Your Next Game Buy Could Be from Battle.net

So will SC2 have digital distribution? I hope so. I don't get why people are all about "owning a physical copy". Disc swapping is a pain in the butt.

One time activation sounds very nice

******** we just need one unified pcgamers community app like xbox live or psn steam works perfectly fine!

*Post edited by moderator* Cool it on the language.

Until someone basically copies Steam, Valve is practically safe. I love Steam although my access to it is limited since my ISP caps me with bandwidth limits >.>"

disc swapping?, id say like 99% of games fit on 1 dvd nowadays... step outta the cd realm there. ( also not to mention the 5 sec spent putting in a 2nd disc if ever needed isnt exactly hard)

Anyway, im all for digital less its a game that for some reason i want the collectors version of, its alot more convenient, even though it does take alot longer to DL a large game vs its dvd counterpart.

Interesting insight into the pile that Blizzard could be sitting on top of. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard stays away from a Steam-like product; it's just not their "bread and butter", as they seem to be more focused on putting out their own quality products and not seeking to "middle-man" other companies' products.

It wouldn't surprise me if they simply sell digital copies of their own products & services, but I can't see Blizzard offering a Steam-like service that would differentiate itself so far above Steam as to cause current gamers to migrate to a new service. Facebook integration? If that is something users show demand for, Valve could easily do the same thing. Blizzard differentiates it's products (games) from other games by being more balanced, well-planned, and overall higher quality over it's competition. A content distribution service is so simple in nature and Valve's product is good enough that overtaking it would hardly be worthwhile, when those resources could be dedicated to making something with a true competitive advantage.

The ONLY impression I ever had of BattleNet was a ridiculously slow online environment. I remember watching a friend play Diablo II on BattleNet. He had a sorceress, and would zone-in to a level and just run around clicking, even though nothing was happening on screen. When I asked him why he was doing that, he said it was because he knew there were monsters attacking him, but the server was so slow, he couldn't wait for the game to load them, otherwise he would die. Sure enough, a couple seconds later the game finally caught up, and there were tons of corpses and loot surrounding his character.

Long story short, I've never gotten over that first impression of BattleNet, no matter how much better it might be today. The fact that they want to tie all their games to this new service just doesn't sit well with me. I like Blizzard's game, but I just never cared for BattleNet.

Oh, and whats the point of an article speculating about Blizzard opening up BattleNet as a Steam-like service? The author clearly states Blizzard has no intention of doing so.

I think he's referring to games that require a disc be inserted in order to load the game. Disc swapping occurs from playing many games that each require their own disc, causing the user to have to swap discs when playing different games. It's actually quite annoying.

T some point

You mean To some point

I couldn't make it through the whole article. All the misspellings and errors makes me think a 4 year old wrote it. (I suck at grammer, spelling, and punctuation, but I am not a journalist either.)

Not from me, any STEAM games I have (Orange Box) are on disk too.

Battle.net DOES have digital distribution of sorts right now. You can enter your CD keys for your old games (D2, SC1 and I assume WCII and III as well). Then you can download the program and not be required to have the CD in drive while playing.

And disc swapping is very annoying. We are talking about the requirement to have a disc in your CD rom drive when you play, not changing discs mid game.

And I agree with Tokenz... Seems like web writers don’t even spell-check anymore. Its rather annoying. Makes the story seem very amateur and throws the accuracy of its contents into question. If the writer is too lazy to spell-check the story, why on earth would they fact check it?

'At some point' would make more sense.

I used to be all about having something physical. Not anymore.

Before DRM, once I was done playing a game, I could sell it to offset the cost of the next game I bought. Console gamers can still do this.

Now, every game I purchase makes me create an account and register the game online. Now the game is tied to my account and I cannot sell it without giving out my account info (which I never do).

Blizzard integrating Battle.net with WoW, SCII, and any upcoming game just doesn't seem right to me. The service back in the day with Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft, didn't seem like a finished service. Laggy, support, user interface...

Trying to integrate everything under one master account is similar to Steam. However, There is no way Blizzard's prowess will allow them to distribute other publishers titles through their service.

Going along with the earlier news article, I would rather not have my real name available to online friends. Facebook integration? I sure in hell hope there is an option to opt out.

This digital distribution (STEAM, The Abomination known as Games For Windows & now Blizzard/Activision) will end up like TV (Cable, Direct TV & Dish Network) or Game console download. You will have several big carriers and they want in a long term goal of all digital distribution and no store sales at all. On that day we will loose a little more freedom.
Bill Gates said somewhere around the late 80s that envisioned a day when everyone would pay a monthly fee to Microsoft just like we do for Electricity or Cable TV.
I say they did it TV and now want to take over the games and all software this way.

any competition with steam would be great for everyone.

I'm talking about putting in the disc to play the game, not the installation process. Plus no discs required for the installation is actually handy when you format and need to install tens of games over again.

CD based games used to be great because of limited Hard drive space, you could keep the content on the disc.

Requiring a disc to play a game is so 90's.

I dont mind buying games online but I do mind that they are asking the same or even higher prices for the download version!

I will never buy a blizzard game,nor will i support anything they run. Ill use steam until there is a better way. Steam community, speacial deals, and great selection are all the reasons i need to stick with them. Blizzard wont offer anything more than a less inovative service with their name plastered to it. Just like all there games. They use concepts already in usse, design an engine that your moms e-machine can run, and sell it to fools who think that their new game is "cutting edge". When is blizzard going to move gaming tech forward, instead of taking 2 steps back so that low end systems can run their games. Hry blizzard, we got consoles for that. Do us a favor and go make diable 3 for the xbox.

Sorry for typo-filled rant, still getting used to evo typing lol. Im just getting really sick of hearing people talk about WoW and SC2. WoW was out dated less than a year after it was reased, yet kids today think its some how king of the crop when itcomes to MMO. Hate to break the newsto you, it hasnt been for over 6 years. Being popular doesnt make it the best, any android user will tell you the same thing about the iphone. SC2 is so basic its laughable. Sup-com 2 and COH blow it out of the water engine was. And COH came out years ago lolol. Blizzard is great at naking simplistic games that appeal to your momas emachine, but there are real choices out there for people who enjoy **PC** gaming.

i buy cd's because i love it's presentation. for me it is a collector's value item. dunno why everyone is ranting cd is old, cd is a pain... i know you got a point, but having the item for me is nice. especially for a title as epic as starcraft.

Like an xbox can play games at a detail level or resolution that a PC could? You're defeating your own argument.

Also, it's their entire gameplay experience that sets the bar for the rest of the PC Gaming Industry. Blizzard games are of a higher quality in many ways. Just because a game looks beautiful, doesn't mean it's a good game. Case in point, have you ever played Age of Conan, Aion, or Lineage 2? Those games have great visuals (in this case, Lineage 2 has great visuals considering when it was made), but the gameplay is severely lacking, which is why none of them could ever upset WoW.

Why do you think that World of Warcraft has over 11.5 million subscribers and is the largest MMO in the world? Why does Blizzard hold over $3 billion dollars in cash with no debt as a company?

It's because they make good games that are about GAMEPLAY, it's not always about the pretty clouds and anti-aliasing. The sooner you realize that, the better games you'll start noticing.

So you based your impressions on battle.net on what you this guy told you was happening? Diablo II was a P2P game, the content was not run on a server, so your friend, and your impressions, are wrong.

So you're letting it go completely over your head that Blizzard isn't requiring users to buy new components to play their games. That they're actually building games that have a larger possible user base. This is a strong point of Blizzard games, scalability.

As for the rest, your only hurting yourself by not checking out their games...which they spend years perfecting before releasing. Other companies release 2-3 games a year, Blizzard releases a game every 2-3 years. You couldn't be further off base.

You're right, however sometimes the most popular games happen to be some of the best. There's always an exception to the rule, and there's always people who just prefer another phone, or in this case, another game, due to personal tastes. You can't deny a game's greatness because of your own opinion of it's visuals, a game can still be great without you liking it.

A good example would be Metal Gear Solid or the Final Fantasy series. I don't play those games, and I generally think they're pretty stupid. HOWEVER, I know by my knowledge of gaming in general, that they are indeed good games. They've sold well, they've adopted a large userbase, and I generally respect the opinion of the masses. They've received many awards for their stories, gameplay, and innovation. Just because I don't like them, doesn't mean they're not great games.




Again, your graphics argument. Graphics do not equal good games.

I'm embarrassed that you call yourself a PC gamer.

Ok, obviously you're pretty clueless about what makes a good RTS...and you haven't actually taken a very close look at the SC2 engine. This aside from your iPhone hate, it's pretty obvious that your opinions are mostly baseless and biased.

A graphics engine doesn't make a good game, WoW certainly showed that.

Worst Case Scenario:
"...the plans are much bigger, much grander..." could mean ActiBlizzSteam. ActiBlizzard certainly has the financial capacity to outright purchase Valve or the Steam service if it really wanted to. Ick...

it would be nice for battle.net to get into a battle with steam for DD dominance. I prefer variety and the competition would be good and there's still that sleeping beat GFWL which while small and not very useful has potential just because of the money backing it.

ya right as much as i like or liked a lot of bliz stuff, they fail really bad as far as updates in a lot of areas in the past... if it was an old game they could care less to the cries of there loyal fan base and would at times go in opposite direction. Blizzard is just not designed and I doubt they have the right mind set to allow other competitive titles/games on there distribution system.

Before WOW i dont think blizzard really cared much, it only cares to keep those paying monthly fee members happy, which is understandable but one time purchasers always seemed to fail, and with all that went on with blizzard like many other companies things are just not the same as they used to be.

Steam is far superior and they have had the right mind set from the start, they didnt only cater to there (valve) titles though that was one way to promote even more they did very good job to being fair for other titles/publishers, I seriously doubt Blizzard can do that.

I don't know where you're getting that Blizzard doesn't patch its games, I've never seen any company support its games as long as Blizzard has. Starcraft got an update 10 years after release, for instance.

I don't see how Steam is doing anything "better" when you've got next to nothing to compare that to. And how is it that you assume that Blizzard "can't be fair"?! That makes just about no sense at all and I have no idea where you've gotten the idea that Blizzard couldn't be as fair as any other company making a PROFIT off of selling things in their own marketplace.