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PC Games (Games)

TotalGaming Tries Yearly PC Subscription Gaming 21

Posted by simoniker from the different-strokes dept.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the announcement of Stardock's TotalGaming.net PC indie gaming subscription service. The press release explains: "While users can purchase games individually, Stardock expects the real appeal of TotalGaming.net to be in the subscription. For $89, users receive a host of good games plus everything added to TotalGaming.net for an entire year afterwards", and goes on to note: "For the initial launch, Stardock has put together an impressive list of games that will be available on day one, such as Galactic Civilizations, Celtic Kings, Orb, The Corporate Machine, LightWeight Ninja, and a new compilation of Disciples II called Disciples II Ultimate Edition... [and] plans to add a new game each month for the rest of the year starting with The Political Machine in August." Notably, the announcement mentions: "Even if [users] choose not to re-subscribe, they can still re-download the entire game years later." Does this approach appeal more than somewhat similar monthly services offered by Comcast, Atari, and Yahoo?
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TotalGaming Tries Yearly PC Subscription Gaming More

TotalGaming Tries Yearly PC Subscription Gaming

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  • TotalGaming subscription based service is phenomenally successful and revolutionizes the gaming industry...in Japan.

  • Heh. (Score:1, Troll)

    by jgaynor ( 205453 )
    Nice to see stardock finally doing something besides inspiring bad UI design [wincustomize.com].

  • Penny-Arcade (Score:1, Redundant)

    by sqrt(2) ( 786011 )
    TotalGaming.net was also mentioned on PA in the last three paragraphs of todays news post [penny-arcade.com]
  • I don't know if this subscription is worth the cost - I guess it remains to be seen what they release on the service.
    I will say that StarDock's Corporate Machine is a very fun little strategy game. Quick paced and doesn't take hours to play. While compared to modern games the graphics are abyssmal, I still find myself loading it up for a quick run every now and then. Great "beer and pretzels" strategy gaming in the same way the Rails Across America is.
    That being said, the game is available at very low cost
  • 1) Other services offer similar services with much better games at somewhat higher prices.

    2) Stardock *had* a service like this before - it was called djijon or something funky like this. Except it was all the same games but only cost ~$40.

    3) All of those games are old/mediocre. They were mediocre when they came out years ago. I conceed that GalCiv is quality but it's over a year old and can be had for $20 on a real disc in a box.

    4) Corporate Machine is fun but Entrepreneur was better.

  • Drengin.net (Score:2, Interesting)

    by BlueCup ( 753410 )
    They did this before with Drengin.net, which I thought about joining, but despite their other year long subscription having almost weekly updates Drengin hardly ever changed. It didn't seem worth it to me to spend 50 dollars for a service with at the time only one quality product.

    On the opposite side of the spectrum though, I'd be a little worried with this "game released every month" thing. I've got a feeling games are going to be rushed, especially near the end. If a game has to come out on a certain

    • "I'd be a little worried with this "game released every month" thing. I've got a feeling games are going to be rushed, especially near the end. If a game has to come out on a certain date there is a large chance that it wont be at its full potential.

      Here's the thing - for most games released these days, they are rushed. You've got to have a guaranteed best seller like Half Life 2 or Doom 3 in order to delay release dates. I don't think that such a release schedule is going to lead to any more of a rush th

      • There are plenty of recent [1-2 years] games selling little to no units [if they're even still available at retail] that could be licensed for a relatively low cost in order to keep the 1 game a month schedule on pace.

        That is indeed exactly what Stardock is doing.
        • Green hit the nail on it's head. Though there are several games under development (GalCiv2, Political Machine, and possibly a Master of Magic sequel), the majority of the games on TG.net will be third party re-releases.
  • Why pay $90 for the privlidge of eating up huge amounts of your bandwidth downloading overpriced mediocre games that you could buy of eBay for $5 a pop. Nevermind that you could get a usenet account to download all the games (and porn, and movies, etc.) you want for $10 a month.

    Personally, the only such kind of service I'm interested in would be a Netflix-like mail-in service that for $20 a month you could have out 5 games OR 5 movies.

    • Companies like Gamefly, etc, do this with console games, however, there really hasn't been an alternative PC game model for this (and I doubt Gamefly would make this jump). There are some companies that do download service (i.e., go to Ubisoft's page, and you can download select Myst games - newer ones, not older ones; go to kazaa and Atari lets you download games for a set time limit trail period, then you have to pay for the rest of the content.) The problem with a PC based model for a "Gamefly" type se
  • Despite the criticism, I think I'll be subscribing as soon as I get home from work... Here's what I see (Read their media packet for more detailed info)...

    1) $90 for the first year, $50 after that.

    2) 6 games so far, plus one a month (Though they said one a month for the rest of this year, not necessarily one a month forever). That comes out to at least 5 more games by the end of '04... 11 games total, even if they use the sneaky wording and stop after that.

    3) So we have $90 for 11 games. They seem like
  • They need to get it through their heads. If its not an MMORPG or an online matchmaking service or something, people don't want to pay a subscription. They want to pay a one time fee and own the game. Period.

    • My understanding is that you do own the game. You're paying for download access to their game library.
      • That's it. A subsciprion to Drengin/TG.net *buys* all the games they have now, and everything they release/publish within the next year.

        Whether or not you resubscribe after that, you retain rights to all of those games that came out before or during your subscription, and can download them at any time through Stardock Central if you lose them.
    • You buy the game through this service. The subscription allows you to get all additional games they develope for the same price.

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