The REAL Problem With Xbox Live (OPINION)

[J_Allard]

Scoobes said:

J_Allard said:
Well no offense but that is a shortsighted and foolish stance to take in regards to downloadable games. Some of the best games this gen have been downloadable. And my 360 HDD is chock full of games like Trials Evolution, Shadow Complex, Mark of the Ninja, Guardian Heroes, Perfect Dark HD, Catan, Spelunky, N+, Super Meat Boy, Bastion, Fez, etc etc, games I can't play off of PSN. Not saying PSN doesn't have quality exclusives, but more of them would certainly end up on my HDD if I had a chance to try before I buy but that rarely seems to be the case.

I believe Sony have a game trial feature which is probably easier for devs. You download the entire game but have a 60 minute limit after which you can buy the full game or delete it. It's a relatively new feature so I expect it'll be implemented properly in the future (next gen maybe?).

Live has these too but on PSN and Live they are retail games that take up tons of HDD space and take a long time to download (particularly on PSN). I am talking XBLA/PSN games. For example if I look at the last 25 releases on PSN, only a paltry 3 of them have any sort of demo I can try out. If I go onto XBLA, all 25 of the last 25 have trials. Even games that are also on PSN. Which leads me to wonder, since MS requires them to make a trial version and they do the work and make one, why not also on PSN? Can't be too hard to carry the work over. The only conclusion I can come up with is publishers not wanting to pay the bandwidth fees on PSN, which are waived on XBLA.