potatohead's Blog - On the future of digital gaming.

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I'm gonna put this here so I can find it later. A comment triggered some thoughts of mine that I may want to refer to later on.

 

The context here is digital distribution and the ongoing grumblings about it, and specifically that "servers are expensive" reasoning we hear a lot.

 

I think it's about more than that, and so here it is:

 

Well, there are several kinds of servers. There are download host servers. Those are cheap ass, but for the authentication / DRM servers they need to connect to, but those can be used across many titles. (I would) Then there are media servers, images, forums and other goodies. Those can be scaled too. Finally, we get to player game hosting servers, which I suspect vary, depending on the game and what the developers did.

 

If those servers are too expensive to actually take any money out of the process, either double down and invest in them, and scale like lots of other people do --and need to do, in order to have them make sense, or...

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/blog/105/entry-7434-on-the-future-of-digital-gaming/