Digital Download boom ahead

The advent of the internet to the home back in the 1990′s was one of the biggest steps the human race has ever taken, from the advent of electricity to walking on the moon; the internet brought the world closer together, through collaboration and social networking.

It’s a fact that Bill Gates then CEO of Microsoft once denounced the internet as a gimmick and that people would still want their software in disc format (even if operating systems came on 10×3.5” floppy discs).  So it’s no surprise that Bill Gates less than a few years later embraced the power of the internet and stepped into the light that many companies had already trodden, something Bill now regrets as one of his biggest mistakes during his time at Microsoft.

Digitally downloading games is nothing new, Steam have been offering games digitally for many a year; however like all emerging markets, it takes time to establish and as such this market is about to boom at the start of an economic recession of all things.

Last year the PC Download platform saw a 100% growth and is expected to hit 200% growth this year.  With global economic woes publishers are looking for cheaper ways to distribute their wares and if that means doing away with the old distribution ideas of putting a box on the shelf, or at least limiting the number of boxes on shelves in favour of offering wares on digital download, then that is the way that the large publishers will go.

One of the biggest draws to purchasing a game is holding a tangible item in your hand at the checkout, sure it’s quick and easy to purchase online and receive a url and a login for a site where you download the game, many people I have spoken to say that there is nothing better than having a game box and you see this is where I disagree.  To me the box is a dust gatherer, my game cupboard is filled with boxes that date back 15 years, games like Doom, Duke Nukem are all sat there in their places, to me it’s a waste of cardboard, plastic and above all my space in the cupboard.  One advantage of owning a physical game is that once it becomes old hat, there is always the possibility of selling it on Ebay, or taking it down to a game trade shop.

Digital downloads will suit the publishers, this is a media that they have already, once they get the final cut of the wares they upload it and they’ve done the distribution themselves.  The distributors themselves have been cut out of the equation in some respects.  Their market is being squeezed by the internet, like many industries in the past; the internet is catching up with distributors.

MMO’s have generally been offered on Digital download, their continual changing environment requires you to download a patch on a regular basis.  Digital downloads have also allowed many smaller companies to thrive on without relying on distributors to do their job.  One such company is Cornered Rat Software.

Cornered Rat Software (CRS) back in 1999 developed a game called World War II Online (now known as Battleground Europe), a MMOFPS for want of a better acronym.  WWIIOL is a first person shooter that allows hundreds of gamers to fight out World War II (specifically the Battle of France), online.

Unbeknownst to CRS they were creating a game that was to enter a niche market and as such the distributors were all a little sceptical of how well it would sell initially.  Boxes were made and discs filled with some of the buggiest software released to man. To this day in the hallowed halls of MMO development many people still laugh behind their hands at what was deemed the worst release of a game ever.

With the game released and installed on the player’s computer the game would then have to patch for hours on end to get the game into a workable format and with 60,000 box sales in the first week that was a lot of disgruntled gamers.

CRS struggled the first few years and their distributor dropped them like a lead balloon, CRS knowing that they had a product that would hit a niche market soldiered on.

Digital downloads became their bread and butter, offering the game on their website for a basic $20 download and then $12.95 initially monthly subscription, their player base where solid, they had gone from the initial 60,000 to a mediocre 20,000, these fanboi’s  held their belief in the game from Beta through the release and Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001 to see the game come into fruition.

CRS today has not grown in size; in fact it has shrunk considerably, but has a core gamer subscription that is estimated to be around 15,000 players, small fry compared to the monolith that is World of Warcraft, but a respectable monthly income for a company with around 30 employees.

Without digital downloads CRS would have folded, their rushed and botched release (care of Strategy First), would have been the end of the game, however the dedication of the staff at CRS pulled the game out of a pit and into the light.  This June 6th CRS celebrate 10 years of MMOFPS, the only true MMOFPS on the market.

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