PS Store Update! (20th August) (....2009)

Well the new PS Store update should be up and raring to download early this evening. There are a few goodies this week- A handful of demos, a few add ons for current games, more songs for Rock Band and Guitar Hero and plenty of videos including game trailers (Heavy Rain Gamescom Trailer will be first on my downlaod list- make sure it's on yours!) and the official Gamescom Sony Press Conference footage.

So, without further adue...

Demos (free)

Colin McRae DiRT 2
PEGI 3+

WET
PEGI 18+

Mini Ninjas
PEGI 7+

IL2 Sturmovik: Birds Of Prey
PEGI 7+

Add-On Game Content

Pain – Andy Dick Pack (£0.79/€0.99)
PEGI 16+

Zen Pinball – Street Fighter II Tribute Table (£1.59/€1.99)
PEGI 7+

Guitar Hero: World Tour – Duelling Banjos Track (£1.59/€1.99)
PEGI 12+

Rock Band

• Foo Fighters Pack 02 (this combines the below three Foo Fighters tracks in one pack) (£2.49/€2.99)
• All My Life by Foo Fighters (£0.99/€1.49)
• I’ll Stick Around by Foo Fighters (£0.99/€1.49)
• Lonely As You by Foo Fighters (£0.99/€1.49)
• I Predict A Riot by Kaiser Chiefs (£0.99/€1.49)
• I’m Shipping Up To Boston by Dropkick Murphys (£0.99/€1.49)
• Inside Out by Eve 6 (£0.99/€1.49)
• No Rain by Blind Melon (£0.99/€1.49)
• There’s No Other Way by Blur (£0.99/€1.49)

PEGI 12+

Videos (free)

• Modnation Racers Trailer
• Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time Gamescom Trailer
• Heavy Rain Gamescom Trailer
• LittleBigPlanet Water Trailer
• Tekken 6 Gamescom Trailer
• Trine Trailer
• Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time Comicon Trailer
• Front Mission Evolved Trailer
• Savage Moon Waldgeist Trailer
• Gamescom Sony Press Conference Part 1
• Gamescom Sony Press Conference Part 2
• Gamescom Sony Press Conference Part 3
• Gamescom Sony Press Conference Part 4
• PR Sizzler Trailer
• Avatar Game Day Trailer (Released on Friday the 21st of August)

Themes (free)

• Katamari Forever and Noby Noby Boy Theme
• PlayStation Store via PSP and Media Go

Downloadable Games

Wild Arms XF (£13.99/€17.99)
PEGI 12+

Riviera (£13.99/€17.99)
PEGI 12+

Warriors Orochi (£13.99/€17.99)
PEGI 12+

Colin McRae Rally 2005 (£7.99/€9.99)
PEGI 3+

Demo (free)

Dissidia Final Fantasy
PEGI 12+

Add-On Game Content (also available via the PS3 store)

Rock Band Unplugged

• A Favor House Atlantic by Coheed and Cambria (£0.99/€1.49)
• Heartbreaker by Pat Benatar (£0.99/€1.49)

PEGI 12+

Themes (free)

• Dissidia Final Fantasy Themes 8, 9 and 10

Videos (free)

• MotorStorm Arctic Edge Trailer

And that's your lot. Enjoy.

-- BIZNITCH --

The Future Of Trading In Games

The future of retail and online games stores seems bleak at the moment due to the ever change ways of buying our games, for the PC you have services like Steam that seem very popular where you pay a subscription to play what ever games you want when you want but never actually own them, then you have Xbox live, PSN and Wii shop channel for your home consoles in which you can download games, DLC, demos and trailers. In the future i'm sure these services will grow and become even more popular meaning we will buy more downloadable games instead of buying games from stores, also other services such as OnLive our on the way and may change the way we play games using the Internet and a monthly subscription on any TV or PC, this may mean by the time the next generation of home consoles releases they may be alot different from what we have now such as a download only like the PSPGO.

There are three possibilities

Disc and download
Download only
Subscription based

The problems with disc's and download's are that they can be pirated over time but subscribution based is alot better due to you never downloading the full game which makes it less likely to be pirated. My opinion is we may see download only consoles next generation, This helps the developers and publishers save money from not producing disc's, manuals, and case's. The other thing this helps the publishers do is sell more of there games instead of losing money from people buying traded in games.

What i would like to see if consoles become download only is the ability to sell the games we download via PSN store. The way this could work is when you go to the PSN store to buy a game you receive a redeem code which you then redeem and then download and play then when you want to sell/trade the game you delete the game from your hard drive and then go on to the PSN store and list the item and redeem code on a section just for trading in games and when it sells you get a certain percentage, Sony gets a percentage and the publisher gets a percentage.

Example
Battlefield 1943 cost's £9.99 to buy new you then play and then Sell on the PSN store for £9.99 you then receive something like 25%, Sony receives 25% and the publisher receives 50%

If this could be done in some kind of way i think this would help people who like buying disc's from shops as they will be able to still sell there games to buy others and would make it cheaper then buying the disc version's as a download only service is cheaper then a disc service, which means games that are £39.99 in shops now could sell for around £25-£30. This could be done if redeem codes are used and a system that changes the code once listed on the PSN store to stop you from redownloading the game again.

As for retail stores they could also sell either PSN cards or the games using redeem codes for people who don't have there console hooked up to the Internet or for when you want to buy a game for someone else for birthdays or Christmas's

Whatever happens when the next generation comes around I'm sure downloadable content will be a huge part of how games are sold.