The Shrine

Offereing "classic" games for $6 or $10 for download without DRM

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6197407.ht ... op;story;3

Makes pirating easy so I'm interested in seeing how it works out

Zeus wrote:Offereing "classic" games for $6 or $10 for download without DRM

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6197407.ht ... op;story;3

Makes pirating easy so I'm interested in seeing how it works out

It's not exactly an unreasonable price...but I'm of the opinion that "classics" (aka. old ass games) don't age well because of the quickly advancing state of technology and the products offered by a service like this really don't justify the 5.99/9.99 price point.

They'll have to make some really solid choices regarding stock to find a large enough customer base. And by that I mean offer relatively recent games at the 9.99 price (NWN 1, Civ 3 gold, etc)...

I think devs/publishers need to really wrap their heads around the fact that games aren't like other forms of media (whose quality has stayed relatively stable through the years). There comes a point when they shouldn't expect to profit from old work and let it happily exist in the internet for free...if they want to make money, they can take the IP and create something new (or remake and update it).

You still have enough "classic" games that generate money without any reworking - such as the arcade ports on XBLA, VC stuff, or even Nintendo's re-release of its games on the GBA where SMB sold something like 2 million copies in Japan alone - that they're not gonna just "get it". What they don't do is quickly enough recognize the opportunity to make an extra few bucks off of a game that won't have legs (like, say, the million and a half FPSs that come out every other minute) by making available on sites such as these relatively quickly.

even XBLA games are at least updated graphics wise a bit, and part of that you're paying for the port... if you've ever tried to play an 8+ year old game on a fairly new PC you'll know the pain

I was reading an analysis of some Japanese visual novel games and apparently the industry is founded on the fact that your core fans buy the same game more than once (a lot more than once sometimes). Like we're not even talking about expansions, just the same game with a different package and they can sell it again to the same guys.

Unfortunate you can hardly justify the validity of a model based on totally irrational fans. If 2 million guys bought SMB again that doesn't mean the same 2 million guys are going to buy any other old game. As far as I know most recompiliation of 'classic' stuff never got any great sales. It probably doesn't cost them much, if any, to churn such compiliation up which is why they keep showing up, but it sure isn't because they're selling like hotcakes. You can argue someone somewhere might find some old game worthy of $5.99 but for the most part I think it's just a waste of time. Someone somewhere (me) will pay $5 for the latest copy of Twin Heroes 2 Volume 492 but that didn't stop the bookstore I go to from stop selling it because no one else is crazy enough to buy it.

And piracy actually covers these needs better than a legitmate service. People pirate stuff just because they can, so the Twin Heroes scans never stop coming even if only 3 guys in the world reads them, but I'm pretty sure a real company would've stopped doing this a long time ago.

I am actually pretty excited about it for a couple of reasons.

1) I am a Vista user, so the fact that they are making some of my old faves work with Vista is great to me.

2) I have stated before that graphics mean nothing to me, so the games looking outdated doesn't matter to me.

3) I already saw the sequil to one of my fave old PC games on the splash with Descent Freespace 2, I am hoping they will bring out Freespace 1 and the other Descent games, as well as classics like TIE fighter.

To me being able to play these games again is worth 6-10 bucks a game.

TIE Fighter runs on expanded memory and I recall that being a mess to run in the newer system, which is part of the reason I don't think these are great ideas.

Well we will see, my guess is that if they are going in to make the games work with Vista/XP, they are also going to take care of other problems older games had such as extremly high speed and things like that.

M'k'n'zy wrote:I am actually pretty excited about it for a couple of reasons.

1) I am a Vista user

That can be remedied :-)

Zeus wrote:

M'k'n'zy wrote:I am actually pretty excited about it for a couple of reasons.

1) I am a Vista user

That can be remedied :-)

No thanks, I am very happy with it.