It wouldn’t be Halloween if we didn’t put a little scare in ya, right? Rest assured, the image above is not a sign that the ironically named legend in vaporware known as the Phantom Console is making a comeback, it’s just a nod to our big topic for this week: Digital Downloads. As it turns out, conceptually the Phantom was onto something, regardless of how nonexistent their hardware really was, and services like Steam, OnLive, Xbox Live Arcade and more have finally delivered on that promise of never having to leave your home to purchase a new game. More impressively, services like Beamdog, Good Old Games and Steam offer hundreds of titles that many of us cut our teeth on and let us relive our past glories in games like MDK2 HD and the Ultima series. In this week’s podcast, we examine how digital distribution has become entrenched in gaming, pushing the market into new and exciting places, and to help us out we asked Trent Oster (one of the co-founders of Bioware currently one of the heads of the digital distribution service Beamdog) and staff writer Victor Grunn to join us. Happy Halloween!
Hosts: Mike Dunn & Ron Burke
Guests: Trent Oster, Beamdog and Victor Grunn, Staff Writer for Gaming Trend
Producer: Mike Dunn
Music: Strange Motorcycle
01:09 – What we’re playing
09:21 – Releases for this week
16:31 – Digital distribution- The Phantom
19:02 – Rundown of services that offer digital downloads
21:05 – The early days of Steam
25:35 – Console downloads- Xbox Live Arcade
29:15 – Independent developers and the advantages of digital distribution
34:12 – NPD statistics
42:41 – Interview with Trent Oster
1:09:49 – Beamdog, GoG, and awesome games we get to play again (or for the first time)
1:14:48 – The resurrection of the adventure game
1:17:38 – The dark side of digital distribution
1:25:54 – Signal to noise ratio
1:29:06 – Comparing to other forms of digital distribution
Email your questions and comments to [email protected]
[powerpress]
Mike Dunn is the old man of Gaming Trend, having cut his teeth on Atari consoles and First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons back in the day. His involvement with Gaming Trend dates back to 2003, and he’s done everything from design and code to writing and managing. Now he has come full circle, with a rekindled passion for tabletop gaming and a recent debut as Dungeon Master (nearly forty years after he purchased the original DMG).
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