The Weekly Byte for 9/20/2010

New Releases

• Darksiders – $19.99 – Hack ‘n Slash/RPG
• Sid Meier’s Civilization V – $49.99 – Strategy behemoth

News Bytes

SCV’s converge on Starcraft II! By the time you are reading this, the first major Starcraft II patch will be available.  The patch hits Tuesday, September 21st, and aside from many multiplayer tweaks, the patch will also add support for Nvidia 3D technology.  I can’t imagine Starcraft in 3D, but hey, at least the option is there!  Full details available soon, standby at Raynor’s console!

Welcome to the digital age! The other big news this week is the NPD shocker for PC games.  Apparently digital sales have blown away retail PC game sales, and who is really surprised?  With Impulse, GOG, Direct2Drive and Steam having constant wicked sales, especially around holidays and off periods for gamers, this isn’t much of a shocker.  Of course, analysts are heralding this as the coming of Galacticus arriving to finally swallow PC gaming and excrete it into extinction forever, but we all know that to be false.  It’s safe to say that the majority of today’s PC gamers have high speed connections and have become increasingly trusting in the digital services available to today’s consumer.  That being said, a service like Steam offers many benefits to purchase games through their store.  Brick and mortar software isn’t going anywhere and neither is PC gaming, it is just staying an evolutionary step or two ahead of console gaming.  :O)

The war on crime is over! At least, on PC’s it is.  Realtime Worlds has announced that they will be soon shutting down APB, the much waited for Cops and Robbers MMO.  Details are scarce about when the official cut-off will be, but, for now, the game is still open so get in and get playing!  You can’t help but feel bad for hose lifetime subscription purchasers.  We feel worse for the employees, who have all been officially laid off.  It seems that the company going under, and not poor media sales, is the ultimate demise for the game.  We wish all of those hard-working men and women the best of luck, and our prayers are that they find new employment swiftly.

Onlive goes unplugged? No, OnLive is not doing a VH1 special, but it will be jumping ship from it’s ‘hard-wired only’ requirement.  The service is so confident, in it’s infrastructure, that it will now be expanding to allow players to play from Wi-Fi connections – a feature previously unavailable.  We’re not sure how well this will work, but you might just get some firsthand reporting from us pretty soon.

Last, but not least, Good Old Games banishes old games to the past. Or do they?  When GOG first took their site down and made the following quotes, gamers saw it as the service going under.  However, continued scrutiny of the comments and meditation on the possibilities have shed some doubts on GOG’s fate.  Firstly, the site promises to make an announcement on September 22nd about allowing gamers access to download all of their games.  Now, I have to ask the question, if a digital service were going out of business, would you A) Make every attempt to contact your customers and warn them to download before the site goes down or B) Rip the site down and promise a solution later?  Yeah, I see this as a major overhaul for GOG, especially since the official quotes do not say that they are going out of business, but rather that they “cannot remain in it’s current form”.  Sounds cryptic, no?  You be the judge, here is the official quote :

Dear GOG users,

We have recently had to give serious thought to whether we could really keep GOG.com the way it is. We’ve debated on it for quite some time and, unfortunately, we’ve decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form.

We’re very grateful for all support we’ve received from all of you in the past two years. Working on GOG.com was a great adventure for all of us and an unforgettable journey to the past, through the long and wonderful history of PC gaming.

This doesn’t mean the idea behind GOG.com is gone forever. We’re closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await.

On a technical note, this week we’ll put in place a solution to allow everyone to re-download their games. Stay tuned to this page and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates.

All the best,
GOG.com Team

Digital Distribution: Our Thoughts

Digital Distribution is definitely starting to be a new trend in gaming. However, unlike motion controls, I am more apt as a gamer to move with this trend. Digital distribution is not something new to the consumers however. The 360 uses it with movies, even Xbox originals. while there are very successful forms of digital distribution i.e. Steam, it can also be a gamble i.e. PSP Go. So what are our thoughts?

Eric Bouchard: The Two Edged Sword

Whether we like it or not, Digital Distribution is here to stay. It’s the direction things are headed. The 360, PSN, Steam…everyone is coming up with ways to deliver their product directly to the consumer. Some people really like the idea of being able to directly download games, music or movies. Personally, I have never been a big fan.

Some of the people who know me may find that hard to believe. After all, I own an iPod with my entire music collection on it, I have ripped several of my movies onto my hard drive and I have digital copies of more than a few of my games. The main difference there is I own physical copies of almost everything. I like having the actual copies in case something ever went wrong. As I have gone through 2 different MP3 players before getting my current iPod, having physical copies of the CDs has been very important to me.

And that brings me to one of my biggest issues with Digital Distribution: you do not really own the product. Anyone who has had to change 360′s knows that. Though Microsoft allows you to redownload any of the arcade games you have bought, you have to go through a rather extensive process to have them relicensed to your new machine. Otherwise you cannot play the games while not connected to XBox Live.

So is Digital Distribution all bad? Not by a long shot. One of the advantages it has is it has allowed smaller developers a channel to release their games. Without it, games like Flower, Groov and Audiosurf would never have been released to the general public. Even larger companies can take advantage of the freedom allowed by Digital Distribution as well. After all, do you really think Epic would have created Shadow Complex if the only way to distribute it had been standard game discs?

Then there are groups like Good Old Games. For those of you who do not know, GOG takes older games, gets them working on current machines and operating systems and then sells them over the net. GOG has two major things going for it. First, many of the games you can download off GOG are not available in a format that is playable on anything current. The other is the company does not believe in attaching DRM to any of its files. In other words, when you buy a game from GOG, you can install it on as many computers as you like and redownload an unlimited number of times if you have the need. Instead of just buying the right to download a playable version of the game, you are buying the rights to the game itself, just as you would if you owned the physical copy. Steam doesn’t even give you that.

Whether we like it or not, Digital Distribution is here to stay. While we can all hope more companies will take the approach Good Old Games has when it comes to DRM, most will not out of fear of piracy. What that will mean for the consumer as far as the question of ownership and usage rights still remains to be seen.

Laren Hawkins: The Future of Gaming

I have to agree with Eric, Digital Distribution is definitely a growing trend in gaming. So much so that Sony recently released an all Digital Distribution hand held. The PSP Go is a big step in the growing strength of Digital Distribution. I was very skeptical of the PSP Go at first. I have always liked owning a physical copy of a game. There are many problems that can come with Digital Distribution. 1: Many people will make the argument that you will never truly own that game and I have to say that is a pretty good argument to make. 2: Many gamers like to trade their games after they are done with it, me included. With something like the PSP Go, you can’t do that, once you drop that money, that’s it. 3: Many consumers may not be comfortable with only buying content online and owning no physical copy of that game. I know I had many concerns about the PSP Go and many questions. So, I hopped on to the information super highway and did some research.

1. What if a friend wants to borrow a game? (There is a feature on the PSP Go that is similar to that on the DS’s download play. I am not sure however how many games are compatible with this feature.)
2. What if your little brother some how manages to delete a game? Like in iTunes, there is a history of your purchases and you have to do is re download it
3. What about the slow internet speed on the Go? That was one of my biggest concerns however, after doing some digging I found a solution. Sony released a software that comes with the Go in which you can transfer music, movies, photos and download games. You can use your computer to download the games and have a faster download speed depending on your internet.

So, are there any positives to Digital Distribution?

Well, yes. For one, you don’t have to make a trip to Gamestop. ( That is enough to make me cry tears of joy and break into a chorus of Hallelujah) With systems like the go all the games are right there on the system you don’t have to carry UMDs. You may still have a question, why am I so wrapped up in the Go? Well lets just say that was the only thong on my Christmas list. Albeit, I am taking a bit of a risk but, what better to understand Digital Distribution then to fully experience it? Like with many things in life, Digital Distribution has both positives and negatives. For now, we can only sit back and watch what Digital Distribution brings to the table in the future.