Digital distribution of games has existed since BBS systems. And while online shareware did to well for some game development houses, it wasn’t until Valve released Steam that everyone started taking a closer look at digital distribution. Gamers, developers, and publishers all paid attention to the success of Steam. Many are still cautious; however, more have jumped into this digital distribution method. Even this month we have seen two publishers make digital distribution deals. It is most likely expected that most next generation consoles will have digital distribution method built-in. But what most people have over looked is the fact that the hardware capabilities for digital distribution are available in current generation handhelds.
The PSP has all the necessary hardware. With the wi-fi, the web browser and game updates illustrate the ability to download and execute online game data. With the MemoryStick Pro Duo card reader, the video and music players illustrate the ability to transfer large amounts of data. With the USB 2.0 support, PC to PSP data transfer illustrates the ability to easily move data from your PC to PSP for easy broadband download and PSP usage. With all these hardware features, it’s easy to see that the PSP could be used to execute digitally distributed content. While movie and music services are already a simple drag and drop away, game distribution is a different story.
Digital game distribution would appear to play a big role in the next generation of consoles. Using the existing knowledge of PSP development may be a much more cost effective way for publishers and developers to tweak there digital distribution models before the diving into the next generation console digital distribution market. The hardware is already available, the customer base already exists, and the software development has been done. All these factors lead to a much lower risk than the next generation digital distribution development.
