Did anyone even try Game Tap when it came out 7 or so years ago? That had games from all consoles on you computer for around $10 a month or something... My cousin had it when he was a game tester, and was getting the beta for $1 a month.

But the guy who was behind the motion tech idea on the Wii presented to Sony first back in 2001. Look it up.

Back on topic: while I like the idea, we often forget that businesses love to make money the best way possible. This way is not exactly profitable

I heard about it only because they had exclusive Space Ghost episodes (which are now all lost minus one on Dailymotion)
Pretty much every review took a dump on GameTap like it was spyware.

Netflix remains profitable despite DVDs and other services offering permanent downloads existing.
This is more for people who don't want to take a full-blown $5 plunge into a game we may not touch again. They could easily co-exist, and with services like this there will be inconveniences most likely.

Also half on-topic, there needs to be a refund system for accidental purchases like the Google Play Store. 10-15 minutes and you're stuck with it.

_{knock it off with the uber-sarcastic anti-extremist tangents, let's stick to the topic at hand please — TBD}

Back on topic: while I like the idea, we often forget that businesses love to make money the best way possible. This way is not exactly profitable

Actually, a properly monetised subscription service is a holy grail for vendors.

Here's why:

With a conventional boxed product, there is no guarantee that if you produce 1 million copies, then you'll sell 1 million units. You can do all the market research you like, at the end of the day you're, at best, making an educated guess at the demand for a product.

If you make 1 million copies of a product, and only sell 950,000 of them, then you've wasted 50,000 copies. For a product that is as low-margin as games are, that's a massive expense.

Now, look at subscriptions. All you need to do with one of them is open up the spreadsheet, and right there you can see how many people are paying for your product. That means you know exactly, to the dollar, how much money that product is making every day, every week, every month and every year. If you make the product compelling enough to maintain a low level of churn (2-3 per cent lost customers each month, for instance), then what will happen is the dollars in the spreadsheet will increase, not decrease, because you'll acquire more customers than you'll lose.

When you, as a company, know exactly how much money a product is making, you know exactly how much money you can invest into it. You know immediately whether an investment is an assured thing, or a massive risk.

Companies are at their happiest when they have fully accountable guarantees. That's why there are so many music subscription services popping up, and that's why Netflix exists - there is a reliability to the money coming in that actually means it's a better investment than blowing $10 million on sticking physical boxes on shelves.

I would bet my house that, assuming Sony survives, that PSPlus subscription service will be extended to the entire PSN and the only way to access games 10 years from now.

Yeah... I can't see subscription services taking over, mainly because of problems with third-parties. This is based off of how Turner and Netflix feuded, and how ratings dropped with Nickelodeon's expansive streaming services (which I had a comparison that I forgot about)

Eh... If something like this happened, we would probably have so many options on what to play that I would probably never play the games more than once...

That's pretty interesting how reviewers thought it was spyware... My cousin works for an internet company(name I don't know), and he said that alot of things people consider to be spyware are real services and stuff trying to make internet ads and some things that appear to be scams better for people. I'm sure some if not most are scams, but Game Tap was apparently 'spyware' with services people are asking for now, that were available 7 or so years ago, which is interesting... They were adding games like nobody's business for a while on there. I'm surprised it died, but being too accessible by any computer, cheap enough for what you were getting, adding games every week from every console, and just being an overall good service from what I saw, I guess it just was too good to be true for alot of people.

This has some merit - I mean online on the Wii U is free, so you could just view it as your Nintendo Network fee, but you get to play games too. I wouldn't pay multiple fees to play multiple catalogs, but one to play all? Sure, why not?

I wouldn't mind it. I would prefer just downloading all my games individually, but it wouldn't hurt to have a subscription service..

I agree, but I would hope they still give you the option to simply purchase the game for good.

If it did like Netflix Instant does, you'd still never have the games you really want to play, so it'd be pointless for me personally. Also, iirc Netflix does give you the option to keep the DVD you've rented (if you have the DVD sent to your home, you just keep it and they charge your credit card their price for it), so I don't see how it'd be unfeasible to allow you to purchase the game you're playing for good if you prefer a one-time fee instead..

Sorry to continue this disscusion, (just couldn't resist) but I looked your point up on this very websight, and the sales pitch went pretty bad it looks like and the move had a working prototype in 2001 which is a bit soon for a copy, and the guy he saw wasn't the guy who created the move, the idea came from trying to take the eyetoy farther than its body tracking alone could do, this is the article I found that further shows the move wasn't a copy of the wii.
back on subject, I don't like the idea because I would rather just own something vc game permanently instead of paying continuously for them espcially since I don't play them very much. And would they make as much money since a a lot of people seem to download a lot of vc games.

Nintendo had a motion-sensing controller in 1989 and a controller with an IR sensor and a sensor bar in 1993. And this was back before playstation ever existed. So there.

@WhiteKnight That'd be a great point... if we weren't talking about Virtual Console here. Nintendo already has access to the data, since they're selling everything digitally. Considering the amount of money Nintendo makes off of a single purchase would equate to a months worth of subscription, I don't know if it'd be worth it to them. For anyone that would get more than 12 VC games a year, then Nintendo would be losing money on those customers. Then there's the fact that no one can keep the games, which be a displeasure to many.

Granted, I highly doubt most people would buy more than 1 VC game a month. You could view this as a way of showing an easy way to profit from Nintendo, but at the same time it could mean that most people wouldn't bother with the service in the first place. The amount of retro games people would really want to play isn't that huge. I don't know if it'd really be worth venturing out into. Most people that buy new consoles don't care about retro gaming as much as what new stuff the console can offer. It's nice that the option is to buy them is there, but I don't really think it'd be worth spending money on servers just for that purpose. Seems like too much money.

Check out OnLive! It's a game streaming service for the PC. I don't use it a lot, but you have the option of paying to "rent" a game for a period of time, paying for a subscription to access a certain selection of games, or just paying for the full game so you can play it any time you want. I have their micro "console" so that I can stream games to my TV. I've got some pretty good deals on a handful of games that would otherwise be more expensive.

More directly on topic, I don't think this is a bad idea. I'm unsure if I would use it myself, but I definitely think that there would be a market for it and that it should be there as an option.

Thanks for the suggestion, I didn't know about that. I can't wait for a console to do what OnLive has done then. I'm hoping Sony uses its Gaikai technology for renting new releases. There's money out there to be made filling in the gap of Blockbuster(both stores were shut down in my town), and Gamefly is just too slow and too much of a commitment. Consoles need to let us rent from them directly.

Woah. Synchronicity. I just had this thought earlier in the day. I think a $2 week long pass for unlimited Virtual Console games would be a huge hit, and a great incentive to get even more amazing arcade & PC engine CD games to the VC.

Speaking for myself, I wouldn't spend more than $5 on any current virtual console game, and I wouldn't even spend that on a digital version of an 8bit game. I'd spend $25 max on the VC in a calendar year. But I'd gladly fork over at least $48 each year to play dozens of SNK games + other classics.

Nintendo needs to take a cue from Apple & Google.

"I don't wanna rent, I WANNA OWN!" - Master Shake

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/731049