August 26, 2011
By the ZippyCart Content Team
The world of gaming is constantly changing, and the industry has started to show significant support for a change in content delivery. What used to be an industry dependent on physical media delivery is now a business focusing on online content delivery, via the “cloud”. A new service called OnLive recently teamed up with Eidos and Square Enix to offer a special coupon to those purchasing physical PC copies of the developers new release Deus Ex: Human Revolution. According to reports, GameStop, a brick-and-mortar retail game distributor, decided that the coupon promoted a competitor and is opening copies of the game, removing the coupon, and selling the tampered-with items as “New”.
OnLive is a service that allows PC, Mac, iPad and eventually Android users to access purchased games from anywhere, at any time, without the need for physical media such as a DVD. The coupon included in the physical copies of Deus Ex were good for a free digital copy of the game. Gamestop said that the OnLive service competes against Spawn Labs and Impulse, the cloud based gaming services which Gamestop acquired in April. “As OnLive is, at its core, a source for games (as GameStop is), it truly competes against all of our distribution channels,” the Gamestop representative wrote.
According to the promotion, a code for the OnLive version of Deus Ex is included in the retail copy of the game sent to retailers. Gamers need to connect to the free OnLive Game Service, punch in the code included with their disc, and begin playing. OnLive works on both the PC, Mac, and the OnLive MicroConsole, a small router that serves as a cloud-based video game console.
GameStop has been in search of viable alternative to its brick-and-mortar stores for quite some time now. The company recently purchased Kongregate, an online Flash-based gaming community. The company competes heavily with Steam, an online game marketplace that sells the hottest titles, often at cheaper prices than their physical counterparts. So what’s OnLive’s added value compared to Steam? No downloads. Just add a game to your shopping cart and play whenever and wherever you want.
On the whole, it seems that adding a digital copy of a video game to your shopping cart is not as simple as it used to be. It’s apparent that the marketplace is moving away from physical delivery and towards digital content delivery. Just by comparing CD sales compared to iTunes or Amazon MP3 sales, one can spot the trend. As competition between established names like GameStop and up-and-coming companies such as OnLive continues to heat up, the drama will likely continue to develop as well. As of right now, it is probably safer to purchase a copy of the Deus Ex: Human Revolution game from ecommerce solutions such as Amazon.
The relatively disturbing news of brick-and-mortar stores opening products and tampering with end-user experience is not limited to Gamestop. Slashdot recently reported that a Best Buy customer purchased a laptop that had been opened and “Inspected by Best Buy”. What the consumer ultimately discovered about their shopping cart purchase was much more than that. Best Buy had gone ahead and set up recovery disks and user profiles. In what seems like an obvious marketing ploy, employees had also taken it upon themselves to install a trial version of Trend Antivirus on the customer’s seemingly brand new laptop. So check those items in your shopping cart before checking out!
Taylor is originally from Washington, DC, but has lived in the Seattle area for the past 5 years. He’s a senior at the University of Washington, studying Political Science (with no interest in entering the political world). He’s more interested in the Tech industry, especially consumer electronics, cloud computing, and how mobile internet and devices will change the business world. He spends most of his free time tinkering with his Subaru and surfing whenever possible.
Hey, thanks for interesting tips. Keep sharing!