E3: Games-on-demand does re-downloads

By Tom Bramwell Published 3 June, 2009

Prices "comparable" to retail.

Microsoft's upcoming games-on-demand service for Xbox Live will be updated every week, and it won't be a problem to re-download things.

Announced on Monday after the Microsoft conference, the service is starting up this August, and the platform holder said yesterday that prices would be "comparable" to retail - with USD 19.99 for LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga offered as an example.

Games can also be re-downloaded if you have to delete them to make space at some point in the future, and this will also mean that if by some miracle you need to buy a new Xbox 360 or get yours replaced, it won't be a problem to download them again either.

Other than LEGO Star Wars, games confirmed for the service so far are BioShock, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Sonic the Hedgehog, Oblivion, Crackdown, Colin McRae DiRT and Call of Duty 2.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (27) Latest comment 3 years ago

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  • Dizzy #1 3 years ago

    >Games can also be re-downloaded if you have to delete them

    That is pretty obvious. If not you would not be buying them but renting.

  • X #2 3 years ago

    Unless they are significantly cheaper i'll just buy them online...probably be less than on the service anyway.

  • Colin8703 #3 3 years ago

    I'll take the physical release thanks.

    Odds on are they'll still be cheaper.

  • oerhoert #4 3 years ago

    If MS offered the opportunity to put in a terrabyte disk of your own instead of the (relatively) measly and overpriced 120GB, this would make even more sense. I'd like to have all my games installed at once, ideally, and I'd be glad to shed the bad habit of buying physical boxes to play my games.

    If this had been around in 2005, and it had been part of the 360 publishing deal that all games WOULD be distributed online (where the publisher could perhaps get a decent share), it would have been even better.

    Looking forward to see how this will turn out.

  • Domovoi #5 3 years ago

    When was it ever disputed that re-downloads were possible? I mean, they're possible with XBLA games and Xbox originals.. what made you think it'd be different this time?

  • Darren #6 3 years ago

    All of the old Xbox games offered on the LIVE Marketplace are more expensive that those which can still be bought online if you shop around so I fully expect that these old Xbox 360 games will be likewise. Plus those old disc based games at least have some resale value and may even become collectible in the future. Your downloaded copy certainly won't! :p

  • PearOfAnguish #7 3 years ago

    Games publishers must be wetting themselves with excitement at the thought of digital downloads gaining mainstream acceptance. They set the prices, they control who plays the games. No more piracy, no more second hand sales. It's the holy grail.

    What are the odds at least one of the next-gen consoles will be download only? It'll have box art showing gamers being bent over and viciously fucked up the arse by a publishing exec.

  • jonsaan #8 3 years ago

    I'm all for downloading games. I have this thing about changing discs:D

  • Toothball #9 3 years ago

    Sonic the Hedgehog is an odd choice, what with it being rubbish and all. I'm hoping it means that other Sega games might make an appearance. I'm keen to see Phantasy Star Universe on there, but since most people don't like it it would be quite a surprise if it happened.
    Edited by Toothball at 03/06/09 @ 11:40

  • AaronTurner #10 3 years ago

    Awesome, they should have done this a while back. Bad for my CC though.

    Glad I've got an Elite!

  • kangarootoo #11 3 years ago

    @oerhört

    Very true. The major barrier to this is MS' absurd proprietary peripheral policy and pricing.

  • peterfll #12 3 years ago

    Larger, affordable hard drive required + cheaper than retail prices = to make this happen

  • bioreit #13 3 years ago

    In two minds about this - on the one hand, physical games will always be a must for me (you can shop around and buy them cheaper, you have resale value, you can lend/borrow) not least because even the Elite's 120GB HDD will fill up rather quickly, but on the other, it would be awesome to switch between games without having to change discs.

    Evening gaming sessions for me and my friends has lately taken the theme of some CoD4, L4D, Flatout and maybe some Crackdown co-op, meaning disc switching happens every hour or two and can be a real pain in the arse trying to find the boxes/discs. If it's just stored on the drive, that would be pretty cool. And if they could do Modern Warfare 2 for download on release day at normal retail value, I reckon I'd buy that straight away.

  • muscleblade #14 3 years ago

    "meaning disc switching happens every hour or two and can be a real pain in the arse trying to find the boxes/discs. "

    You really should take better care of your games. Put them in a bookshelf or something. I have almost 100 retail games but dont have this problem. The disc swithing takes about 2 seconds. I dont see the problem really.

  • Bloodhunter #15 3 years ago

    muscleblade is right, if you keep collections organised you never lose anything

    ive got a friend whos lost about 20 discs because he just leaves them everywhere

    ontopic - this service is fine on pc but i dont know about consoles for full game dl's, i prefer being able to lend/borrow games

  • alnya #16 3 years ago

    Will be interested to see if this is like the Classic games store and never updated after launch

  • midnight_walker #17 3 years ago

    £19.99 for a classic game that I could find for probably half that price on disc? Er... no. Just, no. Downloadable games should be cheaper than RRP, ESPECIALLY in the case of these old knackers. You're getting less, after all.
    Edited by midnight_walker at 03/06/09 @ 14:04

  • dirk_aircool #18 3 years ago

    That will save a lot of money for the publishers . they dont have to transport/distibute the stuff to retail . why is it the downloaded stuff same price as retail ? . And as somone said the HDD is too small . it will do away with trading in games as well .
    The only advantage would be when it came to tracking down the games you cant find at gamestation ( Preowned of course ).

  • Darren #19 3 years ago

    So it looks like these download only games are really for people like bioreit who are too lazy to (a) swap a disc which takes about 5 seconds tops; and (b) can't be arsed to keep their games collections stored in a methodical and easy to access way such as on a shelf, etc. No wonder they say gamers are getting lazy... ;)

  • Feanor #20 3 years ago

    Xbox Steam sounds like a winner to me. You guys are all forgetting how much quieter 360 games are than run off the hard drive, and how they put less stress on the system. The pricing seems very competitive, too.
    Edited by Feanor at 03/06/09 @ 16:03

  • miiiguel #21 3 years ago

    "So it looks like these download only games are really for people like bioreit who are too lazy to (a) swap a disc which takes about 5 seconds tops; and (b) can't be arsed to keep their games collections stored in a methodical and easy to access way such as on a shelf, etc. No wonder they say gamers are getting lazy... ;) "

    Not only that. The power of "browsing" should not be underestimated. To give you an example, about a week ago I was looking at my video-game collection and remembered that I'd fancy a bit of Tomb Raiding, browsed through the MarketPlace and bought the wonderfull Tomb Raider: Anniversary, both episodes for 1600 msp. The game can be found cheaper - online. But I was in the mood for it in that particular afternoon, and if possible without the need to take my car out of the park.

  • bad09 #22 3 years ago

    "with USD 19.99 for LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga offered as an example. "

    If the UK was in line with that (and most titles were in that price bracket) I'd say great, but we'll see.........

  • steveb07 #23 3 years ago

    Crackdown?! I thought it couldn't run off the hard drive. It doesn't install at present from a retail disk. Does this mean they have fixed the problem?

  • twh104 #24 3 years ago

    Probably just removed the Halo 3 Beta. Although they may have done that in late 2007, or something from new pressings.

  • rprince #25 3 years ago

    Wow, I did not know XBLive didn't already do this. This is full games for download, right? Like the EA games on PSN? On-demand makes me think of pay-as-you-play. That would be news. Why do I ever expect things to be really new?

    Anyway, download games should not be close to retail prices! I would have bought Burnout on PSN if it weren't for the fact that it's £24.99 as opposed to £14.99 in shops!

    And redownloading should be a given. Question is whether there's a stupid 5 download limit.

  • crashVoodoo #26 3 years ago

    I just rebought crackdown for a fiver on ebay. i hope they do reduced pricing and offers or it'll be pointless.

  • oerhoert #27 3 years ago

    <em>"Downloadable games should be cheaper than RRP, ESPECIALLY in the case of these old knackers. You're getting less, after all."</em>

    Not necessarily. I actually feel that I get <em>more</em> by buying games digitally these days (as long as it's not got bothersome DRM)--since my house is starting to get very crowded (got around 1000 games) I'd like to avoid physical product whenever possible.