Monday, August 25, 2008

Can GameFly Survive in a VGOD World?

While the music industry offers downloads, Netflix has already embraced the downloaded movie business, somewhat tentatively. I believe that you can now even download movies to your X-Box from your Netflix account, bypassing the need for one of those Roku devices. For gaming, this model just makes sense. X-Box has burst open online gaming with X-Box live. I believe Microsoft has already expressed interest in software that is subscription based. Naturally, gamers would be quicker to embrace such a concept by virtue of their technological advantage and acuity. Then again, I can't see developing GTAIV for the money it cost and then releasing it at the regular subscription price. There will be a premium for these big name releases. Otherwise we'll see quality gaming go down. While subscription based models may increase overall access to more games, without the windfall of a GTAIV-type release, no big box releases will ever come. But I think that with a little tweaking this download, subscription-based model can work for movies, music and especially gaming. (Even books if Amazon has its way with the Kindle!) From the blog post: "What happens when users can download video games directly? Can GameFly survive in a video game on demand (VGOD) world?"

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