Subscription gaming online

Nick Verhaar
WHETHER you are a casual gamer or die hard computer game addict, you would well and truly know the hefty costs involved with purchasing gaming titles from retail outlets.
In many cases, people simply cannot afford the costs involved and have no other choice than to resort to piracy.
However, if subscriptionbased gaming takes off and becomes successful, it could open up a whole new world to gamers.
GameNow is a new online gaming service established by Telstra BigPond that offers gamers the ability to stream some of the latest and greatest computer games to their computers on a subscriptionbased monthly plan.
Splinter Cell, Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries, and the entire Civilization series are just some of the many different titles available via GameNow, along with approximately 100 other titles.
Costing $19.95 per month for existing BigPond customers, and $24.95 per month for all other regular customers, GameNow provides allyoucaneat streaming facilities for more than 100 gaming titles, allowing users to play as little or as much as they please of any of the titles.
That compares to purchasing gaming titles from stores where you can expect to pay anything up to $100 for a single game.
GameNow offers unlimited playtime from any of the 100 titles available for only $24.95 per month and the list of titles is expected to grow in the near future.
This sort of service would be ideal for families either on a budget or with lots of kids with different gaming interests as it gives them the ability to play games from many different gaming genres.
Utilising BigPond’s very own game manager software, the service requires the software to download the initial core files for each game.
The system then continues to stream additional content as you play which means there could be waiting periods involved the first time you play a game, depending, of course, on your internet connection speed.
However, it keeps a copy of this data cached locally which means every time after you want to play the game again it will fire up instantly.
Usage of BigPond’s GameNow service requires you to have a broadband internet connection of either 512Kbps ADSL or higher, or a cable internet connection.
Due to the nature of the service and the heavy download requirements, satellite and dial up internet is not supported.
If you are interested in subscribing to GameNow to enjoy the benefits of subscription based gaming, surf on over to http://www.gamenow.com.au to check out the list of games and sign yourself up for an account.