Interesting, you don't think Sony and MS will make home consoles soon? So they will be like Gaikai?
Nintendo will have to pootle along like the GC and deliver a console that doesn't break the bank and is marginally successful. They did allright with the 30 million selling GC and will probably have the same figures with wii U IMO.
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Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
gamingeek said:How do download them forever if the steam site goes down?
I have corrected my blog for clarity.
gamingeek said:...
Interesting, you don't think Sony and MS will make home consoles soon? So they will be like Gaikai?
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I just don't think they'll be in gaming at all. They are huge companies with plenty of other more profitable divisions. If I had to wildly speculate I think it's more likely that we'll have Nintendo, Valve and Activision as hardware providers within ten years.
As soon as the TV set-top box wars are settled MS will have no interest in being in the gaming business. If they win (which is unlikely given the high cost of their box) they'll be around forever, but if someone else wins they don't care about game consoles -- they'll double down on the PC side.
Sony has done an admirable job with building up studios, but they are so far off the map on the hardware side at this point I think that if the PS4 doesn't pan out for them they'll fold their tent and sell off their creatives.
For consoles to even begin to push towards digital distribution as a primary means for sales, they have to start by giving up on having proprietary storage at exorbitant prices.
Similarly, you can't be locking down my software to my hardware. It needs to be my software at the most to my account. That means none of these customer service complications in transferring from one system to another.
With physical copies, we have full control over our data, and you can change that. Until there's a demonstration that we maintain that control when all information is digital, it's a much harder sell.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobileYodariquo said:
For consoles to even begin to push towards digital distribution as a primary means for sales, they have to start by giving up on having proprietary storage at exorbitant prices.
Well, they all support generic USB sticks now at least.
Yodariquo said:...
Similarly, you can't be locking down my software to my hardware. It needs to be my software at the most to my account. That means none of these customer service complications in transferring from one system to another.
...
This is my #1 problem with console DLC.
I've heard that backing up Steam games is as simple as copying the steamapps folder, though I've never tried it. However, I just tried testing your claim that Steam games can be played without Steam, and while it works for some games (e.g. The Binding of Isaac), it doesn't appear to work with others (e.g. Amnesia: The Dark Descent). Is there something you know about this that I don't? I'd really like to safeguard my games for when Valve has a rainy day.
^Aspro is a pirate at heart, so was probably referring to cracking them.
Backing up is that easy.
Angry_Beaver said:Late Angry_Beaver is late.
I've heard that backing up Steam games is as simple as copying the steamapps folder, though I've never tried it. However, I just tried testing your claim that Steam games can be played without Steam, and while it works for some games (e.g. The Binding of Isaac), it doesn't appear to work with others (e.g. Amnesia: The Dark Descent). Is there something you know about this that I don't? I'd really like to safeguard my games for when Valve has a rainy day.
Only what I've read on Steam forums about their promises to technically enable this as they leave to turn the lights out if they go out of business. It's not something that they have currently implemented, which would, in effect mean that all Steam games were DRM free (and then they'd have no publishers wanting to work with them).
So we have their promise, which is just words, but also, as I eluded to, Steam has so many savvy users even if Valve did screw us over by going out of business I'm confident that the community would hack a solution.
I am staunchly against digital distribution on consoles.
I buy games on Steam.
So how do I reconcile this?
Steam has provided two things that the console manufacturers have yet to provide:
1. A roadmap of "ownership". You can
downloadplay the games you've downloaded forever (and keep the install files for transferrance). If Valve goes out of business, you can access them without use of Steam.2. Credible backward compatibility. With a PC it is easier to recreate past generations shoudl your hardware die. With consoles, it's almost impossible. There are enough Steam users out there that I also trust that the internet community will be coming up with hacks to keep this stuff alive long after I am gone.
I don't trust Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft on the matter of backward compatibility at all. In fact, there is a financial dis-incentive for them to provide backward compatibility. Microsoft half-assed the 360 backward compatibility with mixed success. Sony stained their prior perfect record by removing compatibility and Nintendo is sticking to a "one-gen prior" rule. To give them some respect here, clearly the Gamecube could not have suported N64 carts however, there is no similarly physical restraint on the U accomodating gamecube discs. Nintendo also deserves credit for giving a migration path from the DS to the 3DS.
I honestly don't believe Sony and Microsoft will be in the gaming console hardware business in ten years and their records on making reliable hardware that will last the ages is something to be ashamed of. I am not going to bury my games alive on their hard-drives or trust that they will keep cloud storage around after they exit the business.