2, are now shipping with codes for free downloads. This isn't because the publishers like you and want to give you free stuff. It's part of a larger strategy to increase the importance of the online presence, where content can be tightly controlled and decrease the importance of physical media, and thus, used-game sales and rentals."

Comments

Re:Consoles with Internet Access

[slash.duncan]

I never hated consoles with Internet access, they're useful for running emerge --sync and then emerge --update --deep --newuse --ask --verbose @world for instance. No X need be loaded for that! =:^) But network RELIANCE? Well, I suppose if you're running remotely, you're relying on the network, but what about those of us who only run a single home computer and don't need or want remote console access? Why would we want to RELY on the network to even get a local console CLI running? Are they proposing a TCP socket interface much like X may use, only setup directly from the kernel using (possibly 2.6.28 configured-in) kernel command line options? Why?

Seriously, I read the title in my RSS client and couldn't figure out why Linux console makers (and is that the kernel folks, or the BASH folks, or what?) would be pushing for more network reliance. The best I could come up with was that the maintainers (or some patch submitter) of the early console stuff used for debugging, typically over a serial terminal, wanted to update it to handle Ethernet. It wasn't until I clicked on the link to see what the story was, and started reading the summary, that I realized it was GAME consoles it was talking about.

Re:Arrrr

[bonjour3]

i still think starcraft is the best game ever: http://www.3v3bgh.com/