Console Digital Distribution

When do you think Microsoft will wise-up with its Games on Demand service and start providing games for digital purchase the day they actually release?

And on top of that, fix issues with people using american xbox, on american accounts, but in foreign countries and aren't allowed to PAY for something everyone in america can get?

Games on Demand actually sucks. Halo reach still costs £40 along with Oblivion for £20...

You pay that once and you have it forever, or as long as you have that account. While games might break on accident, you need to get banned to lose the digital game.

or have XBL shut down entirely, but the chances of that happening when you can still manage to play disc games is unlikely, unless we go the way of some kind of steam punk era after another world war, in which case any game discs that managed to survive would be rare.....much less consoles...

but the whole GoD is a brilliant thing, its just like Steam. They jsut need to get games on it the day they come out, and maybe add pre-order support/pre-install (like steam) and actually scale the price down to reflect disc format prices (or even cheaper since a whole shit ton of middle men are cut out of the picture)

Meh... next gen will have games on the cloud. THAT will be where it's at.

games on the cloud already exists...and it works horribly

Give it some time

and that would also mean that any time you went dark you'd have nothing to play. digital distribution still allows offline access.

Whereas cloud play allows you to play games that you would otherwise be unable to, due to system restraints. Both have pros and both have cons.

However, there's a minor problem with digital distribution for Xbox360 and PS3. Both systems are absolute garbage, hardware-wise. You don't install games on console because they quite simply can't handle that. I know the Xbox360 offers a system that allows you to install one or maybe even two games, but pretty much every developer has come out and specifically said that doing so will hurt the game's performance.

the only case of 'hurt' performance is Halo 3. All other games have reduced load times (Aside from forza that I can tell). I install all my games to harddrive, and have many games on demand purchased. this greatly increases the disc life, and reduces overall system temperature.

KristallNacht wrote:the only case of 'hurt' performance is Halo 3. All other games have reduced load times (Aside from forza that I can tell). I install all my games to harddrive, and have many games on demand purchased. this greatly increases the disc life, and reduces overall system temperature.

^This

For my opinion on this...

I prefer actually holding the game in my hands. If I'm just downloading it from somewhere, I don't really feel like its mine for keeps.

I'm lazy, I like not having to change discs...and transporting my game discs when I move (which is often) is quite a hassle.

Consoles will always be bad hardware wise because, much like PCs, they are out of date before they hit the shelves. Unlike PCs, though, companies can't constantly release new systems because they're expensive and the primary market (10-20 year-olds) isn't especially rich

The PS3 and Xbox 360 do, however, have enough power to easily handle most of today's gaming market. Although the graphic level may need to be bumped down a stitch for a few games, the change is minimal. Who wold buy a game specifically for it's graphics, anyway?

The ironic thing is, console gamers whine the most about graphics. And while I understand that the market for consoles aren't particularly rich people, I could easily build a computer for the same price of an Xbox360 that outperformed it so hard that I can't even quantify it properly. It's been that way for quite some time, now. The difference is that consoles just stagnate at that horribly out of date stage, whereas computers can at least be upgraded.