trying to come up with ways to entice customers.
Steam will be down for at least three days after HL2 is released, pissing
off a bunch of customers. Steam will then go under after they realize that
their bandwidth costs were much higher than they anticipated.
-----Original Message-----
From: Angel Stewart [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: January 19, 2004 8:12 AM
To: CF-Community
Subject: RE: Bleak future for videogamers?
What do you think about Valve's attempts to deliver games via streaming
and a pay for play model?
The STEAM engine is designed to allow them to do just that.
You will be able to 'purchase' Half Life 2 over Steam and have the game
streamed to you in portions as you needed it.
Also, what effect do you think hardware Digital Rights Management will
have on how we purchase games?
Taking the consoles, specifically the Xbox, there does seem to be a
gradual testing of the market's acceptance of purchasing new or expanded
components online, and generally having to play on Xbox Live to extend
your gaming experience or to unlock certain things in the game you
bought.
The upcoming (maybe) Phantom is based on a completely Online model.
Where all the games,demos,previews etc. are streamed over broadband to
the console.
-Gel
-----Original Message-----
From: Kwang Suh [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
1. Get back to me in 10 years, when we'll still be buying software off
the
shelf.
2. Might? Ever heard of the Dreamcast, which was utterly destroyed
because
of rampant pirating? Hackers just love a challenge...
3. Why? Because it uses PC parts? Please. The whole the success of
the PC
is precisely because it's open. Remember the Amiga? The TRS-80? The
Commodore 64? Atari ST? Apple? (ok, they're still around, with their
2%
market share). All died because of their closed architecture - their
very
limited expandability, and limited availability of parts from one
manufacturer, and the requirement of software companies to port their
software to that platform's specific OS (which was expensive, and
eventually
not worth it).
Even if a whole bunch of manufacturers decide to implement a closed
architecture (which will never happen), other manufacturers will appear
that
will offer an open architecture.
Another thing: internet bandwidth is expensive and will remain so for a
long
time as telcoms still try to recoup costs from rewiring their
infrastructure. It will remain much cheaper to press CD/DVDs and ship
them
to stores than to have customers download a 14 gig game.
---
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