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 Digg.com Facebook Google Bookmarks N4G Gamerblips del.icio.us Reddit Slashdot.org StumbleUpon I dont mind downloadin arcade titles but i wont download these due to fact that my local corner shop sells most of these between £10 and £15 quid each and if you shop online you could get them even cheaper Hopefully in a years time a Game will be released in the stores and be available for digital download on the same day.
That is the future, isnt it? Spot on stonecold, spot on. how does this work?
if you delete a downloaded game can you re-download for free?
is it possible to sign into someone elses 360 and download a game already downloaded? i dont even know if its possible to log into someone else's 360 as yourself. It certainly is, but I'm guessing we won't see that for a while as none of the console makers will want to piss off retail that much. Certainly not until they bring out a console that is completely focused on downloadable games. Quite a few of these games can be picked up for less than $10 in store. $19.99 seems overpriced. I doubt it, they value their ‘relationship’ with retailers a little too much, and seeing as they are the main source of income for them through software sales I wouldn’t envisage same day downloads for a long, long time, if ever. Cutting out the middle man will only be biting the hand that feeds them… The future?
The future would be to have a game downloading about the same time as it goes gold but once it's downloaded it's unplayable until a second past midnight!! No more waiting in the rain / cold outside Game for the latest Halo!!!
THAT is the future! Yep, I won't be getting any of these either. I've bought most of those for a lot less.
Fight Night Round 3 - £7 a few years ago from Gamestation
Mass Effect - £6 A few months ago from Blockbuster
Need for Speed: Most Wanted - £12 a few months after launch from Ebay
Perfect Dark Zero - £5 for the limited editon about 2 years ago from Game
Prey - £3 Game.co.uk about 18 months ago
Sega Rally - £4 Blockbuster a few months ago
Viva Piñata - £7 for the limited edition from Ebay not long after it came out
Now, I know most of these were preowned, but I would rather pay a 3rd of the price and actually own something physical.
Game's online preowned section has most of those games for under a tenner. where do they get this pricing from? what are their overheads? this will flop because as previously spotted by other people a lot of the games listed can be brought for less than a tenner and in a nice shiny box. * NO TO DOWNLOAD ONLY GAMES * This is gonna be one massive ripoff and if MS get there way you will not have a choice, as you know MS and the second hand market are a thorn in there side that MS would love to pull out ,getting rid of discs, do that then its download only games ,no choice on price, eg at the moment Bioshock 2000ms points = £17 On that auction site Bioshock limited edition cost about £9. Only game there i'm interested in is Burnout Paradise, I don't think I'm going to download it though. much rather wait till the games are cheap on ebay, and then complete them and just send them on.
I've still got boxes of Saturn and dreamcast games that cost a small fortune, ebay wasn't around that time, and looking at them now... i think what a waste of money * NO TO DOWNLOAD ONLY GAMES * This is gonna be one massive ripoff and if MS get there way you will not have a choice, as you know MS and the second hand market are a thorn in there side that MS would love to pull out ,getting rid of discs, do that then its download only games ,no choice on price, eg at the moment Bioshock 2000ms points = £17 On that auction site Bioshock limited edition cost about £9. how come usa get it cheeper? Burnout Paradise £9.79
Sega Rally £9.91
Test Drive £11.73
Viva Pinata £7.79
Viva Pinata 2 £9.98
Kameo £4.99
Perfect Dark Zero £6.85
TR Legend £7.79
PREY £6.87
Assassin's Creed £8.99
Table Tennis £9.89
R6 Vegas £8.95
Fight Night 3 £9.87
Mass Effect £13.19
Just done a quick online search and these are the prices for some of the titles right now. ALL brand new and delivered to your door.
So how many people will want to take up serious hard drive space and pay extra when they can own a hard copy for less? which can also be taken round friends etc and has a sell on value when you get bored! Jeez, I HATE this 'points' system that Microsoft and Nintendo employ. I don't have a credit card which makes it very difficult to purchase these items with any great ease. Yes, I can go out and get a points card, but they're next to useless because of the denominations they come in (once you buy a major title, you're left with an amount of points that can't buy anything of any use!). Why not stick with the Sony model which at least allows use of a debit card? I'd love to give Microsoft and Nintendo my money - they just make it so bloody hard! I already have all the ones worth owning. It's still too early for this idea to take off, unless new releases are MUCH, MUCH, cheaper than they are at retail. I'm thinking half price cheaper. As others have said, the price for the majority of those titles is too much, but I'm guessing it's a case of Microsoft testing the water to see how may suckers are prepared to buy at those prices.
If the take-up is piss poor then they'll obviously have to do a rethink on their pricing policy, so here's hoping this goes down like a lead balloon. Totally agree with the above posts: they're simply overpriced...
I used to pre-order a lot of titles but these days I just add the ones I'm interested in to Gamestracker's website and set a price I'm willing to pay - and it's surprising how quickly the price drops to that kind of level.
Unless I'm a massive-massive fan of a particular title I've totally given up on paying the RRP on release day - so I certainly won't be paying way over the RRP for a download only version with no onward-sale value at all (plus it takes up HDD space which is already taken up installing said hard copies in the first place). Aren't they doing away with Points only for this service? I'm not sure if they'll take a debit card card but they're certainly taking a one-off credit card payment... If your debit card has the Visa symbol on it, you may get away with it regardless :-) Yeah. Only one I want that I don't already have from that list is Burnout paradise. You can get Fable 2 and burnout P for £30 new from hmv. I think they're overpriced, but I can still see this being a hit, a lot of people will pay over the odds for the convenience of being able to get a game there and then. Just imagine you wake up on a Friday, think 'I fancy playing X game tonight...'. You can then set it downloading, leave your Xbox on during the day to do the deed, and when you get home in the evening with your jaffa cakes you're all set. Good times. It might also be awesome from a stoner's point of view. These guys often can't make it to the store, or even across the room to the PC, so having games on demand will be like crack on tap. Hmm... one way of looking at it! ;-) I wonder if that'll make it in to Microsoft's marketing campaign:
"Games On Demand: The Stoner's Choice" Those prices are ridiculous.
Remember a few years ago when games companies were touting the revolutionary and i quote, "cheaper" games downloads that we would see.
Cheaper? we all asked. Well yes they said, by cutting out the middle man and the cost of disks/packaging etc we can pass the savings onto the consumer. Oh cool, bring it on then.
Oh but look how it has all panned out. Are we actually seeing these savings on games digitally distributed? Are we ****!
CoD4 £14.99 (retail) - £29.99 (Steam)
SF4 £17.73 (retail) - £29.99 (steam)
TS3 £23.99 (retail) - £39.99!! (EA Store)
Spore £24.96 (retail (In Stock)) - £39.99!! (EA Store) (Cheapest was £19.99 but not in stock)
Damnation £17.99 (retail) - £34.99 (Codemasters.co.uk)
To name but a few.
As you can see, apart from some of the limited time savings you can get now and then these companies are just trying to rip us off rather than 'pass on the savings'.
So im sorry MS if im not jumping around with joy over your games on demand digital distribution service but you, with all the others can shove it up your digital arseholes untill you stop taking the piss.
/rantover. "The future would be to have a game downloading about the same time as it goes gold but once it's downloaded it's unplayable until a second past midnight!! No more waiting in the rain / cold outside Game for the latest Halo!!!
THAT is the future!"
That's the present. Steam already does that with a bunch of titles. Might not be exactly the targeted audience from Microsoft's point of view, but "Legrasses'" got a point...pissed up or drugged up gamers are indeed more likely to "give this a go" or as he so succinctly puts it..."games on demand like crack on tap". i dont get dd. for some games (like 1 or 2) its kl as you dont have 2 swap the disc out every time you want to play online or smthg but the rest of the time i want to be able to have a feeling of ownership. dd dont have tht plus now they are more expensive and you cant resell them or anything. if this is the future then that is quite sad. Whilst I see where you're coming from, you have to keep in mind that publishers don't pay attention to retail discounts. All they compare it to is the RRP, which is usually £39.99 at least (for consoles). This is why DLC looks overpriced in the majority of cases. I hope so, it's a good angle, although I do think at those prices, and to encourage sales, you should get a free pack of jaffa cakes with every game. ;P Its true that most of the games i gave in my example are older and have now come down in price at retail but my argument still stands.
It still doesnt get away from the fact that most digital distribution services dont offer games any cheaper than retail when newly released. Not even any cheaper than RRP unless there are special offers being offered e.g. pre-order discount on steam etc.
Dont get me wrong there are some bargains to be had via DD if your after a game at the particular time there is a decent promotion or discount but the services are still being used to suck more money from us.
And dont even get me started on the price of DLC... :evil: Maybe (this will sound stupid but it's just an idea) you could have games released with launch day downloads but only by using a code that you would purchase in a retail store/online and it would offer the consumer a convenient way to get there game on launch day whilst keeping retailers in the loop. Like I said it's just an idea why is everyone complaining? you dont have to worry about games being sold out or discs getting scratched! who gives a toss if its a little overpriced! this is to ensure that the game industry lives on! if it werent for the game industry then the economic crisis surely wouldve made us go insane! why is everyone complaining? you dont have to worry about games being sold out or discs getting scratched! who gives a toss if its a little overpriced! this is to ensure that the game industry lives on! if it werent for the game industry then the economic crisis surely wouldve made us go insane! why is everyone complaining? you dont have to worry about games being sold out or discs getting scratched! who gives a toss if its a little overpriced! this is to ensure that the game industry lives on! if it werent for the game industry then the economic crisis surely wouldve made us go insane! its pointless. why would MS sony etc bother giving a cut to the retail store when they dont have to and just distribute it online? another reason dd will probably never reall overtake physical copies is tht retailers get all their money from games (especially preowned copies). going exclusively digital means thees stores are in a huge problem and will prob say screw you and wont even bother selling the consoles themselves. you'd prob find them only in the huge shops and tht isnt good.
thts the prob with the psp go's price. people are saying the reason its so hi is due to the fact tht they have to give the retailer a higher cut as they wont see an ounce of money after they sell it (other than accessories). i dont really think they can hike up the price of consoles tht much later on but we'll see. man, over time every like consumer good depreciates in value. games cant be an exception.
dd has far worse probs. bandwidth limits, restrictions (like taking games to a friends place now and then), corrupted storage devices, the service will go down periodically and this will freak some pepl out and if you do scratch your games then you're just careless. i am with the preview and they have put a few 360 games up already today
they are all priced at £19.99..not priced as Microsoft points
Viva pinata -£19.99...i got this bundled with Forza 2 the other week priced at 15 quid :D Completly ridiculous.
Assasins Creed, £19.99 digital download, or £8.99 for a boxed copy with free delivery.
You'd have to be completely MENTAL to get the digital copy.
Just how stupid do Microsoft think it's userbase is? :roll: it's a falt price for all of them, like x box originals. Only half of the games are up on the preview at the moment. Still 19.99 is a bit much for games that were launch titles.
I can see where they're coming from though if you think about it from an RRP value all the games clock in at £25+. So you'd be in theory saving a fiver.
If the price remains uniform though it'd be a bloody good service when it eventually starts posting new games. Which would be fine if they hadn't already stated that the games on demand wouldn't have new games on it. A bit pointless really because people generally buy older games 2nd hand anyway. I know that I wouldn't pay more than £10 for most of those.
And you can guarantee that games like Burnout and Oblivion will be the standard versions, without the added DLC, so you'll eventually pay more than retail for them anyway. good point. You can pick up the game of the year ed of Oblivion for less than £20 now if you shop around.
I think MS said that they wouldn't be day of release because they didn't want to piss off retailers. but i think they were talking about only a 2-3 week delay. which isn't to bad. They have just added them to the games on the demand and each game is going for £19.99 even for Viva pinata wich you can buy for £4.99 in Gamestation . Also most file sizes are between 5 and 6 gig If that's true (I'll check myself later), then they are paking the tiss.
I wouldn't even be given half of the games on that list..... I checked throught the last this morning, they are all £19.99, and all can be brought elsewhere for less than half the price you can get them "on demand".
That combined with the fact that the biggest (overpriced) HDD you can get is 120gb, means they are indeed taking the piss. Damn. I guess that £13.60 price point was going by the $ equivalent before they add the "Europe Tax"!
As Duncan Bannatyne would say; I'm out. 8) You can get all tese gams on Amazon for £10, why would I want to pay more for a digital download?.
**** off with your milking machine MS, we don't want it. Indeed, as i said in an earlier post £20 is taking the p!ss for those titles. Ive been looking to get Oblivion for the 360 (even though ive played over 200hrs on it for the PC) and i certainly wont be downloading it from MS when i can get a brand new copy, not 2nd hand for less.
On a side note does anyone know if MS are getting rid of the 'MS points' currency in favour of real currency with real prices or is it just for the games on demand?
Or do we still have to buy the points before we can then buy any DLC/add-ons etc?
I really hope they get rid of that system altogether. The US can now use PayPal, which in effect, does get rid of the points system.
Let's hope it comes to the UK, too. I'd be wary of using Paypal at the moment though, three people I work with have had their cards cloned in the last couple of weeks and PayPal has been judged as the culprit in each case. As of last night all the X360 Games on Demand were priced €29.99. €29.99 for Perfect Dark Zero...I paid less than €7 new about 2 years ago. Lol can get the disc retail games cheaper...i'll pass on this. instead of just older games why not include new ones? and this is why console makers and publishers cant wait for a download only future, no more second hand sales, no more heavy discounting in shops, no more middle men, just more profit for them. These games in this format are worth £5. There's no box, no manual no disk and no possibility of re-sale on the second hand market. It's environmentally friendly but also much cheaper to distribute the games, almost free. Digital download isn't positive unless game prices reflect the value of the product which is £5 because if prices don't reflect value then there will be expensive games and few high-street stores. The fact is, both Sony and Microsoft wanted to do this as the only form of distribution for this generation, however held off, essentially due to concerns that not all countries could technically offer consumers quick enough broadband, plus the fact most consumers may feel a jump from DVD straight to digital content was too soon.
Xbox arcade and PSN are nothing more than a way of easing the consumer into a digital download era.
Its simply a way to test the water. Guess what, consumers bought it, hook, line and sinker. Were going mad for it!
Its seriously caught the finance departments at Microsoft seeing how much money is being poured into Xbox and arcade games that this is a no brainer. Bring out digital content from the 360 catalogue.
Its made to sound so tempting and all so user friendly, the real truth is, its simply another way to garner more of a cut of the profit than ever before.
You cut out packaging, pressing of the discs, distribution and transport, plus the hundreds of staff in various offices and depots that come in to organising all this.
What Your left with is some code that can be sent as many times as needed to as many sources, with almost no overhead.
Microsoft and Sony absolutely hate retailers, they have no desire at all if possible to sell through them. Don't for a second believe otherwise. Retailers often do nothing to help Microsoft and Sony, plus are only after a profit themselves, forcing the game price up further.
The one thing Sony even looked at doing was having the PS3 burn areas of the disc coding it to that machine, this was scrapped not so long before the final unit went to production, but is again on the cards for the PS4, if we even have physical media now.
Why this hatred of retailers, well its obvious, they all sell second hand games, which to the retailer offers a higher cut than that of the original, to Microsoft and Sony they lose out on the sale of this title NEW to someone else having purchased a second hand copy.
Regardless of whether the person has traded in his game and bought a new Microsoft or Sony title or not, this is irrelevant as they will also lose at least one new sale in to the equation and gain no profit from it.
Therefore the fight to control this has been extremely high up on their agenda.
Digital media offers this. As you can see from the pricing, its disgusting to think they are selling titles that are over a year old for prices not much different than you could of paid at a retailer only a couple of months after they were launched.
Trust me, it won't stop here now, this will gather momentum and if the life of the 360 is extended say 5 more years before the next system is out, by then the consumer market will be that brainwashed into thinking this is a superb idea, that the next machine will be digital download only.
Lets also not forget, it might sound like a superb idea getting that game downloaded and activated a minute after midnight for those big hitters, or downloads as they become available for those other Tripple A titles.....I'd just hate to see the lag on the network and hit the distribution servers take at the golden hour. It will make downloading CDs on dial up seem exceedingly fast. I'd also like to offer anyone the challenge (including Virgin Media 50mbit consumers) that I could drive to my local game shop, pick the title up, pay for it, drive it back and install it if necessary and still have time to crack open a beer long before anyone else has actually finished the download of that 4 gig game.
As the majority of the UK are still being offered no more than 4mbit maximum speeds, this is simply not going to work the way consumers had hoped.
Also, for a moment can you imagine the frustration with the 360 popping with its 3 red lights, especially for nearly 12 months after launch when microsoft were still insisting you send back the hdd (and get a different one back with your refurbed machine????). The pain of downloading each of these games again? Well you wouldnt bother would you. What with me being on the 7th Xbox 360 now, I'd of give up with that long ago.
The truth is, this will become nothing more than a monopoly, like sky sports and box office is. What was consumer friendly will soon end up costing us far more in the long run, for nothing at all in return apart from some binary on a hdd.
The value in a few years to come? Zero. What a waste of your money.
I'd avoid this like the plague, as everyone that takes it up is technically going to do nothing more than hang the rest of us.
As I say, may sound like a brilliant futuristic idea, but in reality its nothing more than a way of making rich people richer. http://www.destructoid.com/games-on-demand-pay-100-for-mass-effect--143190.phtml Hmm. They cost far too much, given you can get most of them pre-owned for far less. Plus I don't have the HD space, unless MS want to send me a 60 gig drive? As several people have mentioned these prices are higher than those for going out an buying a preowned version from gamestation, Game, CEX or whever.
Who will want to pay extra for a version that you:
A) Don't have a physical copy of.
B) Will be much more a hassle to deal with if it goes wrong.
C) Cannot be traded in to save you money when you've finished it.
D) Will probably dissapear into the digital ether when the next MS console is released (leaving you with nothing).
E) Takes up precious Hard Disk space.
I know download is probably the future for the industry but it has so many disadvantages, it'll be interesting to see how well the GTA add ons peform at retail in comparison to the download versions.
after typing this I went and read the rest of the posts and realised Paullwar already said all of this with far more skill. | 
