Gamefly: Yet Another Digital Distribution System,,,

[Jake Gilla]

http://www.shacknews.com/article/69642/ ... t-pc-games

Don't quite understand if this is a rental or purchase service.

[Thrik]

The impression I've gotten from commentary elsewhere is that it's more a competitor to OnLive — a PC service that lets you stream games from their datacentres and play loads of games at reduced/subscription rates — rather than, say, Steam and Origin. Quite a smart move as a lot of people seem to like the idea of being able to easily trial games or 'buy' them temporarily until they've finished them like OnLive lets you, but without the crappy quality and experience OnLive delivers for many people.

[Izuno]

But can Gamefly deliver better QOE than OnLive in places it's available? I haven't read into GF's back end...I assume they partnered for ye olde infrastructure?

[Thrik]

Sorry I didn't mean it like that. What I meant was that they're targeting OnLive's method of selling games, but not delivering them. It'll be straight-up digital distribution, but packaged in a subscription-based way (like rental) rather than actual purchases.

[Warby]

interesting ... i actually might try that ...

[sarge mat]

I guess its good other companies make competition for steam, just a pain in the ass when the "only available on" stuff starts to happen.

[Izuno]

Yeah I read up since my last post...it's a literal rental service via digital distribution. Should Valve want to do the same thing with Steam it very well could. In effect, it has before every time it's offered a "free weekend" or "weekend pass" or whatever that allows free play of a game one hasn't purchased...right?