and the uninstaller.exe wont work either…”not enought arguments”…it’s obviously not seen the games own forums

And even worse, the players in those nations also commonly use stolen credit cards to make their purchases increasing the fraud rate of the game company’s sales.

Cutting out the physical media, the retailers, and distributors are definitely pluses.

However, in order to maximize sales, the game companies sell physical “game cards” through retail outlets to sell to players that don’t use credit cards.

The cards often have as low as a 50% margin, which puts a dent in overall revenue.

Nevertheless, I would like to comment on your point regarding the long tail.

To keep an online title running successfully requires significant investment in technology, marketing, community management and customer support. All of which carry a significant (although certainly manageable) cost. Jagex for example has over 300 staff with a large percentage supporting Runescape. Failure to provide quality customer support can rapidly turn into bad PR and hard won customers abandoning the game.

For “traditional” publishers this can be a big challenge as it involves thinking completely differently and recruiting staff with a services rather than product focus.

It’s wonderfull that these kind of constructions actually work. I’m suprised by the amount of money is spend by one person. They must have earned about 30 million by now, great.

It’s especially nice too see that the disadvantages that occur with the internet (piracy) can be used smartly avoided and by makig it online you have a product that u can alter and refine over time, someting you can’t do with boxed products.

The distrubution of the product is no problem anymore because everyone, everywhere can download it. Even remote countries can be accessed with no problem, a publishers dream. And all revenue as Bruce says will be for the publisher and not some “stupid” shop or other distributors. Money that the publisher can invest in making the product better.

There are two main lessons. If a distributor doesn’t deliver added value then it will soon die out. Secondly, al lot of products become obselite because of the internet.
If the distributor doesn’t deliver extra value then there not there anymore in 5 years time, or at least very drasticly reduced. Look at the examples.
- Book shops wil lagery dissapear, when E-readers will work, and book publishers will die out. Maybe it will be come unfashionable and not eco friendly too have a large book collection!
- CD sales are already being reduced by online downloading. No need for CD’s when u have a mp3 player
- Telefoonbooks are already completely unessecary. Online works better faster and is more up to date. Please stop making them.
- encyclopedia are obselete. Online are just as good and they have much more content like videos, music and more pictures. all makers have stopped production.
- Travelling agencies : book your holiday online, it’s cheaper and you can see all the information you want. Only a small amount of people still like a personal touch.
- Bank buildings are beying transformed beacuse costumers do a lot online. Products are being bought online in stead of in the bank directly. Less contact with the costumer but more high quality contact.

Internet is great, just look at the possibility’s and disadvantges and use hem too your advantage!

I don’t know how well Battlefield Heroes will do in the long term. When it boils down to it, it’s not a very good game, we don’t know how they’ll be keeping it fresh or if the users recorded are people playing the game or just people who signed up one evening to see what it was like and then never went back (like me).

Lets all remember Quake Live has been in the news recently too because it looks like they are going to have to resort to subscriptions for some content because advertising isn’t working.

There is still something to be said for the initial purchase. Team Fortress 2 and Left4Dead are doing great thanks to all the updates.