I had just punched in the CD-Key a few seconds earlier which brought me to this thought.
Unfortunately the blue screen of death showed up and carpet bombed that train of thought.
Thankfully installing Fallout on my laptop brought it back to life.
Why don't more companies do it like NC-Soft?
You have 2 options with NC-Soft
- Buy game at store and get CD-key in box, register CD-key with account
- Download game free from site, and buy CD-Key, register CD-Key with account
They already have a massive system for downloading their patches and content upgrades.
Just make the game and its expansions available for online download already!
NC-Soft had it so right!
Heck no box, or key in hand I could install city of heros/villians and be up and playing in a hour. Because my account is still on file with them with the 2 CD-Keys I bought still registered with them.
Only downside is the retailers loose a bit of business I guess. But blizz could just ship fancy packed CD-Keys to the store that they could sell for the same price as the full box I guess
*shrug*
2 comments:
Look up Steam and Direct2Drive, they make a lot of games available for download. Steam is pretty popular, too.
Blizzard and other companies probably do not do it because of bandwidth costs. I will bet a 3-4 gig game will cost more in bandwidth than it does to stamp in on a DVD. Especially when you have as many customers as Blizzard.
I imagine they might get a fair bit of backlash from the retailers too, if they didn't at least release the key to be sold in stores. Imagine the drop in sales at say Futureshop if WOW had been a download only upgrade.
I find I do purchase a lot of games online, with only having the key and rarely have any problems.
Although the last one I bought, two weeks ago, has been more trouble than it needed to be. Thankfully their technician has been very helpful. That being said, I am still glad I purchased the CD to be shipped incase I need to reinstall later.
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