Woah woah woah.




Guys, chill.

Yes both our governments are terrible when it comes to technology. Tesltra doesn't help (Trujillio helped even less).

But feasibility, lads. You realise more people live in New York than there are Australians in existence, right? And you realise Australia is as large as 77% of all of the USA. And we live around the edges. It doesn't mean a great deal for intra-city connections, but you can't underestimate how much we're losing out simply because we don't live densely at all. Compare the sizes of Melbourne and New York. Now compare the populances. Zomg 4x difference. This makes it waaaay harder to make a profit off an infrastructure, meaning companies (yes companies, not governments) are very conservative in how they roll out new wires and optics. Which means we don't keep up. What we're seeing now (the NBN) is government-sponsored (ie, taxpayer paid) development. It's needed because it makes no financial sense for a company to do so (and then be forced to sell it at a low price to competitors...). Like most things, it's the economy, stupid.

I prefer to buy boxed games for PC just like I prefer to buy console games and DVDs. However, I would 99% of the time buy online and I think that's hitting shops way harder than Steam, which is not something most non-techy gamers would use.

Quote: Original post by phresnel
Personally I am not a big fan of Steam & Co., and tbh, I don't "own" a single steam-powered game. I am anyways not playing too much these days, mostly classics like Civ III (and most recently I took the step to try out that contrast-poor and unfamiliar Civ IV I disliked for years, after grabbing it for 10 EUR) or the Total War series. I really like my games boxed in the rack, even if only stored in a cheap CD-ROM case, ready to be grabbed out upon demand, with no need to register online or having to configure internet at all on the playground-box, which often is not even a physical box.

I feel the exact opposite, actually. I think that non-physical games are much more convenient than boxed games with a CD/DVD. The latter are things you tend to lose, it takes space for nothing (and I'm not that much of a nerd to actually expose video game boxes around my house, they usually go into some drawer somewhere, to be never found again when needed), physical media gets scratched or corrodes over time, buggy DRM can't authorize the media on eg. a modern Blueray drive anymore, etc. Steam is so superior, it isn't even funny anymore. Games are always available at a central place, from anywhere, at any time.

The downside, of course, is the required internet connection. And you Aussies seem to really have some serious problems down there :( I can relate to this, living in a very rural area where broadband access was a major challenge up to rather recently, when they finally got their asses up and upgraded the 1960's phone lines.

I hope this gets sorted out in the future for you.

I felt this sadness when they stopped doing pre-owned PC games. Man, I use to be able to build up quite a collection because of that. I bought so many that I've got a tower full of games that I couldn't even get around to installing.

Quote: Original post by Yann L
Steam is so superior, it isn't even funny anymore. Games are always available at a central place, from anywhere, at any time.

The downside, of course, is the required internet connection. And you Aussies seem to really have some serious problems down there :(

It's also important to note that Steam changes pricing based on your location. So we're often charged much higher than the actual exchange rate when converting from USD... Also, release dates are sometimes enforced, so that if the game isn't on shelves here yet, it also doesn't show up on steam.

Ever since I've been playing games with disc-based DRM, I've been able to play them at LANs by using the disc to launch the game, and then taking it out and passing it to the next person. This unspoken policy of "you can play LAN as long as there's a disc there" seemed to be commonplace. Nowadays though, if I want to play a LAN game at home, I've got to spend hundreds of dollars, which just isn't going to happen!
Personally, my g/f and I are shattered that we're not going to be able to play Diablo 3 together without blowing hundreds on it. Blizzard used to be good about it - Starcraft allowed one disc to have 8 simultaneous "spawn installs" (multiplayer only) so you could play on a LAN legitimately. Now though, they're encouraging people to hack their software...

On the upside, back in the days of simple "is the CD in the drive" DRM, I could lend games to friends if I wasn't playing them... These days, if I lend a game to a friend they get access to my entire Steam catalogue! I don't think that was their intention.

I buy most of my games at Half-Priced Books.
Few years old, but some are still good -- dirt cheap too.