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Epic Mickey 2 for Vita coming June 18
Digital Duke4?
by Steve Gibson, Feb 16, 2005 6:57pm PSTWell everyone around here who put more than a moment of thought in to the industry probably realizes that digital delivery is set to become a huge part of the game industry. Half-Life 2 was a huge step and now it looks like 3DRealms is now hopping aboard the digital delivery train. Here is a quote from Scott Miller about Gamesxtream a Steam-like service.
"Games xStream is the first and only online delivery platform that can satisfy a gamer's desire to buy a game on impulse and start playing minutes later, regardless of the size or complexity of the game. 3D Realms is extremely excited by this ground breaking technology, and we plan to use it to sell our future releases"There seem to be a dozen new game streaming technology companies showing up every time you blink. Try to keep the Duke4 jokes to a minimum and save your comedic skills for the Apollo or something.
Comments
What's wrong with me going to the store and buying it. I like having game boxes. What if I downloaded every movie I owned and the only proof I had was the damn data on my computer? This is lame stuff guys
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Which also means you do not have to wait for the entire game to 'unlock' to begin playing.
You can play and stream at the same time, not 1 or the other.
You can also play online and stream without it killing your ping times (yes, its game QOS aware).
When you close the app, its gone. No memory resident stuff, no taskbar icons, no bloatware.
It has provisions to allow for offline mode as well, and can autodetect it (not forcing you to manually set the mode). If you have not streamed the entire game, it will let you know this (since if the game pieces arent there, its hard to play) (not in the current release, we're testing online, not offline)
It supports patching, and updates if you want to use them, and can do it 'on the fly'.
You can still plant your updated media / files / etc into the game path and it can pick them up, you do not need to do anything with the client. Gamesaves / configs are written 'in the clear' so you can edit just like you are used to.
How do I know? I am one of the coders and the architect of the system.
on a side note...
I bought HL2 from steam as well (prerelease). So i've experienced it much like others. I play games as well, so a lot of this was built from a gamers perspective.
The game images are from a mod I am part of: http://www.hackerz.tc based on the UT2004 engine.
--Royal O'Brien aka OBWANDO
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Not sure i get why he says first, is this not what Steam is.
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i made the mistake with HL2. will want retail hardcopy that doesn't need online authentication. otherwise, 3dr will not get my money.
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Make that two in the stores, I'm giving one away in a competition.
But one thing though, george.
Get the fucking game done already. I'd like to see you guys top HL2. Don't think you will. Times have changed.
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http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=9006004
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What really prevents someone from 'spoofing' and making your computer THINK the masterserver is trying to update your software, when in reality its uploading malicious code.....
If a hacker shows up at the right door (port) wearing the right suit (masterserver id) what prevents them from walking in, and doing what they please?
I dont like the idea of my computer 'auto-accepting' any kind of code....
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Pros
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1. Ease of updates, add-ons
2. No wasted resources for packaging
3. Convenience of in-house purchase
Cons
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1. Lack of physical ownership
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Fuck the haters.
As it stands I prefer online distribution. Presuming it is like Half Life 2 you save a couple bucks by buying online, which is a drop in the bucket but more money will presumably go towards the developers. I can always get behind that. On top of that I don't waste space with a paper box I'm going to throw away anyways, I can back up the install with a DVD, and all my patches and updates are automatic.
Did I mention that I LOVE automatic patches and map packs?
Anyway, lots of people seem to disagree with me here, but I would personally love it if I could buy all my games this way. Hell, once they start selling movies and music at higher or lossless quality, I'm buying that too. Screw DVDs. I have a shelf with over 400 of them. If I could have my entire movie collection running out of a box in high def in my home theater I'd be in heaven.
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Also, people who bought it at retail and then complained that they had to use Steam need to cowboy up and get over it. They knew about Steam before they bought the game, and no amount of whining now is going to put that genie back in the bottle. HL2 via Steam has been a pretty successful thing financially, and when devs can give me the game directly without the middle man I will always take that route. Especially 3DRealms, since they will need all of the money they can get: after DNF no publisher will work with them as they are totally incapable of making a game in a reasonable amount of time. Hopefully DNF will be a success so they can self-fund like Valve does. =)
Understand this - the people complaining about it aren't *against* you being able to download it off the internet the day its release and have a super-awesome-auto-patch function.
I personally would just like the option to do what I have always been able to do with my games - Play them without a net connection. Choose what patches I download. Play them without a third parties 'consent' being required at the time of use. Give me all of those options, and I will be happy.
But we all know thats not going to happen right? As with most copy protection, the rights will be definitively taken away from the honest, but the pirates will be unaffected (and able to do all of the above).
There is a lot of good service to be had in digital distribution. And a lot of bad limitations. Why can't I have the *option* of using those services when they are in no way linked to the limitations?
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back on topic though. i'm all for the people that make the games getting my money instead of fueling EA or one of the other mega corporations. what was it with hl2? valve takes in 3x as much $$ versus retail copies or something close to that.
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