Comments on: Dear Microsoft, Make Games on Demand Better

By: NamelessTed

NamelessTed — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:01:39 +0000

Yeah, I have been reading about the new ability of using the flash drive as storage. They limit it at 16GB though. That is actually more usable storage than the 20GB hard drive which only give you 12GB to work with.

Baby steps I guess. This is very much a step in the right direction.

By: Mr. Hawkins

Mr. Hawkins — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:36:47 +0000

Hey it’s that thing I said. Sorta. http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/18/xbox-360-gaining-usb-storage-support-in-2010-update/

By: not a fool

not a fool — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:30:28 +0000

Games on Demand is an excuse for M$ to rape you for every penny. They won’t be happy until they have all the fucking money so they can spend it on whores, drugs, guns and killing little black kids.
CUNTS !!!

By: Mr. Hawkins

Mr. Hawkins — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:38:08 +0000

In regards to what Jorge posted, I think the rental system would serve well enough as a system for “lending” a digital copy of a game but one thing I would like to see is something similar to the library feature demoed on the iPad that shows your bookcase of digital titles. This should include your XBLA and GoD purchases, and maybe someday your installed titles from your physical collection.

By: Mr. Hawkins

Mr. Hawkins — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:30:38 +0000

Wow. Allow me to step around the garbage comments laying around here.

So Games on Demand does little for me as someone who enjoys the physical material involved in purchasing goods, however I see a few ways that would make it relevant to me.

1) Explore creating a game rental service. The demo system is hugely popular on Xbox, so expand on it. Allow games to be rented for MS Points at a reasonable rate, then give me the option to keep it if I like it by paying the difference.

2) Make them competitively priced. Make me think about whether the case, disc, or manual, are worth whatever the difference is between retail an GoD pricing. After a few weeks or a month or so, start keeping a close eye on GameStop’s used game price. Since (somehow) GameStop is selling millions upon millions (upon millions) of used games a year, it’s apparent that people are buying them. Make those people question if it’s worth it to go get upsold and talked down to in order to save a buck or two against GoD on a used disc in a sticker infested case.

3) Compete with your biggest competitors. I’d consider them, in this market specifically, to be GameStop and Amazon. Yeah they don’t have a store built into the Xbox, but they’ll mop the floor with GoD in terms of sales. Amazon gives me free release date delivery (via Prime) and about 10-15% off retail on day one. They also provide pre-order bonuses. GameStop can undersell you after a week or two due to the high influx of trade-ins. Take those factors and position GoD to at least match what they’re doing. Sell new games at launch and get some old classics on there for a no-brainer cost. Sony’s top 10 most sold games on PSN include several hard-to-find PS2 titles.

4) Consider storage constraints. These games take a good while to download and they take up a considerable amount of storage. Instead of charging an ungodly amount for proprietary hard drives enclosures, start selling a DIY kit that comes with a voucher for a GoD game. As well as the Xbox is doing, there’s still no reason not to match what Sony is doing right in having access to PSN games on Amazon and Target and allowing users to swap out their HDDs to allow for better storage.

If all these things happened, I’d have no choice but to look at GoD as something other than a NXE blade I look at for novelty’s sake.