gog.com for retro games (wishful thinking)

[jman]

Today I was browsing gog.com to check for the latest entries.

I don't know how much their business model is successful, but - provided the needed conditions - it would be interesting if same could be applied to old hardware platforms.

Imagine how cool would it be to have a distribution agreement with some copyright holders to sell autorunning installers with 1 or more games.
You pay $1.99 and you buy WinUAE + Populous II.
You pay $0.79 and you buy VICE + Track&Field.
For $4.99 you can have WinUAE with the 5 most known EA games.

The cheap ticket to the memory lane, without knowing anything about emulators or games, just plug you USB joypad.

Notice that since most emulators are GPL'd, technically you buy the right to play the game and you only distribute the emulator packed, all in one EXE, exactly like gog.com is doing with DOSbox.

The system ROMs you say? Yes, those are a problem. In the medium term, maybe for WinUAE con be solved with a free implementation, but the others are definitively the show-stopper.
Also because the hardware copyright holders are far from being open to any discussion and I'm sure I'm not the first one that imagined this scenario :-)

[Djay]

I bet they don't donate money to the developers of emulators, considering without them they wouldn't have a business... If they do then I am all for it, but I would imagine that people that want to play retro games know how to set up an emulator

[jman]

Originally Posted by Djay

I bet they don't donate money to the developers of emulators, considering without them they wouldn't have a business... If they do then I am all for it, but I would imagine that people that want to play retro games know how to set up an emulator

In theory this would apply also to GOG (and DOTEMU, let me add) customers: you can always download the game by yourself, install DOSbox by yourself and there you go, they would be out of business. Which isn't the case, luckily :-)

However, you raise an interesting point: emulator developers don't have the right recognition by those who should be grateful in the first place. There are a lot of business opportunities (imo) yet to be exploited.

[Djay]

So it would seem that developers get exploited and so do the customers... Nice business model! I get that they aren't gonna say hey do it for free yourself, but with stuff like YouTube, forums and even facebook (seeking advice) playing old games using emulators is easy as you can find lots guidance through those channels..

Also if you owned a computer back in the day then you were considered a techie nerd, so in all likelyhood you still are, thus you would be able to this all yourself

Maybe I naive, I just don't see a market for this?

Edit: Looking at ebay you can buy a pre-setup Amiga emulator plus 22,000 game disks for £3.99 or you can do it the right way with Amiga Forever at £9.99 and get 40 games and 40 demos and have a legit 1.3 rom and wb 1.3

of course i have winuae... and all it cost me was time! And the real thing also!

[jman]

Originally Posted by Djay

So it would seem that developers get exploited and so do the customers... Nice business model! I get that they aren't gonna say hey do it for free yourself, but with stuff like YouTube, forums and even facebook (seeking advice) playing old games using emulators is easy as you can find lots guidance through those channels..

Maybe I naive, I just don't see a market for this?

Edit: Looking at ebay you can buy a pre-setup Amiga emulator plus 22,000 game disks for £3.99

Again, if GOG and DOTEMU are trying, it means there can be a market for this. I don't think they are just finding a place to invest those spare $500k they had leftover from the holiday season ;-)

And I think there could be a way to give everyone its own share. Look at the DOSbox site: they've put a nice banner sending you to gog.com (hint hint...).

There will always be people pirating software, as there will always be those who think different (no pun intended), and you obviously sell to the latter category. And there will be "pro" users like us that don't need to be spoon-fed.

What you can say (correctly) is that the PC market has always been double figure wider than the Amiga one, so an hypotetical gog.com oriented to retrogaming would have much less audience.
Also another meaningful objection would be: look at gog.com, they're selling "Fallout 2", not the first "Test Drive": apparently there is a limit to how far a PC retroplayer is willing to go ;-)

[Djay]

Maybe it could work? I am no industry expert... but your right Fallout 2 was made in 1998... Amiga games started in 1984 possibly well before the mainstream got into gaming anyone gaming at that time was (i would imagine) a bit of a nerd and was willing to invest time learning about computers and how to make them work...

also any successful business needs break america, Amiga didnt do very well in the states its biggest markets were Europe and Australia...

what i object to is people making money off the back off other peoples work, i guess that they would have to supply...

a kickstart replacement, which they didnt make nor invest in
winUAE (or suchlike), which they probably didnt donate to
a game, in which the original developer would receive no money for

i suppose it might encourage more people to get back into the Amiga and hopefully increase our community at EAB

i am no saint, i copied games back in the day, but i didnt try to make money out of it...

i suppose time will tell as there is no financial outlay maybe anyone with a bit of spare time could do it?

[Rotr]

I have the impression a lot of assumptions are being made on behalf of GOG who seems the most targeted in this discussion. Did anyone check on this? They are very tightly integrated with dosbox for a lot of the games offered on their website. I would 'assume' they have a good working relationship with them. All I'm saying is be carefull with 'assumptions'.

[deicidal]

There is already a website out there who are doing all in one exe files of amiga games, cant give you a link as they are using KS and a hacked version of whload to run it.

[P-J]

Originally Posted by Rotr

I have the impression a lot of assumptions are being made on behalf of GOG who seems the most targeted in this discussion. Did anyone check on this? They are very tightly integrated with dosbox for a lot of the games offered on their website. I would 'assume' they have a good working relationship with them. All I'm saying is be carefull with 'assumptions'.

+1 for this. Second post said 'he bets that they don't pay for it', then every other post is based off that assumption. Check your facts before starting a discussion on that subject, surely?

[P-J]

Originally Posted by jman

Also another meaningful objection would be: look at gog.com, they're selling "Fallout 2", not the first "Test Drive": apparently there is a limit to how far a PC retroplayer is willing to go ;-)

They're probably selling what they think they can sell. How do you know they're even able to obtain the rights to [insert other game here]?

[Djay]

indeed, in the case of gog it seems they pay for dosbox usage which is a good thing...
i lost the bet

but i am still convinced about the winuae+1game idea... for various reasons

[deicidal]

Originally Posted by Djay

but i am still convinced about the winuae+1game idea... for various reasons

As I said they already exist, if you look for them

[P-J]

Originally Posted by deicidal

As I said they already exist, if you look for them

I think the poster is referring to a legal & licensed sale. The one you posted sounded a bit shady.

[deicidal]

Originally Posted by P-J

I think the poster is referring to a legal & licensed sale. The one you posted sounded a bit shady.

Sounded, it is, one of the reasons I didn't post a link. Like I said KS Roms hacked up whload.

[Djay]

Originally Posted by deicidal

Sounded, it is, one of the reasons I didn't post a link. Like I said KS Roms hacked up whload.

yeah seen them on ebay... maybe these people sell millions of them and maybe they have really happy customers... i dont agree with it though

[stevsurv]

Originally Posted by deicidal

There is already a website out there who are doing all in one exe files of amiga games, cant give you a link as they are using KS and a hacked version of whload to run it.

I downloaded these recently and they are actually quite good! Some are kinda buggy but most good. It uses the Winuae base and works quite well. These only work in the PC windows enviroment unfortunately.

[CritAnime]

Slightly related but has anyone ever downloaded any of the retro games off Steam. I got UFO and Terror from the deep. I still had to piss around with the dosbox settings because it wasn't configured right.

[synchro]

Originally Posted by jman

Today I was browsing gog.com to check for the latest entries.

I don't know how much their business model is successful, but - provided the needed conditions - it would be interesting if same could be applied to old hardware platforms.

Imagine how cool would it be to have a distribution agreement with some copyright holders to sell autorunning installers with 1 or more games.
You pay $1.99 and you buy WinUAE + Populous II.
You pay $0.79 and you buy VICE + Track&Field.
For $4.99 you can have WinUAE with the 5 most known EA games.

The cheap ticket to the memory lane, without knowing anything about emulators or games, just plug you USB joypad.

Notice that since most emulators are GPL'd, technically you buy the right to play the game and you only distribute the emulator packed, all in one EXE, exactly like gog.com is doing with DOSbox.

The system ROMs you say? Yes, those are a problem. In the medium term, maybe for WinUAE con be solved with a free implementation, but the others are definitively the show-stopper.
Also because the hardware copyright holders are far from being open to any discussion and I'm sure I'm not the first one that imagined this scenario :-)

But you can do this anyway provided you own an amiga or amiga forever ...Im using bootable exe's in my launcher.....without the launcher they are just bootable icons...click it and the game loads...no winuae or anything needs to be installed there all self contained