[Games] On Demand

Retrieving content on demand/online is not a new concept by any means. From news (web sites), music (Napster -> iTunes/Rhapsody), and video (Comcast, YouTube), it would be hard to argue that the distribution isn't revolutionary. There's a great article on GigaOm about Video Games on demand that reminded me about something I've thinking about for a while.

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD battle. We quickly agreed with each other that:

1. Fighting over standards benefits nobody
2. Neither of us will buy a player until a "winner" emerges
3. 3) By the time (2) happens, the technology will be obsolete.

The only benefit we could really find for the medium at all, in fact, was for storing massive amounts of data that needed to be physically delivered to someone else - not for watching movies. To complicate this even further, it seems like there is a growing resentment about physical goods like DVD's. There have been so many "new formats" that it's very difficult to talk someone into buying a new machine.

Hopefully most folks will wait out the current format war, which should probably go the way of SA-CD vs. DVD-CD. We'll buy all our movies online - and won't need to worry about which titles are available on what platform.