Xbox 360's Games on Demand service gets demoed on video
By Darren Murph 
posted June 7th 2009 12:32PM
posted June 7th 2009 12:32PM
posted June 7th 2009 12:32PM
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Nice!
No more camping at stores for ex. Fallout 3 :D
Woh Hoo!
GO 360!
This has been on the PS3 for a long time, and without the absurd cost of Microsodft's HDD.
That's great, but I don't own a PS3, I own an xbox360.
Really Nando? You downloaded MSG4 onto your ps3? Yeah, I didn't think so. So I guess you are you talking about 'demos' and 'mini' games from the PSN. Yes, those too have been on the xbox 360 via xbox live for ages. Infact, since launch.
Puggs was referring to full-length games more so than cheaper $19.99 mini-games or 'homebrew-style' games. Tell you what, if your able to, download MSG4 instead of buying it from a retail store and post a video of how it works. I'd love to see it in action. Since the uncompressed material from the blu-ray disc at around 30GB will probably take 10+ hours to download even on a very very fast connection, please make the video at like 128x speed so we don't have to spend all day.
Meh! This will be the "heroine" of the platform. Feels groovy when its happening but does ass loads of damage longterm. Meaning MS needs to get off of the 90s old DVD platform already. Xbox 360 will NOT have legs (i.e. that 10 year pipe dream) if they don't adopt a larger storage medium (Blueray, or other). The devs will be limited in their ability to create rich, immersive, near reality experiences. We will increasingly see 40gb+ IPs as the standard and then a watered down 8gb version (kinda whats done for the DS). I say large Xbox 360 capacity drive, Xbox 720 or BUST!
@ Frankenstein - I hear you on that. And as for 'no more waiting in line' I hope microsoft has some serious bandwidth arrangements for when everyone tries to download Halo: Reach at the same time...
Nice. It's going to be a lot easier to do the unethical immoral illegal act of loading pirated ISOs.
Xbox 360 is getting closer and closer to the PC gaming experience...
PC gaming is all about buying the latest second best card and upgrading. Don't you know anything?
Do you really think that Microsoft would release this if they hadn't already taken every possible measure to prevent it from being copied? Xbox Live Arcade games have been stored on the HDD since the console was released, and we don't hear about rampant piracy of those. I'm betting that a good amount of DRM will be employed here. This is a cool service, but I'm just going to stick to buying the game discs. Downloads will take hours and how are you supposed to use this on a different Xbox 360 (if you have 2) without having to recovering your gamertag and re-downloading the game.
thats what REMOVABLE HARD DRIVES ARE FOR DUNCE CAP!!
I haven't had trouble buying a game since way back when Gears of War was first released and it quickly became the top seller. Nowadays retailers order plenty of disks for anticipated releases and the only problem I run into is buying special editions. When I bought GTA4 with the gym bag and the safety deposit box, i had to really look hard since I don't preorder games.
Way back when Gears of War was released.... 3 years ago? You must be 9.
Comcast's Bandwidth isn't pleased.
Mr bandwidth throttling will like it.
Oh man I hate that guy. He's a total virgin.
hhaa yeah this is awesome, and im sure comcast is whining AND im sure well all get screwed by comcast.
any torrent files i have loaded up all of the sudden drop my comcast connection completely. its like magic.
I hate comcast and i cant get anything else in the complex i live in yet. ultra lame
I wouldnt be surprise if eventually there was a surplus of just PURE ISPs like NETZERO and Juno was in the days of dial up.
I dont want all this bundled nonsense and i dont want to pay zillions of dollars.
its too bad the infrastructure costs so much for the high speed access.
Lets all band together and create the PEOPLES ISP!
NATION WIDE BROADBAND FOR COST!!! 10MBps up and down minimum
eMax, its funny you say that since there's an engadget story about Korea working on doing just that. Free wireless internet anywhere in the country at 100mbpsec or something crazy like that. The whole system is costing about 10 billion I think it was? However, free-internet access...anywhere...anytime...for any device that supports wifi. I think it kind of neat since you could potentially have access to the vast amounts of information on the internet at any time. Mind you, you might not really want access to that information but...still...it would be there :P:D?
I'd love to have seen the $750 billion dollar bailout package be used on a us-scale free internet and cellphone network national wide more-so than GM survivng for 2 months only to need to fill chapter 11 ANYWAYS.
Yes! I have an Xbox 360 but haven't played it much. I don't have an Xbox Live account either. I think I might get an account now! One problem though, the servers might get jammed with people trying to download it.
if they are clever they do it the bittorrent style to assist there servers...
It's Microsoft we're talking about here.
Last I checked Microsoft outsource all their content distribution to Akamai, so I doubt they will have bandwidth issues. If they can survive patch day and service pack releases without a blip, I doubt games on demand will cause them any problems.
Thank you for the information, jep. I didn't know for sure, whether or not they could handle bandwidth attacks.
Does anyone know if you will you be able to re-download it for free if you delete it? I know you can do that for the games now, but I'm wondering if this will also be possible for these games. Kinda gives you a more secure feeling when you make $50+ purchase for an intangible product.
They have said that it will follow the same model as the live arcade games - download as many times as you please. They pretty much need to since even the 120 GB HDD is a little small for this to be used extensively (seriously MS - 320 GB hdd are below $100. How about a capacity bump).
You will be able to re-download games you have already purchased, the downloads are tied to your xbox live account, and anything you have purchased can be re-downloaded at any time.
Can you sign on to your xbox live account on any xbox ? All I see people during is one friend buying the game for 50, and then charging like 15 to download to his friends xbox's.
Yes, you can use your account on any xbox (he account can only be used on one at a time though), and yes you could download a game onto your friend's xbox, but the game is tied to youre account, so youre friend would have to be signed in as you to play.
so you would have to buy the game twice for another user on your xbox to use it?
No. The way it works on the Xbox is, once you purchase a game & download it, it just works on that console. The system actually checks an identifier for your console when you first purchase the game on Live, and ties that to it. If you later install the game onto a different console, you must sign in to Live on that console before it will launch.
yes, that means if you buy a newer Xbox and transfer/redownload your purchases, you have to log into Live whenever you want to play that content. It is possible, however, to call up Microsoft and get them to switch your account to the new console, so you don't have to keep logging in... but then the original console goes to the "must log in to play" on your purchases.
I was psyched at first, but those prices really need to go down before I consider using it. Shouldn't they be taking into account the fact that you can't resell or lend downloadable games?
I do believe that is the point. They cut out the used game market completely. And since you can't sell or lend your copy = more sales.
Price of games? surely they have to sell them cheaper if you are not getting the box and manual, there are no shipping costs etc.
i would think a tenner less would be easily done
You'd think that wouldn't you, but I'm sure Microsoft stated somewhere that the prices would mirror boxed RRPs. And before anyone starts slating Microsoft for this, name me ONE download service that sells the majarity of its titles cheaper than the boxed variants, hell, some of the titles on Steam are even more expensive than the boxed versions.
Cheaper sales would kill the hardcopies, and kill the profit. So lose-lose for MS.
Steam charges the same for it's box copies. Over time both prices drop so not big of a deal. This will be really great for getting all those older games that some people never played.
@MikeyQ it's not games but Kindle books are much (normally at least half) cheaper than their non-digital counterparts and the reason explained is exactly that since there's no printing/binding/materials used the price should be lower. I think that's a good model to follow.
Steam had ridiculous sales though. Like 75% off for a week. TF2 actually gets it's price LOWERED for a week whenever it gets new content, as well as a free weekend.
I like your idea, however the reason that out of all the media markets(Movies, music, games and books), only e-books are significantly cheaper than their printed counterparts, is that only with books does making the actual product make up a significant part of the total production cost.
No more reselling/buying used games on ebay :(
another reason why shops bankrupt and people sit home without work... at least they can play 360 all day long
It might cause some job losses in the used game market, but let's not forget that jobs are being created in the engineering market for people who have to design and develop these systems.
I have a feeling part of the reason they developed this setup is so that nobody could resell the games.
I don't plan much on game resale value anyway, most games i buy i hope to never get rid of.
I'm also guessing that now there will be people selling their xboxlive usernames and harddrives.
All you will have to do is drop 800 extra microsoft points to change the name on the account and then you get all their games that have been saved..
Well, not really, since nothing is changing concerning the normal boxed retail versions of games. Its just offering people a choice, in some situations I know I would prefer to simply get something on demand than go out and get it from a shop or wait for it to come in the mail.
Good for Microsoft there winning in the gaming category, soon (maybe) in the Mp3 category and with the release of Windows 7 in the computing category:) go get out your windows flag from the back of the wardrobe in the dark corner, throw that iMac out of the window and sing the windows starting up tune...oh crap, iMac's run bootcamp now? Is this covered in my warranty?:S
Have they given any indication on when we will be getting these upgraded features?
My main concern with this is that hopefully the infrastructure can cope with the service; I am already having horrible visions of people in their thousands trying to download a game on launch day and bringing LIVE to a standstill. I doubt that on-demand games at launch will happen for a long while though, and if it does it will just encourage retailers to make better offers and publishers to make the "limited edition" versions of games more worthwhile.
just like steam
they need to allow people to use larger HDD for storage, not just the pricey one from M$ which is hard to upgrade... maybe allow mutiple HDD to be used for different games...
also it would be cool to download the game before launch and 'unlock' it at launch time, so there wont be server congestion and unecessary wait.
Please make games like $10 cheaper to account for lack of physical copy and shipping costs, etc