Hmm, I was hoping this would go down a bit better, even though I'm not the biggest HL2 fan...

<span style="color: lightblue">In other words,
- All the money spent on their games will go to the people who designed and wrote it, not the people who just put it on shelves and advertise it.
- Valve are making use of the internet as a way of distributing software, and will be the first big-name game authors to do so.
- Videndi will loose some business.

Good.

EDIT: Fixed colours...

[ 05-01-2005, 09:18 PM: Message edited by: LennonCook ]

i can see proces not dropping, they gotta pay the lawyers with something

Yeah, there is no way they will drop the price.
And lennon, I doubt you will be liking it so much when you monthly bandwidth is destroyed after buying a game ;)

<span style="color: lightblue">That is the fault of the ISP, not the game designer. The fact is simply that the internet is a wonderful way to distribute games. Cheap, effective, fast. The distributors can basically guarantee that every copy that is downloaded is atleast tried, and - if they license with the internet in mind - possibly tried by multiple people; which they can't do with CDs - they can burn 100000 CDs, but they have no way of guaranteeing that all of those will be bought, or on the flip side that that is enough. As a consumer, I can't go down to Games Wizard and guarantee they'll have the game I want. The internet fixes that - the distributors put up a few servers (and, if they're smart, BitTorrent it), I can simply go to their website, pay their fee, and I've got the game. Every time. Guaranteed (since they should be able to tell if I didn't get the full file, and my account should thus stay open until I do).
The only part where it falls down is with the ISP. If they time limit me, I might not be able to get the game for a month. If they bandwidth limit me, I might not be able to get the game for a month (or, I might not be able to get anything else for a month). But that isn't something anyone but the ISPs can directly control, and it's not something ignoring it will fix. What the ISPs who do this need is a good kick in the pants. Something to start a mass exodus of the average consumer away from them, into the realms of those ISPs who aren't so evil.
With luck, Valve's move will be the start of that something.

<span style="color: lightblue">That is the fault of the ISP, not the game designer. The fact is simply that the internet is a wonderful way to distribute games. Cheap, effective, fast. The distributors can basically guarantee that every copy that is downloaded is atleast tried, and - if they license with the internet in mind - possibly tried by multiple people; which they can't do with CDs - they can burn 100000 CDs, but they have no way of guaranteeing that all of those will be bought, or on the flip side that that is enough. As a consumer, I can't go down to Games Wizard and guarantee they'll have the game I want. The internet fixes that - the distributors put up a few servers (and, if they're smart, BitTorrent it), I can simply go to their website, pay their fee, and I've got the game. Every time. Guaranteed (since they should be able to tell if I didn't get the full file, and my account should thus stay open until I do).
The only part where it falls down is with the ISP. If they time limit me, I might not be able to get the game for a month. If they bandwidth limit me, I might not be able to get the game for a month (or, I might not be able to get anything else for a month). But that isn't something anyone but the ISPs can directly control, and it's not something ignoring it will fix. What the ISPs who do this need is a good kick in the pants. Something to start a mass exodus of the average consumer away from them, into the realms of those ISPs who aren't so evil.
With luck, Valve's move will be the start of that something. </font>[/QUOTE]lol, dont get me wrong lennon, I think this is a frikken awesome thing, but I dont think the generall online population is ready for a company like Valve to be online only ;)

Downloading an entire game seem like a cumbersome way of obtaining a game, especially for non-internetwizzies.

I expect we'll see these online distributers providing snail mail distributions (dvd's) for users with limited bandwidth.

As for me, I think they've got a solid marketing plan, and I think it'll work.

The HL2 release certainly wasn't perfect, but for the first application of their technology they picked a game that was sure to be huge, therefore exacerbating their problems. IMO the whole thing went AMAZINGLY smoothly given the scale and newness.

This is the future of interactive content delivery.

So how many weeks will that take me at 3.5KB/sec? [img]tongue.gif[/img] In ten years maybe, this is just ridiculous!

Who pays for the shipping of sending it over here? In the end it might turn out more expensive than just buying it over the counter.

So just how much are the price will be reduce?

<span style="color: lightblue">You get three and a half kilobytes in a second? I'm jealous, I still measure speed in kilobits. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

But remember, this could help make broadband the norm (that is, it won't just be sites assuming everyone has broadband anymore). This won't get us the whole way there, but if it works well, it will be a good start.

<span style="color: lightblue">You get three and a half kilobytes in a second? I'm jealous, I still measure speed in kilobits. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

But remember, this could help make broadband the norm (that is, it won't just be sites assuming everyone has broadband anymore). This won't get us the whole way there, but if it works well, it will be a good start. </font>[/QUOTE]Well the way I see it, and the way I thought you would have seen it, companies like telstra will see this, know that people need broadband and up their prices due to the fact that bandwidth is going to go through the roof [img]graemlins/eatmousepointer.gif[/img]

3.5 kilobytes is correct here... A 56 kilobit/sec modem would give ~7KB/sec. Of course the reality is nothing that fast, and my connection varies from about 3.5KB/sec up to 5KB/sec. If it was 3.5Kb/sec then I would be waiting for minutes just to get Ironworks to load!

And kilobits are a stupid measure of size anyway, so I always think in kilobytes [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 05-03-2005, 07:41 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

I think this is a good idea, as more lazy sods will take up buying the game direct from the company off the net. It might prove troublesome for online game distributors such as Play however. That is, of course, if it takes off.

The majority of people I know have Broadband these days, and if you are still stuck on 3.5Kb/sec then you are one unlucky person. ;)

Well, at uni I have a nice fast connection. At home, its a different matter [img]smile.gif[/img] I shall definitely get broadband in my first house.

But my parents just wouldn't use it, and the additional expense doesn't justify it. If all you do is check email and visit the occasional site then dialup is all you need really. If we were in a non-BT area then it would be nice and mega-cheap but alas.

<span style="color: lightblue">Or, they will drop prices in an effort to gain more customers (and/or not lose existing ones).

[ 05-03-2005, 06:24 PM: Message edited by: LennonCook ]

<span style="color: lightblue">You get three and a half kilobytes in a second? I'm jealous, I still measure speed in kilobits. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

But remember, this could help make broadband the norm (that is, it won't just be sites assuming everyone has broadband anymore). This won't get us the whole way there, but if it works well, it will be a good start. </font>[/QUOTE]Well the way I see it, and the way I thought you would have seen it, companies like telstra will see this, know that people need broadband and up their prices due to the fact that bandwidth is going to go through the roof [img]graemlins/eatmousepointer.gif[/img] </font>[/QUOTE]no way!
they wouldn't increase the price, especially over something like this. Telstra (the major communications provider in Australia) firstly wouldn't pay attention to this event, and secondly wouldn't do anything about it even if they knew, another company such as TPG would have to make the first move then Telstra along with optus would follow.
But all that would only lead to a reduced price, and if it increases bandwidth requirments, then that infastructure needed to be upgraded anyway.
Besided it's only a game, think of the ammount of bandwidth people use downloading porn and music, and that's a constant download, this would be a once off download for a select part of the internet using community, because gamers, and mroe specifically gamers that would download an entire game are only a small fraction of broadband users.