Posted August 02, 2010
GOG has become one of the most popular internet buying platforms due to its exciting lack of DRM - you buy a game and it belongs to you. A concept that sounds easy but is surprisingly rare to find (mostly from independent game platforms, but also from some commercial ones like 3D Realms for their old games) -, due to the often extremely good prices (although there are exceptions), due to the functionality of old games on Windows XP (still the most widespread gaming platform on PC) and partially due to the classy community.
A release plan of one game a week was good when the site was small, to test if it works at all. Now the site has thousands of mostly satisfied customers. However, there are big deals with big companys like Activision who offered their games here. While for some companys it is unlikely that we ever see them on GOG - most famously Microsoft -, many are interested at least to communicate about business.
Now that the train is driving around the gaming world, a release plan of one or two games per week can only be held if there are not many games to publish. As the deals with big companys go on, I expect a radical change. We'll probably see more often things like releases of two games each twice a week. Maybe GOG will get permissions for other games, like those from Indie developers. Of course, it is important then that the workers will keep their eyes out for quality. Eventually, however, I expect more games to be added than can be released with the current release plan.
GOG has started as a small business, but it has the potential to become a heavyweight. I expect several emulators to be built for Windows XP sooner or later - WinE, despite the name, is one for Linux already - so the games offered will maybe have to be repackaged from time to time. With the advent of a transcendental internet there will a standard (like HTML) have to be established, which will easily allow people to play games on their TV, their fridge, their windows, their doors, tables, wherever they want.
Things will get much finer, as long as we avoid the horrors of a real Human Machine Interface. The human body never was constructed to have things implanted into it and while older ones might work fine, those won't that can be thought of as computers - there is no system that can't be destroyed; and there is no clean technology (yet?) that would not cause at least local ulcers. But with an omnipotent internet around us - but not in us - humanity might enter a technocratian age where data really is capable of being used anywhere. Gaming stores will grow even more important at that time. Imagine you go to the train, download a game and play it on the train window, or maybe even on holographic devices. While yet still a futuristic vision, technology goes into that direction recently, and in a few decades I expect it to be like this (and you can really use it everywhere then by powerful satellite connections if we get the political issues of the world resolved and all nations to introduce such concepts).
The real potential of GOG is showing up then. The things that are today stored on hard disks will fit into sticks of the size of an MP3 player easily in a few years if technology advances in the next years. Now with the correct devices you can maybe plug it in or project it and just play on everywhere. Internet speed should not be an issue then anymore, or bandwidth - downloading hundreds of MBs might be possible in a matter of less than a second.
The demand for games will grow into the bottomless. You can buy games from GOG (or elsewhere, of course, but we talk about GOG) everywhere and download it in no time. The whole market will grow so much that in a few years there will be so many games that GOG can release that it might be able to offer a new one each day - no casual things but real games!
I give the current release plan no future. If not much earlier, in 2012 or 2013 it would become a horrible bottleneck for GOG. Exceptions were already made - like in the weeks when releases were at Tuesday and Thursday. The growth of the market can cause GOG to disappear forever - or become an extremely powerful name. It all depends on the management - which of course includes more than the release plan. In 2013 there will probably be 1,000 games on GOG, but with the current means of technology we should expect there to be like 2,000 in 2015. Maybe 7,000 in 2020. 20,000 in 2030. And we're only talking about good old games (i.e. what is considered old then). Without this, we'd reach 100,000 much sooner. There are already well over 10,000 games published, not counting casuals. Not all are good. :-)
The potential is huge! Don't let it go to waste!
A release plan of one game a week was good when the site was small, to test if it works at all. Now the site has thousands of mostly satisfied customers. However, there are big deals with big companys like Activision who offered their games here. While for some companys it is unlikely that we ever see them on GOG - most famously Microsoft -, many are interested at least to communicate about business.
Now that the train is driving around the gaming world, a release plan of one or two games per week can only be held if there are not many games to publish. As the deals with big companys go on, I expect a radical change. We'll probably see more often things like releases of two games each twice a week. Maybe GOG will get permissions for other games, like those from Indie developers. Of course, it is important then that the workers will keep their eyes out for quality. Eventually, however, I expect more games to be added than can be released with the current release plan.
GOG has started as a small business, but it has the potential to become a heavyweight. I expect several emulators to be built for Windows XP sooner or later - WinE, despite the name, is one for Linux already - so the games offered will maybe have to be repackaged from time to time. With the advent of a transcendental internet there will a standard (like HTML) have to be established, which will easily allow people to play games on their TV, their fridge, their windows, their doors, tables, wherever they want.
Things will get much finer, as long as we avoid the horrors of a real Human Machine Interface. The human body never was constructed to have things implanted into it and while older ones might work fine, those won't that can be thought of as computers - there is no system that can't be destroyed; and there is no clean technology (yet?) that would not cause at least local ulcers. But with an omnipotent internet around us - but not in us - humanity might enter a technocratian age where data really is capable of being used anywhere. Gaming stores will grow even more important at that time. Imagine you go to the train, download a game and play it on the train window, or maybe even on holographic devices. While yet still a futuristic vision, technology goes into that direction recently, and in a few decades I expect it to be like this (and you can really use it everywhere then by powerful satellite connections if we get the political issues of the world resolved and all nations to introduce such concepts).
The real potential of GOG is showing up then. The things that are today stored on hard disks will fit into sticks of the size of an MP3 player easily in a few years if technology advances in the next years. Now with the correct devices you can maybe plug it in or project it and just play on everywhere. Internet speed should not be an issue then anymore, or bandwidth - downloading hundreds of MBs might be possible in a matter of less than a second.
The demand for games will grow into the bottomless. You can buy games from GOG (or elsewhere, of course, but we talk about GOG) everywhere and download it in no time. The whole market will grow so much that in a few years there will be so many games that GOG can release that it might be able to offer a new one each day - no casual things but real games!
I give the current release plan no future. If not much earlier, in 2012 or 2013 it would become a horrible bottleneck for GOG. Exceptions were already made - like in the weeks when releases were at Tuesday and Thursday. The growth of the market can cause GOG to disappear forever - or become an extremely powerful name. It all depends on the management - which of course includes more than the release plan. In 2013 there will probably be 1,000 games on GOG, but with the current means of technology we should expect there to be like 2,000 in 2015. Maybe 7,000 in 2020. 20,000 in 2030. And we're only talking about good old games (i.e. what is considered old then). Without this, we'd reach 100,000 much sooner. There are already well over 10,000 games published, not counting casuals. Not all are good. :-)
The potential is huge! Don't let it go to waste!
