Microsoft's E3 keynote was so jam-packed the company decided to wait until afterwards to announce what might be the biggest new feature of them all: on-demand access to full retail games. The service will launch in fall with 30 titles to start, and new games will be added weekly, with pricing to match retail. The best part? Purchases can be made directly with a credit card, no pesky Xbox points required. Developing...

That's the best thing to come out of E3 so far. I am happy to hear about this. My guess of a price point is 20-30 $, but hopefully 15-20. Mostly cuz they want money, but the games I see in the pic sell for 20-30 new.

What's the differnce, really? It just eliminates one step from the purchasing procedure. Actually, it basically turns it into PSN's money system. And while that is better... it's not really THAT great, just a little more conveniant.

If going directly to cash instead of cash to points really does recude over all cost, then yeah, I would see this being pretty awesome though.

Any reduce in steps creates an increase in revenue. Sounds all good for microsoft though: They pocket a little extra cash uploading games instead of producing dvds, they can probably get around the dvd9 limits through a download-only game, and they defeat the resale market (an important one). Actually, what I'd do if I were them: Offer the ability to resell your downloaded game in a marketplace that you set your own price for and take a cut of the sale. They're able to reach millions of xbox players to sell fast, microsoft makes more money, and the used game market takes a hit.

ya know spoom, that resale thing is smart. Sell the rights to the dl to someone else at a reduced price means that all three parties win. MS gets a cut and hits GameStop where it hurts, and the seller gets a cut on a sale that before then would be impossible, and the buyer gets a "used" (of course that term is loosely applied) game at a reduced price. Smart man Spoom. You should hit that idea over MS's head. Maybe it will sink in.

I believe that there are gamers who would prefer the convenience of the easy downloads and for that I welcome it but for my own personal preferences it will be a long time before I download things without getting a hard copy. Having to own the games installed takes up way too much memory, I worry about inadvertent deletion, and you cannot loan it or sell it to anyone else.

The idea of allowing "used" versions of downloaded games in a resale market is a good one in theory but I think used gaming may actually be motivation to Microsoft to promote downloaded games without a resale market system. If everyone buys games online there will be less and less used game revenue to lose in the typical shopping mall video game stores (because there will be less and less hard copies for sale) but then the only way to find the game when one wants to play it will be to buy the game at the full "new" price instead a used price.

If you do, you can just go download it again without paying for it. Once you buy it, it is tied to your account permanently. Sony does the same thing. I had to format my PS3, and I had to go re-download everything. But it recognized that my account had already purchased it before, so it just let me download it again.