I sit here on what feels like a never-ending Wednesday playing Max Payne and listening to the Shatter soundtrack. Why does it feel like today will never end? Well that’s because the local exchange is having issues meaning the internet is a bust.
When it returns I fear having to open Google Reader to the thousands of new posts that sites make although generally they are all on the same thing. I fear having to check my email to see missed deadlines, urgent responses and countless offers to various purchase pills.
I’ll ignore those fears at the moment. I’d rather opt to dive around hotels in New York with an oddly stiff trench coat. I didn’t buy Max Payne before my internet got cut off though. The allure, last night, of purchasing it through Games on Demand wasn’t strong enough. I took myself to town and bought it for a fraction of the price.
This rare coincidence have confirmed another fear though. Services like OnLive would be out of my reach. Leaving me with absolutely nothing to do in these times of, for lack of a better word, hardship. Now digital distribution isn’t something I entirely agree with but at least that is delivering the content for offline use in the future. The pros and cons.
I guess what conclusion I’ve come to on this long afternoon is that OnLive would be a step back or at least solely it would be. Maybe in decades to come when the Broadband infrastructure is in place and most importantly stable enough we should go for it, but at the moment I would pick my physical shelf of games over any other way of enjoying this content.
Despite being a bit of a campaigner against digital distribution for it’s lack of a physical product, platform owner controlled prices and dependance on another service, I’m coming around. However this content has be available in as many different avenues as possible and OnLive, digital distribution and retail are three options.
Three options that should stay completely separate and independent of each other. Putting all our eggs in one basket would be foolish. Calling physical discs a dying medium would be just as stupid. It should just be one form of content delivery among the emerging ones. Let’s not champion digital distribution or OnLive as the be all and end all. See them as another route to your entertainment.
The fear is that publishers and platform owners won’t want to support multiple delivery routes. Although as long as people will consume games through multiple avenues they’ll have to support it. I guess the real fear is platform holders taking exclusivity in an different direction with delivery exclusivity. The day a massive title becomes an OnLive exclusive won’t be one to look forward to.
Leave a Reply