If they used this to resolve the backward compatibility issue then it could be a winner. I can see there needing to verify if users have the existing games might be an issue but it could be a good solution.



That means at least a couple of our members are excluded from this service right now.

PlayStation Now set for 2015 EU launch, report claims

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/44 ... rt-claims/

If they get it right it could turn the industry on it's head, but price is key. I find it hard to believe that the sort of greed in digital right now will get any better with a service that lets you finish a game during rental. I mean how much will the developers and publishers want for their standard business models getting turned upside down? Traditionally they're [LIFTED] idiots.

Microsoft reportedly paying YouTube gamers to praise Xbox One

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/44 ... -xbox-one/

Xbox One competitive digital prices 'on the agenda'

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/44 ... he-agenda/

I laughed earlier at Infamous (PS4) being available for 'a pre-order price' of £48! The disc prices are stupid, the digital prices are just taking the piss. It's gouging, nothing more.

I can understand the price to some extent with the higher development costs but they will get to a point where they are too expensive, and so will find fewer people buying them. Online prices should be lower with the additional cost savings they can make.

I seriously doubt the higher developer costs in most cases, certainly at £15 difference a disc, then charging a similar amount online where there aren't even distribution costs. And most of these games are sequels where a lot of the groundwork was done years ago, plus they're often essentially upscaled versions of what's already been created for the PS3/360 version.

I hear this a lot, but it's not actually true. There are distribution costs to digital software, just not the same ones. Sony, Microsoft etc are presumably paying someone (Akamai or whoever) for the service to host the data and to ship it out to the possibly millions of people who might download it. Even if they're doing it themselves, there is a cost to having a datacentre with all this stuff in and a massive fat pipe connecting it to the internet.

Now, without seeing the actual figures I couldn't really say what that cost is and how it would break down for each copy of the game sold. I think it's a fair assumption that it's less than physical distribution, but it's definitely not 'nothing'.

I agree that digital software should be cheaper than it is, but the idea that distributing it is free is just completely unrealistic.

I knew I should have explained that better as I was typing it , I was thinking more in terms of Activision, for talk's sake, paying their fees to whoever and the money coming in without them having to do that much relative to traditional retail. Well, except when it comes to patching the game that should never have 'gone gold' in the first place, and even that affects standard retail users if you actually wanna play the thing

Well most have a very similar physics engine running most of the big budget games. There are loads of new maps and that will be expensive especially the mapping of what can be destroyed etc. You are right the costs of digital distribution is considerably lower but I think that promotion costs are high, even though I suspect that these could be trimmed considerably without hurting sales.

But these are all costs that have been priced in for years previously, or should have been. And if your game has DLC it's generally been in development alongside the main game and using the same resources in almost every sense. Not to mention the price of DLC in comparison to the main game, generally.

DLC is over priced. I usually try not to buy it, except for games that I really enjoy. So far that really has only been Civ 5. Some new characters and units really must be very profitable if you have designed your game to be as easy to modify as some of the older Civ games were. I created my own units for Civ 2 for the later stages. Most memorable for me, was my combat engineer, which was basically an engineer with the ability to paradrop, which made terraforming islands so much quicker. I doubt that Civilisation has got much less adaptable. under the bonnet.

White Xbox One 'coming in October', says alleged Microsoft insider

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/44 ... t-insider/

The vents will look a bit like those old-skool desktop speakers in white

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... ing-to-ps4

Hmm.

Microsoft offers $100 Xbox One discount for ditching PS3

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/44 ... ching-ps3/

Interesting marketing idea but how many will actually take them up on this offer. If it were still working and they owner had plenty of games for it, it would be worth more on the second hand market.