Online distribution

    I so badly want that change of power everybody is talking about. Developers not being completely at the publishers mercy. Online distribution is one of the holy grails people are hoping for. Do anybody here have experience with it?

    I bought my HL2 from a webshop in a box and all. But I have made the decision that from now on (even though I am very much a box on the shelf kind of person), I will buy things through online distribution if at all possible. I know of Direct2Drive from the IGN/Gamespy network and I have just bought a few games from them - they are downloading as we speak.

    Are there any other similar initiatives out there, apart from Steam?

    3drealms said that they'd be distributing DNF via something called "xStream" (god it hurts to type that). As far as I can tell, it's basically the same thing as Steam.

    I Googled for their site, you can read more about it here :

    http://www.gamexstream.com/

    I believe this is the future for indie-developers, especially now that broadband-speeds are getting higher and higher, and because the games you buy via the internet would be a bit cheaper than "regular" games bought in stores (since you can cut the cost of CD/DVD production, manuals, box, marketing).

    If I'm going to put up my own studio we are going to distribute our games through something Steam like platform, but I'm going to wait till the wannabe Steams die and the true ones are going to pop out.

    It has a lot of good points for the developers but for the users I could think of better ways to distribute things...

    There is still a very large group of people that do not have an internet connection or broadband, those will miss out on your game and of the people that do have broadband some have traffic limits so they cant even download things like 4 gig games

    Id also like to have something in my hands and not somewhere virtual when I pay money for something...

    I am very much a box in the hands kinda guy. But this is too important I think. At the end of the day, this is just one of hopefully many distribution channels of the future; To have online distribution exclusively would not make sense...

    When I got the World of Warcraft collectors edition box with all the goodies, I could have tought for a moment that I was a box man myself.

    BUT when I got the insult to the industry HL2 DVD box, I said "F that" it had a normal DVD case like the movies, a disc and a two sided paper like in the movies. Now I could have easily lived without that box.

    I like the approach where the steam type distributing is marketed towards games and gamers that are heavily in to internet play, and that is actually what I tried to say but failed to deliver.

    I don't play that much singleplayer games, when I play I'm on the net 90% of the time, 10% might be games like HL2 singleplayer or GTA:SA etc.

    People who don't have broadband or any connection to the internet are not the target market for such platforms so they shouldn't stress about that too much, BUT I agree that with the current way games are gaining on weight from 1cd games few years back, almost every game these days come with 2-3 cds or a DVD, so something have to be done about that.

    And ofcourse one shortage comes from console market that is light years away from PC market in this sense.

    The online distribution of games is a pretty trvial part of the puzzle. It's the funding needed to get the game made in the first place that is the crutch right now. It's not that independant developers can't afford to get a game out there to the market, they just can't afford to get it made without the help of a publisher. Buying most games online right now probably wouldn't help matters at all - you are still going to be buying them through the publisher. It's only in the cases of things like steam and this xStream thing where the game has been self-funded where you are actually getting money to the developers.

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