WebProNews

Tag: Digital Distribution

  • Amazon’s Indie Games Store Is Open For Business

    Indie gaming is becoming increasingly more important as AAA titles become less frequent. Valve, Sony and Nintendo have all jumped on board the indie gaming bandwagon, and now Amazon has thrown its support behind it as well.

    Amazon announced today that it’s opening an indie games storefront on its site. In Amazon’s own words, it’s all about increasing discoverability:

    The Indie Games Store is a dedicated storefront designed to specifically help indie game developers with promoting their PC, Mac, and browser-based games while helping gamers discover a large and growing selection of innovative indie games.

    You will realize this is only a good thing if you’ve ever browsed Amazon’s digital game catalog. Before, everything was lumped together into one storefront and some great indie games were pushed to the very back. Now these titles have their own storefront where consumers can more easily find interesting and unique titles.

    As with most major product launches, Amazon will be offering a number of promotions to those who buy indie games from its new store:

  • Indie Spotlight – The Indie Spotlight puts the focus on developers with Q&A and featured bios to give customers a glimpse of each developer’s style and personality. We’ll feature a different indie developer every week starting today with Gaijin Games.
  • Indie Bundles – Starting today until July 23rd, gamers can get great deals on Indie Bundles and increase their collection. These bundles are made up of 5, 6, or 10 games each, and will cost $9.99, which is a discount of up to 90% off if purchased separately.
  • Gift with Purchase – Starting today until July 17th, customers who purchase any indie title from the Indie Games Store, will receive codes to redeem 3 pre-selected titles for free. The games change daily and each purchase entitles customers to 3 free games, so customers are encouraged to check often.
  • Indie Gamer’s Choice – To help connect gamers and developers, we’re introducing the Indie Gamer’s Choice program, where gamers can get involved. The Indie Gamer’s Choice positions two indie games head-to-head and allows players to vote on their favorite title to become the Indie Gamer’s Choice, which is featured in the store.

    • Amazon is still trailing behind Steam when it comes to digital distribution, but it’s quickly becoming a major player in the space. Moves like this only further cement Amazon as one of the premier destinations for digital game downloads. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon released a desktop app to directly compete with Steam and Origin.

  • GameFly Launches Steam-Like PC Client For Rentals and Purchases

    GameFly, the video game rental service, today announced that its PC client is officially out of beta. The digital distribution platform now has over 1500 PC games for purchase, and “hundreds” of games to play for free with a subscription to GameFly. There is also a Mac version of the client, but with significantly fewer titles. As a release present, the company is also giving away free copies of Bioshock to those who download the client.

    “We used the positive and constructive feedback from our community during the beta to help make the best product possible,” said Sean Spector, GameFly co-founder and senior vice president of Business Development and Content. “To celebrate the launch of the client, we’re excited to partner with 2K Games to give away their highly acclaimed PC game Bioshock for free.”

    The GameFly desktop client also has news, photo, and video feeds as well as an “active social community.” If this all sounds similar to Valve’s Steam, there’s a reason for that. GameFly appears to have launched the first real competition to Steam’s near-monopoly on downloadable PC gaming. There have been other clients, of course, such as Electronic Arts’ Origin or Ubisoft’s UPlay. Those platforms haven’t been highly competitive because they carry mainly games from those specific publishers. GameFly’s plethora of choices should energize the PC gaming market a bit, especially if GameFly is able to provide enough quality games for download through its subscription option. $8 a month for unlimited play of new and classic PC titles would be a fantastic deal, and would certainly force Steam to make more changes than selling creative software or providing a console-like skin.

  • Steam Isn’t Just For Games Anymore

    Steam Isn’t Just For Games Anymore

    Valve and their Steam service have become synonymous with digital distribution. There are other players who are trying to break into the downloadable PC game market, but nobody has been able to take on Steam just yet. With Steam’s next move, it will take those competitors even longer to catch up.

    Valve announced today that Steam is going to begin selling non-game software. By that, they mean that Steam will soon be a place where you can pick up software like Adobe’s Creative Suite. No software titles have been announced yet, but I can dream that Adobe will be at launch.

    Here’s what Valve had to say on the matter:

    The Software titles coming to Steam range from creativity to productivity. Many of the launch titles will take advantage of popular Steamworks features, such as easy installation, automatic updating, and the ability to save your work to your personal Steam Cloud space so your files may travel with you.

    More Software titles will be added in an ongoing fashion following the September 5th launch, and developers will be welcome to submit Software titles via Steam Greenlight.

    “The 40 million gamers frequenting Steam are interested in more than playing games,” said Mark Richardson at Valve. “They have told us they would like to have more of their software on Steam, so this expansion is in response to those customer requests.”

    The addition of Steam Greenlight is especially interesting. The system was initially put into place so that indie game developers could have their games placed on Steam without having to go through Steam’s regular approval process. Regular software developers will be able to place their apps on Steam Greenlight for the world to see and approve.

    It will be interesting to see how Steam changes in the following months after this announcement. There’s no doubt that Steam is still going to be primarily used for games, but software might change things up. The idea of a Steam software sale is enough to get me excited. Seventy-five percent off Adobe Creative Suite 6? Yes please!

  • Amazon Enters The Free-To-Play Business With Game Connect

    In just a few years, Amazon has gone from major retailer of physical games to major player in the digital games business. They beat Steam to the punch with a massive July sale that rivaled what Steam does in Summer Sales. The only thing they lacked was a large catalog of free-to-play games and MMOs. Well, they are lacking no more.

    Amazon announced today the launch of Game Connect, a new service that will see many of the more popular free-to-play and MMOs delivered digitally to players through Amazon’s digital games portal. It’s more than just delivery though as integration into Game Connect will allow players to buy in-game items through Amazon which makes microtransactions easier for both developers and players.

    So how does this all work? Customers can now link their in-game accounts to their Amazon account for easy delivery of those crazy costumes or power-ups they want to get in their favorite free-to-play games. During the checkout process, players will see similar items from the same game or other games to increase visibility across the platform. All in all, it’s a great way to extend brand awareness across the network.

    “Customers can now discover a new category of free-to-play games and can experience the convenience of having virtual items purchased with their Amazon account delivered directly to their game accounts,” says Mike Frazzini, director, Amazon Games. “Game Connect helps game developers reach more customers, move more quickly and grow their business by simplifying the purchase process for customers. This is an exciting next step for the Digital Games Store and we have even more to come.”

    Game Connect is starting off with a pretty big collection of games that will appeal to players of different types. You’ve got more action oriented affair like World of Tanks and Super Monday Night Combat to more traditional free-to-play role-playing games like Shin Megami Tensei Imagine and Runescape.

    If you play any of these games, take note: Linking your account with Amazon Game Connect will net you exclusive in-game items that are normally valued at around $15 or more. It’s a great way for Amazon to get their foot in the door with these games and you get free stuff. It’s a win-win for everybody. Check out Amazon’s Game Connect exclusive offers at their store front.

    Game Connect is obviously Amazon firing a shot across the bow of Steam. Many companies have risen with services trying to take down Steam and all have met with minimal success. Amazon stands to make the biggest dent in Steam’s market share and Game Connect is one more tool for them to reach that goal. It will be really interesting to watch this play out over the next few months to see if Steam allows free-to-play games on their service to connect with Game Connect.

  • Square Enix Officially Announces Final Fantasy VII For the PC

    Just out of curiosity, is denying something over and over again, only to admit that the thing you’ve been denying actually exists considered a good marketing strategy? Does it help build the highly sought after buzz among legions of fans? With that in mind, after months of denying it, Square Enix has officially announced that their smash hit, Final Fantasy VII, is indeed coming to the PC market.

    While the official date of the release is still a mystery, unless you know a secret about the phrase “Coming Soon” that I don’t, Square Enix has embraced the release with a new site devoted to the PC game (FinalFantasyVIIPC.com) and a new trailer to boot, the motivation behind the denials is a little confusing. I understand the desire for secrecy because that itself only helps build buzz, but with a game with such high brand recognition, the “hide it behind the curtain” approach seems overblown.

    Whatever the case, here’s the trailer:


    The new site also reveals some details about the game, including the introduction of 36 unlockable achievements. Fan profiles can also be shared with other players, which comprises Square Enix’s nod to the social media aspect of gaming. There’s also a section called “Cloud Saves,” which, as the name indicates, will give players the option of saving their current PC session to the Square’s cloud storage so it can be retrieved on another machine at a later time.

    Another area of mystery concerns the price. When the word originally leaked, a price point of £7.99/€9.99 was mentioned, although, that is not listed on the official site for the PC game. Digital distribution details have been provided, and it looks like Square Enix is choosing to ignore Steam’s service, and will instead make it available at the Square Enix online store. Much like the unknown need to deny upcoming content, I’m not sure about why content creators would want to limit the amount of stores allowed to offer the content being sold. I mean, it’s easy to understand why Square Enix might want to develop their own store, but cutting off access to it to consumers who use Steam seems like a “cutting off your nose to spite your face” move.

    Instead of forcing people to use your service, why not try giving them incentive to do so?

  • Warner Brothers Still Struggles With That Whole Ownership Concept

    Warner Brothers archaic, “we don’t like the idea of distributing our content in a non-physical format” has been well documented at WebProNews and beyond. Basically, Warner Brothers does not want your renting their home video content, they’d prefer you buy it on DVD. Furthermore, after you buy one of their DVDs, that’s it. They have never supported the concept of ripping the contents of the DVD to other devices, at least, not until now.

    Provided you consider Warner Brothers’ new approach to converting a DVD into a digital file progress. Many don’t, including the collective at PublicKnowledge.org. To demonstrate just how much they can adapt to the digital revolution, Warner Brothers has introduced perhaps the most cumbersome “Disc-to-Digital” program, one that actually dissuades people from using, which is perhaps the WB’s goal all along.

    Does this mean that Warner Brothers is releasing ripping software–or, well hardware, I guess–to the public to facilitate this transformation process? Of course not. That would be entirely too easy. No, what Warner Brothers proposes is something entirely different and absolutely inconvenient. Public Knowledge has the details:

    …the first phase in this process is to let DVD owners bring their DVDs to a store that will handle the digital conversion. Tsujihara described this process as allowing consumers to convert their libraries “easily, safely and at reasonable prices.”

    You did read that last paragraph correctly. The head of Warner Home Entertainment Group thinks that an easy, safe way to convert movies you already own on DVD to other digital formats is to take your DVDs, find a store that will perform this service, drive to that store, find the clerk who knows how to perform the service, hope that the “DVD conversion machine” is not broken, stand there like a chump while the clerk “safely” converts your movie to a digital file that may only play on studio-approved devices, drive home, and hope everything worked out. Oh, and the good news is that you would only need to pay a reasonable (per-DVD?) price for this pleasure. [Emphasis added]

    To demonstrate this process in action, Public Knowledge has also put together an incredibly handy diagram of how the process works:

    (image)

    Considering the fact we has consumers have been able to rip music CDs to other devices for, well, longer than some have been around, the movie industry’s approach to ripping content from DVDs is laughable, but it’s not going away anytime soon (PDF). I suppose Warner Brothers could be credited for at least being open to the idea, but the method they want consumers to use is absolutely absurd.

    Maybe one day these movie studios will understand the concept of ownership and digital distribution a little better than they do. Until then, there are still copies of DVDShrink floating around the Internet. Just flex those Google muscles a little and you should be rewarded with the appropriate exe file.

    In others news, it’s clear Frank Zappa and his awesome t-shirt were well ahead of their time.

  • Steam Takes Over the Video Game World (Infographic)

    While the concept of digital distribution is still a sore point among many content providers across the entertainment industry, there’s at least entity that not only has embraced digital distribution, it has mastered it. No, I’m not talking about Netflix or iTunes, two services that have also successfully brought digital distribution to the masses.

    No, the service I’m referring to has also crossed the digital distribution bridge, but it has done without the negative attention both Netflix and iTunes (the Apple DRM) receive. If you aren’t aware of what Valve has accomplished in relation to video game distribution, perhaps you should introduce yourself to their Steam platform, as well as all of the accolades the service receives in places like Reddit and other video game communities.

    It’s not an understatement to suggest not only has Steam revolutionized PC game distribution, it may have saved the PC gaming industry altogether. With that in mind, the Steam infographic take a neat look at the service’s successes, of which, there are many.

    A word of caution, however, the infographic is huge:

    Steam Infographic

    While the information is indeed useful, perhaps the most telling aspect of Steam’s success lies in the amount of money the service brings in, per employee. As the infographic reveals, in 2010, the service brought in $350,000 per employee, more than either Google or Apple. Granted, both of those tech giants employ a much larger staff than Steam, but the fact remains, Steam is quite profitable.

    Furthermore, Steam offers game developers a better slice of the money pie, especially when compared to traditional retail outlets. This is an important fact to keep in mind, especially if you are an independent developer. It also makes EA’s withdrawal from the service all the more perplexing. Yes, EA is really trying to get the same level of acceptance for its Origin distribution service, but turning their noses up to Steam’s money making potential in the process is awfully shortsighted.

    Much like Warner Brothers’ decisions on how they deal with Netflix.