"Thou shalt concieve of a game only as a disc within a box, that shall sit upon a shelf until it is purchased in a store, with cash or equivalent, and this model shall represent my will unto eternity."

                   - The Gaming Industry Collective

Ahhh, but no longer! I was just sitting in my office the other day reading this feature on GameBiz, (and in the back of my mind thinking about how RIT could begin to distribute some of its own games), when I was invited to check out Games On Demand from Comcast. I haven't had a chance to do so yet, but I will be, and I'll try to post my impressions when I do. It certainly *LOOKS* very exciting (and I always wanted to play some of those games, but never got around to it... grin...). The IDEA of it is huge, and although it seems obvious, it represents a substantial shift from the current marketing and publishing model of the industry.

Wonderful quote from that first article: "Even if the download takes all night, it's still faster than the fastest delivery service from a traditional retailer or e-tailer," Jason Bell, executive vice president, Turbine Entertainment Software.

That's good thinking! Now if I could only get my @)#($*) DSL not to timeout... but that is niether here nor there.

The great gaming gods at Microsoft have not been idle either. The other day I noticed the Game Advisor for Windows XP floating around. Very interesting. My friends tell me that this will be integrated directly into Longhorn, and will feature not only the occasional demo download, but also all released patches for games that qualify under the "Games for Windows" logo. Basically a "Windows Update for Games". How much longer until that becomes a distribution channel? I can see the writing on the wall...

I first heard about this concept at a conference a number of years ago, and at the time there were two thoughts, looking forward:

1. This will be great for the consumer because they can try before they buy, they can buy with simple 'point and click', and it could lessen the cost of some games (or at least spend more of it on the game) because publishers wouldn't have to pay for shelf space and print displays. [secretly, I would miss the cardboard cutouts of an_anime_adventure_character_01 when I troll the mall.]

2. This is very bad for small games. If the online distributors lock their services, and are regarded as the 'trusted source' for online download, then they control a monopoly in much the same way that shelf-space considerations lock out the small game today. It is my personal hope that the big distributors in fact link to and support independent game downloads, but I'm not holding my breath. Perhaps someone will start a "University Games Channel" and an "Independent Games Channel" and somehow be able to get them on the XP Game Advisor, but more than likely it will still just be a website somewhere, and won't get that ub3r level of home saturation. Perhaps this is something the IGDA could look at partnering with an online distributor on...

3. Infrastructure not ready [yet]. This problem will solve itself, but currently too many people are still fighting broadband woes, we don't yet have fiber to every home, etc. etc. [ insert any number of current writings on the connectivity issues still facing the USA and the world ]. But this may very well be the application that pushes the next "wiring wave" - home entertainment can get people to upgrade and press service providers for upgrades like virtually no other stimulus.

So as I write this, I'm waiting for EQ2 to finish downloading, and I'm glad I came to school to use their T3's. My DSL laughed at me. But this will solve itself, and perhaps the Day of the Box, much like the Day of the Album Cover, shall draw to a slow and inexorable close. I'm excited to try the Comcast service, I'll let you know what I think.