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Games Entertainment

Games on Demand 155

Posted by CowboyNeal from the here's-my-money-keep-the-games-coming dept.
Laurens Simonis writes "Yesterday, the Dutch ISP Planet Internet introduced a games subscription service. For a small monthly fee, about $10, you get unlimited access to a growing list of (sort-of) current games which you can legally download from them. Currently, you can pick from 20 titles including Tomb Raider Chronicles, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare and Commandos 2. New ones are added monthly. To my knowledge, this is the first time an ISP offers this kind of service. Personally, I'm all for the idea. Could this be the future? Half-Life developer Valve Software seems to think so." This looks really cool, but I'm curious as to how well it will catch on. It feels about 5 years too early to me, but here's hoping it performs well.
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Games on Demand More

Games on Demand

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  • Good for occasional gamer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @05:56PM (#5610541) Homepage Journal
    For someone that wants to pop on and play a game casually, this is great.

    But for the hardcore gamer, I think they'd prefer to have the game in hand.

    • Not only that, some people like to have the origin (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rooked_One ( 591287 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:20PM (#5610649) Journal
      Some like to have the original "collectors edition" - if you will - CD case, box, and possibly tin in their possesion. I know I still have my CD case of Quake from the day it came out, as I'm sure many other /.'ers do also. Or what about quake3 or any game that revolutionized gaming and made for lots of mods. I mean look at Half Life. IT CAME FROM QUAKE!!! Please don't say it came from quake2, I don't want to argue semantics with people who just don't know.

      Heck, this is offtopic as it comes, but I just recently threw away my VOODOO card box. I still have the card :) Sucker cost 250 bucks when it first came out. OUCH! But boy did it make GLQuake a work of art. I bet you old cards like that will be come like old baseball cards down the road. Well probably not. =p

      • I've actually started collecting original CD's for their nostalgia value. I'm currently trying to acquire all the original lucasarts games. I got Full Throttle in the original celluphane the other day and I'm working on getting day of the tentacle..which that code wheel thingy and all.

        A friend of mine just got the OG duke3d with the mousepad..still wrapped in celluphane. Fun hobby I've picked up..should be interesting to see what else I can get.
      • I bet you old cards like that will be come like old baseball cards down the road.

        And I'll bet you that 15 to 30 years down the road, almost all material possessions - including most antiques, caviar, diamond, and SLI voodoo's - will become almost worthless thanks to nanotechnology being able to manipulate atoms like bits.

        The only way to help preserve the value of a one-of-a-kind material object is to make sure that NO ONE EVER gets their hands on the master molecular scan backup(s) (and there WILL have

    • Re:Good for occasional gamer (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Erasmus Darwin ( 183180 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @07:11PM (#5611021)
      "But for the hardcore gamer, I think they'd prefer to have the game in hand."

      This service would allow them to best decide which games they actually want to have in hand.

      • That's what demos are for though. As a hardcore gamer myself though, I tend to flit from title to title. (Can't remember the last game I completed. Probably Half Life. Most games I like don't have definite endings though, like sports games etc...) So not having to shell out full price for a game I may only play for 10 hours or so would be cool.

        Though for casual gamers I guess it's a good idea. But casual gamers generally only play one title for a while, at least the casual gamers I know anyway. (My wife is
        • I can see your point, a casual gamer might buy maybe 1 game per year ($50), while a hardcore gamer might buy a game every couple of months ($300/year). So the service would make more sense to the hardcore gamer because they could save money with the service ($120/year). Not sure though, I consider myself a hardcore gamer, but I only buy a few games per year. The rest I warez.
    • And there is a certain amount of fun involved in going to game stores...(Chiefly talking to the clerks about new releases and stuff...)

      But I concur, this is a godsend for those people who would rather sit on their ass downloading stuff than actually go to the game store... Or people who are just too damn busy.

    • But for the hardcore gamer, I think they'd prefer to have the game in hand.

      Heh. I've seen quite a few young "hardcore gamers" who don't actually have a copy of the game "in hand" at all...

  • Translation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by koh ( 124962 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @05:57PM (#5610551) Journal
    "Since P2P consumes our bandwidth anyway, we may as well provide the games ourselves and make a buck in the process".

    Smart move though.

  • Since its in German (Score:3, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi AT yahoo DOT com> on Thursday March 27, 2003 @05:57PM (#5610553) Journal
    Can I assume that Tetris is the only game not on the restricted list?

  • Not worth the money (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Out4Blood ( 247541 )
    Given that I generally play a good game for at least a year, I'd hate to drop $120 on it. Although it'd be nice to have only spent $10 on something like Neverwinter Nights.

    • Re:Not worth the money (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Blaine Hilton ( 626259 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:05PM (#5610621) Homepage
      I think this is why it would be great for occasional gamers, or someone that would like a "try-before-you-buy" type situtaion. Pay for a month and try a bunch of games and then if you are going to play a game over and over then drop your subscritpion and buy it.
      • I would suspect that you won't be able to play the latest and greatest from this service, perhaps again the 'occasional gamer' market.

        I suppose that wouldn't change a great deal for me, since I refuse to give over $45 for a game, I end up waiting a month or two anyhow.

        -Zipwow
  • So let me get this streight. I pay you $10 for a $40 game.

    And I can download all the other games too!

    Even if you just want one game it pays off.

    Something is missing here. How would a company make money like this.
    • You pay $10 PER MONTH.
      You stop paying, you lose the game (at least, in theory).

    • Re:WOW (Score:3, Informative)

      by irc.goatse.cx troll ( 593289 )
      As FortKnox said, Its monthly. Also, as a Steam beta tester I can tell you there are plenty of drawbacks. If their servers are down or for whatever reason decied you shouldnt be able to play, You loose the game. If you're on dialup, You cant play either. If your connection dies, no game. You see what I'm getting at -- its not all fun and games..erm..atleast not all fun..

    • Re:WOW (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      How would a company make money like this.

      I'm guessing it's a loss-leader to make broadband more attractive.

      My attempt to read their site only got as far as "Om deze site optimaal te bekijken is versie 5 van de Macromedia Flash plugin benodigd. U kunt deze installeren door hier te klikken.", though. Hopefully "U kunt" means something different in Dutch, but I'm not taking any chances and won't be klikkening hier.

    • making money (Score:2, Insightful)

      by slackr ( 228760 )
      I don't know exactly how much of an offset can be reaped here, but I think one major efficiency of this distribution method is in the massive cost of packaging/distributing side of the gaming marketplace. I would not be a bit surprised to see a massive reduction in material and especially labor overhead when you consider the reduction in manufacturing and transportation, not to mention the massive effort required to maintain relationships with retailers and their markups. Keep in mind also that many games

  • Tolerance For Piracy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @05:59PM (#5610566)
    Unfortuneately, there has to be tolerance to piracy built into the policy or it won't work.

    If you download a game, you have the install media. It's a simple matter of building a app or a device to circumvent the copy protection it has at that point. There are no hardware controls like broken CD specs built into this kind of system, so I can't see it depending on hardware copy protection either.

    For online games, using an account tied to the download account will keep people from using piracy that way, but look at all the people who downloaded Warcraft3 and then never played online.

    Long and short, there has to be a margin built into this business model that's tolerant of a certain level of underground distribution. If the system is not tolerant of this, and tries to depend on legislation, litigation, or user controls to keep users from distributing copies then it won't work.
    • hah! you don't have to have an account to play WC3 online. Ask google about kali

    • If you download a game, you have the install media. It's a simple matter of building an app or a device to circumvent the copy protection it has at that point. There are no hardware controls like broken CD specs built into this kind of system, so I can't see it depending on hardware copy protection either.

      This is an extremely simplistic view of the process. Of course if you view it like it's just a glorified "click here to download and install" kind of process, you'll assume it's a "simple matter" t

      • Re:Tolerance For Piracy (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:38PM (#5610772)
        From comments of beta testers, it sounds like the games maintain a connection to the ISP offering the service. This is probably an encrypted stream of keep-alive responses. They games probably also distributed to the user in an encrypted install package.

        The problem here is that at some point, the decryption information is in the hands of the user, even if he doesn't know it. All it takes is one guy to do adqueate packet sniffing or memory reading (ala ShowEQ) to intercept the key and then build an app that acts as a licensing server.

        If you look at any of the high-end grphical apps (3dsmax, for example), this is the way they enfoce their licenses... with a manditory server connection. One of the 'cracks' for 3dsmax is an app that installs as a windows service and intercepts the app's request for authorization. It masquerades itself as the authorization server and tells 3dsmax to run. The crack comes as a windows installer, easy for a novice to install and run. (I've heard of more than one novice user opening themselves up to BO or other trojans in this manner.)

        3dsmax is a fairly esoteric modelling application with a relatively small possible user-base, including those who are running illigitimate copies.

        Games such as those listed in the artcle would be in *much* higher demand than a modelling application and subject to significantly more attention from crackers and warez distributors.

        As complex as it is, I think this is a situation of 'infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of keyboards'. Sooner or later, probably sooner, someone's going to crack this. Unless the system is tolerant to having that take place, it won't survive.
    • Yeah.. and what about the license? Will you be allowed to make any changes to the game without breaching your contract with the company? What if you're just installing a simple mod for counterstrike? Personally I'd rather buy the games; I know that no headhunter is gonna take me to court over my +9 trainer...
    • They could just build in a hidden serial number (encrypted with a public or symetric key). If it gets distributed they could look up the number and disable the account. The game would run fine, so hackers probably would not target it (though removal could be very simple).

      Just a thought.

      Maarten
  • Anyone care to cut and paste the text for a brother?

  • Not new - but definately a neat idea (Score:3, Informative)

    by raydobbs ( 99133 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:00PM (#5610576) Homepage Journal
    The idea is not new - EB had a service that you could rent a computer game, and it would download and install to your system - allowing you to play the game for the specific period of time, then if you actually went out and bought it - the saved games and everything would transport right over. The service tanked (as far as I know, EB doesn't have a link to it anymore), don't know why... Hopefully, this one does better, and has a better selection of games.
  • We Canadians are geniuses...
    http://www.gamesmania.com/display.do? jsp=/jsp/home .jsp&lang=en

    No idea how this Gamesmania service is doing, but this is actually the second such service our major telco (yes, Bell Canada) has tried to launch. The first one, Software Lane, was about a year in the planning, but never even went fully live. That was back in about 1999 to my recollection.
    • We Canadians are geniuses...

      Now, let's not get carried away...
    • Gamesmania seems to be doing perfectly fine... Rumor is that Bell Canada's ISP made indecent amounts of money with Gamesmania subscribers, especially since almost all employee get a comission on each upsell made on this - and get penalized if they don't make enough. Guess what kind of problems this causes in a company...

      Of course, all those are only rumours, isn't it?
    • This service seems to be doing very well in Canada, the service is, I believe $15 per month (not per game)and you can download 1 or all games. And the list of games is impressive since the games are not all 5+ year old titles ( Civilization III, Star Trek Armada II). Check it out at http:\\www.gamesmania.com
    • We Canadians are geniuses...


      Although some of us have trouble providing a proper link [gamesmania.com].

  • Already exists (Score:2, Informative)

    by ifreakshow ( 613584 )
    Yahoo [yahoo.com] has a service very similar to this it's called Games on Demand [yahoo.com]. The difference is that you only get 10 games per month.

    • Re:Already exists (Score:2, Informative)

      by Destoo ( 530123 )
      To quote my other post..
      Yes, and they're even powered by the same company, Exent.

      Yahoo offered Civ3.

      Let's see.. this one:
      Thief3
      Ghost Recon
      TR: chronicles
      Vrally2
      Rainbow6:RS
      Rcoaster tycoon
      Silent HunterII
      Supreme Snowboarding
      IL2 - Sturmovik (what?)
      Monopoly II
      Outcast
      Project IGI
      Deus Ex:The conspiracy
      Driver
      Gangsters 2: vendetta
      Hitman: condename 47
      AITD:New nightmare
      Anachronox
      Commandos2; men of courage
      Conflict zone....

      nice lineup.

  • Old news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by levik ( 52444 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:02PM (#5610587) Homepage
    My ISP has been offering this with all the old consoles for a few years now. And I don't even have to pay anything extra - it's included in the monthly fee I pay.

    Though because it's an advanced feature, they don't publicize it. I have to google for these games myself. They even code-named them "ROMZ" so that newbie users don't stumble on them by accident and cause a support nightmare.

  • Exactly what about this idea make you feel it is "5 years too early"? You think it's really cool, so why can't/shouldn't its time be now?
    • Anyone else remember The Sega Channel? Satellite delivered games to the cable headend, and then on-demand through the coax to the home. Circa 8-9 years ago. Never got very far (obviously).

      ...and as for the average schmoe needing that jewelcase before he plinks down his bling for a game, it should be noted that Sony is having mad success with its EQ download-only expansion. Of course, that's EQ, so the normal rules of games, marketing, economics, space, and time may not necessarily apply ...

  • I don't think its too soon for games on demand.. Look at all the people who play on sites like pop-cap games, yahoo games and msn zone. There are many games that are available on demand, and as thus are played on demand.

    I think the factor that will truly bring this idea success will be when you don't have to download to play the game. You visit the URL, and the game plays... Maybe that would require the game to install on demand... or maybe it already exists with languages like java and flash, where all yo

  • Yahoo! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:03PM (#5610597)
    They have the games on demand [yahoo.com] service. There are many other semi-repackaged versions of this. Generally older games. But good for the non-hardcore gamer, I think. I'm playing Age of Wonders which I never got to play, with The Outforce. They've got some Star Trek games, too. For me, it is worth the money, because I almost never buy software. Especially after the MOO3 disaster, I don't think I'll buy again for a very long time.

    • Re:Yahoo! - How it works. (Score:5, Informative)

      by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:15PM (#5610623)
      It makes a quasi disk device (X: Y:) that has the game. But it is more like NFS with caching. They push the first 100mb or so (variable per game, just to get the core/intro material in there) into your local cache (hard drive). Then, as you call for more information from the game (more missions, scenerios, etc), they are streamed over the network to your local disk cache device. Pretty slick, actually.

      It works pretty well, but I have noticed a few problems. There were some things that were delivered as they are downloaded on some games, when they shouldn't be (primarily, movies). Age of Wonders gives me a lot of hard drive chatter on the main screen of the game. Looks like data was placed sub-optimally and it has to seek to hell and back to read something over and over and over and over (basic animations, perhaps). Bad programming or layout.

      From a service standpoing, I'm happy with it. Their back-end enging is EXEtender, which you'll see some other game-on-demand services use as well with some of the same game titles (usually from Infogrames). For them, it has got to be a nice way to squeeze more profits out of dead titles.
    • They (Yahoo!) have the games on demand service. There are many other semi-repackaged versions of this. Generally older games. But good for the non-hardcore gamer, I think. I'm playing Age of Wonders which I never got to play, with The Outforce. They've got some Star Trek games, too. For me, it is worth the money, because I almost never buy software. Especially after the MOO3 disaster, I don't think I'll buy again for a very long time.

      Do you really use this? $5 for only 3 days seems like a lot for a PC

      • Yahoo! has the month of something like 3 games for $10 or 10 games for $15. If the other site is unlimited for $10, that sounds like a good deal. I'd have to take a look at the game selection. I know they have LESS titles, but if they are good, I'll switch over to them. (Thanks!)
  • ... as long as the ISP doesn't start capping you. My current isp decided to change the terms of service for its subscribers so anything more then 5GB is an extra fee. Since it is run by the ISP, hopefully they'll take that in to consideration if the idea takes off.
  • IF the GSP model is something that will happen - it will be interesting to see if this becomes a good marketing model.

    If this proves to be good youll see things like "command and Conquer generals: EXCLUSIVELY at Verizon Internet Services"

    or something like that...

    but its a good idea. I mean imagine if all your opponents are on the same core ISP - the ping time average for all users would be around the same (ideally).

    anyway - what if you take the SBC/Yahoo model further.

    You will get ISPs and Gaming/Conte
    • Especially a german game provider would not provided those bad games like Command&Conquer Generals :)

      I think that would be the worst drawback beside to lame and 10 year old games. There are to many good but indexed games and providing those games online would be nothing other then the forbidden advertising in store. And $10 for a green blooded robot-only Doom version seems to much.
  • This kind of arrangement is a real win for the smaller game developer. It gives them a chance to distribute their game to a wide audience, with little or no up front publishing costs, beyond the basic PR and marketing.

    Think of it as like the web for games. Before the web, the basic modes of mass publishing were huge and daunting. Want to write up a description of how you mod'ed a computer case, and reach a world wide audence in a pre-web world? Forget it. Now days, just get Cowboy Neal to post a link
  • I was able to attend an informal presentation of Steam by one of the Valve guys (I can't remember his name), and it didn't look like there would be anything but Windows support for this sort of thing. Granted, the idea is pretty solid, if you're in to the idea of not actually owning a physical cd with your software on it, but with no support for Mac or Linux, I'm having a hard time getting jazzed about this idea, either in supporting it as a game developer, or as a gamer. Is this just me, or does anyone e

  • Great for cheapskates (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Mr_Blank ( 172031 )
    ... Like me.

    Wouldn't this plan allow me to sign-up, download all the games available for $10 and then quit. I could then play those games for a few months without paying monthly. Then, later if they had more games I could sign up and repeat. If I can work it that way, this company will not get the recurring cash flow they expected.

    On the other hand it is still a win. A bunch of games that otherwise were getting dusty in the bargain bin or bit bucket get another go round because they are available easi
  • Seems to me this is a fancy version of the SegaChannel! Am I right, or am I right? :-) Huxley

  • powered by exent... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Destoo ( 530123 ) <destoo@gmailLAPLACE.com minus math_god> on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:19PM (#5610641) Homepage Journal
    Interesting games indeed.

    "Caution: Exent Technologies Ltd asserts that this content is safe"

    exent.. exent.. where have I seen that name...

    Yahoo! Online Games Contain Spyware [slashdot.org], the story on Civ3 downloadable from yahoo.

    So they just moved to another platform, right?
  • this reminds me of a prior attempt [ciol.com] by the real networks to provide a game subscription service named RealOneArcade [realonearcade.com]. i don't think the service became all that popular, though - unfortunately, it seems they didn't offer much aside from arcade and puzzle games, and there's only so much demand for those.

    but in general, the subscription model can be amazingly profitable. even if games-on-demand bring only a fraction of the incredible revenue from on-line games [com.com], it's still a lot of money. not to mention they do
  • consoleclassix.com/ [consoleclassix.com] has a free service for NES games and a pay service ont he way for SNES games. Basically, they own cartrages of all of the roms they have availible to play, and limit how many people can play a game at once to how many carts. they actually own. Pretty spiffy and legal way to play some of the classics. :)

  • How do the authors get compensated? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:24PM (#5610666) Homepage Journal
    Suppose the ISP finds that there were 1,000 downloads of a particular title one month. How do they pay the software companies royalties? I mean, what if the user downloaded it, realized it was a mistake, then deleted it without ever playing the game. Does that count as a "sale?"
  • the offer from the German provider T-Online, where you get Splinter Cell for 4 days and 9.99 Euros.
  • ... or 15 years too late? When I was a young lad, we had a service from out cable company for downloading games. There was a little box that we had to plug into the side of our Intellivision game console, and for a small fee (something like $10-20/month, can't remember exactly) we had access to approx. 20-30 games. They usually changed the selection monthly, but the more popular games stayed for several months.

  • G.O.D. (Score:3, Funny)

    by ADRA ( 37398 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:29PM (#5610710)
    It will survive forever, unless Nietche Says anything about it...
  • Have an ISP (cable/DSL) that has gaming servers at the ISP, available to ISP customers only. Charge the customers a little more per month(or make it a seperate fee) to access said servers(tribes, cstrike, whatever) where you would get low pings, playing against other players with low pings. Have a good map rotation, friendly(but fair) admins, and a message board, with local mirrors to download cstrike updates, etc.

    Wonder if people would pay for that. The only thing it depends on is a lot of subscribers wh

  • GamesMania - A Bell Canada Service (Score:4, Informative)

    by matthewcraig ( 68187 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:31PM (#5610722)
    The canadian telephone company, Bell Canada, has been offering games-on-demand for some time now. The service is very inexpensive, and there are 100+ games to choose from. The download speeds are exceptionally fast. What's interesting is that they apply all the latest patches to the games already, and they even test extensively for operating system compatibility. How cool is that? Makes you wonder what those US telcos have done for us lately...

    The service is available at gamesmania.com [gamesmania.com]
  • I was in on an early marketing thing for one of these in I don't know, 1999?

  • Yahoo Games on Demand (Score:4, Interesting)

    by joshamania ( 32599 ) <jggramlich.yahoo@com> on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:37PM (#5610763) Homepage
    I use the Yahoo Games on Demand service, and honestly, I'm thrilled with it. They have several different payment options, up to $15/month for 10 games. Some games you can only rent for 3 days and that costs $5. Usually the newer stuff.

    The selection is pretty good, again, mostly older stuff like Civ III and railroad tycoon, but also some really interesting games like Legion and Tropico. I'd prolly say I buy about 4 computer games a year, spending about $200...probably more. For me, $15/month is a bargain and I get to try many more games.

    The technology isn't quite 100%, but it's good enough and getting better. I think everyone should try it out, especially considering you can get started for $5.

  • The Sega Channel??? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rudy Rodarte ( 597418 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:40PM (#5610793) Homepage Journal
    Does any one remember the Sega Channel? Basically, your sega genesis was hooked up to the cable and you downloaded games and played them that way. I (Being a nintendo zealot) only played when I went to friends' houses, but I was really cool not having to go to Blockbuster to get a game.
    I wonder what ever happened to that.....
    • Sega Channel tanked miserably. It was released a bit too late to do any good, the Genesis really went downhill shortly after (32x anyone?).

      I managed to pick up a Sega Channel modem recently (50 cents, can't be beat!); anyone know of any groups trying to reverse engineer these things, so a person could somehow set up a local server for themselves?
  • I'd definatly pay for that!
  • Having another distribution method available to consumers is always a good thing. This will give the hardcore gamers a chance to try a game out for a while and see if it's worth buying. Hopefully it'll also increase the popularity of the PC gaming market which may drive some prices down a bit. I don't see a downside to this as long as we still have a choice.

  • "(sort-of) current games" (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Relic ( 92325 )
    The reason you see alot of older games is that publishers are hesitant to make games availiable in a G.O.D format at the same time they are released to retail stores. The reason being, G.O.D is perceived as a threat by retailers, and given that currently retailers are the biggest channel, publishers might prefer not to upset them. (this may or may not change in the future as broadband becomes more prevalent as a delivery channel).

    As for piracy, the games on demand technology being used here is probably bas

  • TELUS.net in Canada. (Score:3, Informative)

    by yittrix ( 87103 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @06:58PM (#5610922) Homepage
    TELUS.net in Canada has been offering games that can be downloaded as a subscription service for over 6 months now.

    You can find information at TELUS.net Games [mytelus.com]

  • Any made by Valve product that is "coming soon" should be viewed with a high degree of skepticism. I pre-ordered the "coming soon" TF2 addon pack for Half-Life that was supposed to arrive during the last week of November, 1998.
  • This is a very good idea. Games drop quickly in value after they are released.

    However, when old games are distributed through stores they still have to be burnt on CDs, put into shiny boxes, shipped to stores and stored there.

    This solution is a win-win. Gamers get access to more games cheaper, and developers get increased revenues.

    Tor
  • I believe they call it usenet here
  • For 13$/month I surf the net.. why pay additional 10$ for just games?

    don't get trolled!
  • Many thousands of people use this model right now in a wide, free beta test of Counter-Strike on the Steam platform. It works nearly flawlessly over a high speed connection -- and why Steam hasn't been able to find distribution partners and implement a real subscription service is anyone's guess. I don't think the technology's 5 years too early -- the infrastructure and technical know how is present. Perhaps the difficulty lies in changing the current business model for game distribution overnight.
  • I'm surprised to see all the positive posts about this service. Where are the paranoiacs who are typically worried about everything moving to a subscription-based pay as you go model?

    Casual gamers? They won't subscribe. They can download all the demos they can eat for free. Download all you want and then quit? It seems unlikely that anyone offering this service wouldn't add a big "catch" such as a download limit or a minimum term for membership.

    "Hardcore" gamers? Why would they want to try this, wh
  • Simply put, this sort of thing is the future. Software licensing on a per-time basis is an extremely attractive business model. Furthermore, as much as I don't want to pay for a piece of software for as long as I'm using it, it will actually encourage quality software. This is simply because if your program sucks, people will stop paying for it. You won't be able to make much money by selling worthless software that looks pretty and well-advertised anymore.
  • There ARE some really good games on that list, like Anachronox, Deus Ex, Thief 2, etc., but you can probably pick up any of them for about $10 now. So I cant see the advantage of paying a subscription for this, unless you can actually KEEP the games.

    Also, I would imagine they would need some current, A-list titles for this to really take off. However, it is probably beyond their means at this point: unless Valve is backing them. But what the heck has Valve done except sit on things? I remember lusting

  • Customers will feel intimidated by this if their ISP charges extra for big downloads. People already hate all the forms they have to fill out for taxes. If gaming on demand requires more than one form for billing, people will avoid it because it's too complicated. And how will it work for players under 18? If it works by some charge card system, how will their parents set limits? And how easy will it be for the kids, who usually know the technology better than the parents, to cheat those limits?

  • Sorry guys, Canda got you bead! (Score:3, Informative)

    by G.I. Suck ( 656049 ) on Thursday March 27, 2003 @08:02PM (#5611368)
    Canada had this type of service for a year now. check out Games Mania [gamesmania.com]

  • It's not a new idea... (Score:2, Informative)

    by foxtrot ( 14140 )
    To my knowledge, this is the first time an ISP offers this kind of service.

    Well, for limited versions of "ISP", it's actually a pretty old idea. The Blue Sky Rangers' site notes PlayCable [intellivisionlives.com], a service for playing Intellivision games across your cable TV line.

    Of course, no geek story about the PlayCable would be complete without noting the story of how the Intellivision's version of Bump 'n' Jump was developed [intellivisionlives.com].
  • I donno, even that seems too optimistic. Until broadband gets more mainstream and clears out the kinks we all hear too much about, stuff like this is going to be very limited.

    I don't consider the cracking issuing to be of much importance. As it was pointed out before, this is aimed mostly at casual gamers and gaming history has shown that casual gamers don't spend their time getting a white pasty skin look at night while looking up cracks, warez, and pr0n.

  • www.gamesmania.com is doing something similar, but more like "renting" out games.

  • I don't think so.. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just like the others, I want to have the software on a disk. With the way things are going with DRM and streaming software I really do not like this idea.

    The main reason is that it gives the company more control over the software. At least when I own the physical disk, cd, dvd, etc, I know that I can keep using it as long as I like, have the security knowing that if something goes wrong I still can reinstall it, etc. Then there is with some exceptions (mmorpgs, virus protection, etc) the fact that they c
  • Simular thru cable called the Sega Channel but it didnt last thru the test markting it would beam the roms to your genesis thru your Cable System. It didnt get past the Test Marketing stages thu. ALso one couldnt keep the games since it was a ROM.
  • upside: Access to trying more games (legitimately) without having to shell out $50.

    downside: If this distribution platform became really popular, it could encourage game developers to create games that had a lot of short-term flash, but not a lot of long-term replayability. So we'd see even less of a focus on gameplay over graphics than has already been the case with PC games these days. It also could further reduce the creation demos for games, as it would be easy (and tempting) for game publishers to say
  • To my knowledge, this is the first time an ISP offers this kind of service

    I'm sure people are holding back on their wisecracks concerning your knowledge.

    To my knowledge...this is old news, and not that great.

    For example: OnDemandGames.PlaySite.com" [playsite.com] uses Stream Theory [streamtheory.com] as the wizard behind their curtain. That's right, it's just a Citrix Terminal Server type of thing...

    Imagine paying only $10 per month for games like Unreal Tournament. You'd have to ask: why not buy the GOTY edition at the local store
  • For a long time, people just have not been willing to pay for stuff online. I mean, look at something like Fileshack [fileshack.com]. A long time ago fileshack was a little weakling but you could get files for free and fast. Well, such a service would have killed shacknews, so they launched Mercury. All the downloads you want, very fast, and tons of cool extras. A lot of people whined about paying for such a service, when you can still find the files if you look for free and sometimes just as fast. However, it seems

  • About this ISP (Score:2, Interesting)

    by yourruinreverse ( 564043 )
    Unfortunately, Planet Internet is an awful ISP in every other respect. When I stopped using their services after three years of frustration with their unreliable SMTP, their lack of SPAM wave filtering, and having to put up with their customer service SPAM as well as a completely ignorant help desk service ("You have problems sending large e-mail? OK, let's run through your ISDN hardware configuration first."). They dropped their monthly fee, and then started luring customers with all kinds of add-on servic
  • didn't sega already do this about a decade ago with the sega channel?
  • a lot of what drives people buying games, especially kids and even older gamers who are somewhere between casual and hardcore, is hearing about "the coolest new game" from their friends (like seeing gta3 on playstation 2, or splinter cell on xbox or pc, or whatever.) after a few cycles of hearing about a cool new game that is on store shelves but not being able to play because it isn't on the service yet, while still getting hit with a monthly fee, would piss me off enough to cancel. it would be like a netf

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