No. Broadband is too laggy. Even in countries like Japan with hyper fast speeds. By the time this type of service is doable, the current gen will be long gone. I suspect the big companies are getting on board "just in case".
mind you most people in the world dont have internet, hence why physical publishing it still the major point of revenue
How many High-Performance-Machines do they need for this? Think about the Lag if you have a good latency of ~50ms: Video-Data comes to your Machine, needs to be decompressed, then will be shown on your Screen. You make an input in the Game, the Input-Data needs 50ms to arrive on the "Manchine" which runs your Game. It will recognize your Input and the result needs again 50ms to appear on your screen. (And of yourse, its not only that the "Machine" needs time to recognize your inputs, it needs more time to compress the Video-Data again....) Even low-bandwith and low-performance streaming Applications like Teamspeak have a little lag so how will it work nearly realtime with high-end Games?
Seriously. I'd much rather own the game outright and potentially play it forever than let Big Brother cut me off whenever he feels like it (or goes out of business).
I oppose digital until the day comes the prices are really low. I bought both Oddworld games on Steam, being my second non XBLA/Wiiware digital purchase, but it was 4$. Stuff like that is awesome. I like digital when you can get a 60$ game for like 15, which I don't think is ever going to happen. Why the fuck is stuff on Steam more expensive then boxed copies??
too right. Digital downloads are a thing of evil. I sure hope as hell it doesn't come to light. Yakumo
I often ask myself this. When Steam first took off I hated it, then when I started to pick up some of the valve classics for next to nothing (the dollar to pound helped a lot here) I thought it was great. Now it's just pissing me off again, the prices aren't even trying to be competitive.
Steam costs more than retail because companies cut prices as they see fit.. you see it all the time online as wel -- Amazon being cheaper than the big retail stores, etc. HOWEVER Steam refuses to release games for a lower price if it is going to retail too BECAUSE retailers have threatened to reduce or cut altogether the amount of copies of that title they order. Basically, the physical stores don't want to be undercut by digital sales and even though digital sales are ever-increasing, game developers and publishers still rely on physical purchases for the majority of sales. It really sucks, because the devs/pubs WANT to sell at a lower price knowing full well they don't have to deal with the costs necessary to stocking a copy in a store...
I've seen the on-demand service available in S. Korea and that was fantastic. Just call up episodes and in a min or two you get watch it... So I think at least in S. Korea this is well within the realm of doable/workable I suppose~ Wish we could have something half decent here in Oz but... -__-;
This is pretty much what everyone says, but I just don't buy it. I'm sure Steam didn't put up much of a fight.
See Remote Play for PS3. I'm in the same room and it's still ****ing too laggy to play in most games. Only one that worked half decent was Pixel Junk Eden and even still sometimes you'll screw up due to some lag.
