A Brief History of Downloadable Console Games

Ant sends in a story at CNet about the evolution of downloadable console games, ranging from Intellivision's PlayCable in 1981 to the modern systems we see today. Quoting: "Intellivision was the first home console to let users download games via a coaxial cable line. Subscribers rented a special cartridge that hooked up to local cable and would be able to download single games that could be played until users decided to download new titles. The service's downfall was a result of innovations to Mattel's Intellivision game system, which began using cartridges with ever-increasing amounts of memory. The PlayCable service could no longer keep up, since the special cartridge could hold only a fourth of the total space that newer games required."

Comments

A Homebrewer's best friend

[protologix]

Console game downloading services, giving hackers holes to load homebrew through since 1981

Re:A Homebrewer's best friend

[ae1294]

Isn't homebrew code speak for pirates these days?

And pirate is code speak for DRM freedom fighter.

Re:Cable penetration

[Joe The Dragon]

comcrap cable

Obligatory Transformers reference

[Gax]

ba weep gra na weep nini bon

Re:The console Catch-22

[tepples]

You develop a game on the PC

One typically develops homebrew games on a PC and runs them on a console. I take it you meant develop and run on a PC, but it's a pain to fit four players holding USB gamepads around a 19" PC monitor, and the majority of your audience won't have an HDTV or a PC video card capable of outputting composite or S-Video to a CRT SDTV.

and put it on NewGrounds or some similar site.

Newgrounds is a Flash site. The homebrew tools are usually much cheaper than Adobe Flash CS. Besides, Flash doesn't even support gamepads.