Free Choice - How It Works

Sapphire sent us a prerelease version of the Sapphire Select DVD that shows how the system works. This demo DVD contains only Tribes Vengeance, but Sapphire assured us that the procedure will be the same for all of the titles that will be available with the final version.

After you insert the DVD, a menu opens with an overview of all the available games. As we already mentioned, we could only select the game Tribes Vengeance from the demo DVD.

Clicking once on the game of your choice displays more information about the game and the system requirements. Then you select Play Free Now to install a full version of the game on your computer. Windows then prompts the user to select a drive and an installation folder.

The setup program adds an entry in the Windows start menu and also lets you create an icon on the desktop to quick-start the game. Up to this point everything works exactly the same as a normal game installation. As soon as the game starts you get a window letting you know the remaining free playtime for that particular title. With our sample upon completion of the test, for example, there were 32 minutes left. You can either let the clock run down until it expires or elect to get the full version. You can "buy" the title by sending in the activation code located on the case of the Sapphire Select DVD.