digital-distribution posts

The big advantage of PC game download services is convenience; you can purchase and download legal copies of PC games directly to your PC hard drive with no need to hold onto a disk. The problem is that you also cannot resell or trade in those games as you can with a boxed PC copy or boxed console games.

Now a newly announced service called Green Man Gaming is claiming to offer a way for gamers to trade in PC game titles they had downloaded and purchased. The UK based site says it will launch near the end of March and will have 400 games to purchase with over 2000 games available by the end of 2010. Unfortunately the press release announcing the service doesn't go into much detail, saying only that they will use "leading edge technology" to facilitate the trade-ins and adding that they will "pay significant royalties to the publisher each time the game is traded in perpetuity." We hope to get more info about this service including if it will be made available to US customers.

There's no doubt that the PC game industry is moving more and more towards a digital distribution model and today another such service officially announced its presense. The ModDB.com web site, perhaps the single biggest online resource for learning about and downloading third party mods for games, has just announced its plans to enter this growing market.

The service is going under the codenam Desura and ModDB.com claims their service differs from others like Steam and Direct2Drive in that they give mod and game developers more control over how they share things like news, screenshots, movies and other things to the public. Currently the service is in a private closed beta stage and there's no word on when Desura will go live to the public.

We know that Black Friday is the most important shopping day of the year. Excellent discount prices on all sorts of merchandise intended as Christmas gifts is the tradition of the day. We also know that it can be a little intimidating for new or inexperienced PC users to decide between the different digital distribution (and community) platforms. We certainly were when we first heard about all the different services available. However, we've evaluated these services, from those that can barely be called such a thing to the juggernauts that dominate the industry, and all of our research has been compiled it all into this comprehensive, handy-dandy guide. You may not know what game to get your friend for Christmas, but you'll definitely know where to buy it!

Those looking for a quick guide to the services covered and what we thought of important features, check out our downloadable chart!

Peter Moore, the head of EA Sports, has been vocal in the past about how he feels PC gaming has not been successful for his division, saying, " . . . shipping a physical disc for the PC, simply isn't working for us." Now Moore has expanded on those viewpoints as he states, " . . . the concept of physical packaged discs and the core business model that is video games as it currently stands is a burning platform."

Moore made those remarks at a panel during the recent PLAY Digital Media Conference. According to IGN, he still feels that disc-based games will be around for a while, saying, "As an industry, I still think we may be as many as a decade away from saying goodbye to physical discs." However, he feels that slowly the digital download business model will win out, saying, "More content will be delivered daily, weekly, or monthly, and less will be of the old model of cartridges and discs." Certainly for PC games the digital download model has been leading the way for the industry in the past couple of years.

Common wisdom has it that if you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it. What, then, should we think of the recent trend in gaming to bring back, and in some cases revamp past video games? I'm thinking here mostly of Bionic Commando's recent upgrade to be both a completely new reimagining of the franchise (yes, now it's a franchise at last) and an update of the classic arcade hit which itself includes a version of the original. Developer Grin is covering all bases, giving die-hard fans what they want while at the same time bringing in new fans who may never have played the first release.

Is it a good idea to keep mining the past for the hits of the future? How much life do these games still have in them? Is it possible to revamp an old game sufficiently to make it feel new while retaining its old-school flavor? Let's take a look.

During last week's annual E3 video game trade show, GamesIndustry.biz was able to catch up with new EA Sports president Peter Moore. Moore discussed several key strategies from his playbook, including the increased focus on digital distribution by Electronic Arts in the coming years -- and months.

"You're talking to a company here that truly believes that every consumer will ultimately go online," Moore said. Adamant that his company will lead that charge, Moore explained that a focus on disc-based sales was hurting the industry giant. The cost of writing games to physical media is not expensive, but the process of shipping the products, creating packaging, relinquishing a share of sales to retailers... all of that and more adds up to a price that EA would like to eliminate.

"We have every intention over a period of time ... of moving this company to be one that is totally digitally-focused," Moore said.

Of course, it's pure hyperbole and fantasy to believe that all consumers will adopt an online-only marketplace, and brick-and-mortar retailers will certainly raise objections. Moore maintained his stance, stating that companies such as Best Buy and Walmart adopted foresight in an effort to serve their customers at physical sites as well as online. Bluntly, Moore said that retailers will either "embrace it and find a business model that makes sense, or they become in the end monolithic."

Longtime fans of the Penny Arcade webcomic most likely already know what I'm about to say here. You probably know that On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One is an adventure-RPG set in the steampunk/gothic horror world of New Arcadia where similar-yet-different versions of Gabe and Tycho run their own paranormal investigation firm -- of sorts. But did you know that in this game you'll get to battle robotic juicing machines that copulate with fruits, men, women and sometimes small animals? Oh, you did. Well fine, but don't say we didn't warn you when their little metal protrusions puncture your tibia.

For those of you who don't know every little detail about the game, let us make you au courant on the subject of OTRSPoD:EO. Yes, we just went acronymical on your ass.

We've heard it many times, from many people; PC gaming is dead, or will be dead. Or at least, it's in disarray. In 2007, the PC accounted for only 14% of game sales. Piracy is rampant. Victims wander the forums proclaiming the PC gaming apocalypse. All hope is lost! Well, that's all bollocks. PC gaming is transforming, not dying.

At least, so says THQ exec Jack Sorenson. On one hand, he said that "thinking about the PC as a disc-based platform may in fact be old." On the other hand, he described everything from MMOs to digital download (Steam, anyone?) to casual games as huge successes. "All of those business models just don't go through retail, so when you look at retail figures on a comparison, it looks radically worse than in fact it may be," he said. "Maybe the PC is just transforming to really being the other end of the Internet."

He also said that if you look online-based Asian market -- "where there's not a single boxed product being sold" -- the picture looks rosier. He even suggested that "on a global basis [the PC] may have seen the biggest growth of all platforms, but we're so western-centric that we just don't think of it that way." So there you have it. Lament the industry's changes if you don't like them, but at least it's not dying.

Stardock has been a leader in digital distribution of software for years, even before Valve made it sexy with their Steam service. Now, according to this Gamasutra Q&A, Stardock will be taking their efforts in this field to the next level with something they are calling Impulse. Company CEO Brad Wardell said that this new effort will consolidate their TotalGaming.net game distribution service with their Object Desktop application service, " . . .so you can literally manage all of your games or all of your applications and tools and utilities all in one place."

Wardell stated that Impulse will have features like allowing game developers to add in things like mini-expansion packs that might cost a few dollars. While Impulse will allow games to have monthly subscription services, Wardell also stated that developers can use Impulse to add in community features like user-written blogs and other items. The just announced publishing deal with Gas Powered Games for their title Demigod will apparently be the flagship title for Impulse. We can expect to hear more about this new PC game distribution effort in the near future.