The OnDemand Age of Gaming

Roaming the aisles of Blockbuster searching for the right game was, sadly, probably my defining childhood hobby. Today, I drive by the vacated blue building and dream about the good ole days. I know why it had to go. With the emergence of Netflix and a greater library On-Demand, putting up a fiver for a rental seemed like robbery when it tends to be half the price of a DVD now. Also, Blockbuster got sick with a disease in which it had to put out every Hollywood Rip-off and B-rated horror movie both sides of the Mississippi.

Sorry little Timmy but Mommy can't tell the difference

Yet, even after they raised the cost of renting games by $3 dollars and required you to show more forms of identification than a man speaking Spanish in Arizona I still kept renting.
Now those days have passed and a new age is upon us. Renting games may be a shadow of the past, with Gamefly as maybe the only last bastion of hope. With advances in broadband speeds, downloading whole games is only second to downloading all new game content. This past fall I bought my first desktop computer capable of playing some high end games and with it unlocked the mystery of why the PC section in Gamestop has dwindled. Online sale of computer gaming has skyrocketed. It is probably the best way to purchase games now on the computer because it not only gives you convenience, but also allows you to often demo the game. On top of that, HOLY GOD THE SALES. If you want to buy PC games I recommend waiting till Christmas time and then go on STEAM. If a game wasn't half off, it just wasn't worth buying out of principal.

Internet speed might not also make a trip to the local gaming store obsolete, but also high-end machinery. OnLive has already begun instituting gameplay through streaming in which anyone can play through their networks. You get all the visuals and control without the need to pay for the CPU or graphics card. With all the talk of fitting new HDTVs with the capability and Ipads, this could make gaming more assessable and finally allow Wow players to play outside.

WoW Player Experiences Freedom for First Time Since 2004

This experience may seem relatively new, but I can't stop thinking about how Sega had this pinned years ago with the Sega Channel. YEA, the SEGA CHANNEL. Anyone remember that? No? That's cause it probably wasn't in your area (it was in ours...but not for very long). In 1994 Sega teamed up with cable companies to supply a monthly service where you could access a library of games for a low fee. It included game manuals, cheats and puddles of drool from the twelve year olds who lusted for the clunky unit. It was short lived but filled with rad colors only early nineties could deliver.

Sega Thought it Be Cute to Create a New Kind of Edward Scissorhands

Could we see a Wii channel in the future? Cause I've bought the old school Marios like three times over already...Sonic you are not innocent here either (that bloody capitalist hedgehog make me want to be a communist). Nintendo just re-released Super Mario All-Stars for the Wii...really? I love these games, but I'm done buying them just so I can play them on the most recent console. Yet, I'd probably pay ten dollars a month for something like Netflix.