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TheCount

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I think it's only worth it if you have a high turnover rate on games. For people like me that take their time and can play the same game for weeks and weeks, I think it's pointless to get a Gamefly subscription.
 

Kevinicus

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It depends on what kind of games you are looking at. I play, or at least try out, a lot of RPGs, and blockbuster doesn't carry a lot of those, so I got a Gamefly account for those. If it wasn't for that, it would be a MUCH better decision to go with Blockbuster's in-store game pass. With gamefly it can take over a week to get a new game once you mail in an old one. With Blockbuster it's immediate.
 

Tusan_Homichi

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I've had it at a couple of different times. Any game that's even remotely popular, you won't be getting for a while. Your queue? It's basically just for show as far as the shipping order goes. I had all sorts of games and their sequels and more often than not, it seemed like the first game in the series would be skipped and they'd ship the second. Annoyed the hell outta me.

Obviously, I didn't care for it. Your mileage may vary though.
 

Route 66

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Gamepass is approximately 264.00 a year right? You could buy 4-5 games a year for that price. They advertise no due dates but keeping a game for a long time is what hurts you. If you keep a game for a couple of months, you could have bought it and kept it.
 

masomenos

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One of my roommates recently started testing a new service called On-Live.

http://www.onlive.com/

Basically, it allows you to play 360, PS3 and PC games without owning the necessary hardware. For instance, even if you have a 6 year old laptop you could still play a brand new PC game, run it at full settings and not have any issues in performance at all. You don't have to download the game or anything, it just streams to you while being played somewhere else. If I'm not explaining it well then it's just because I don't really understand how it works.

It's really amazing technology and in a few years it very well may completely change the way games are delivered.
 

Reality

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masomenos;3437673 said:
One of my roommates recently started testing a new service called On-Live.

http://www.onlive.com/

Basically, it allows you to play 360, PS3 and PC games without owning the necessary hardware. For instance, even if you have a 6 year old laptop you could still play a brand new PC game, run it at full settings and not have any issues in performance at all. You don't have to download the game or anything, it just streams to you while being played somewhere else. If I'm not explaining it well then it's just because I don't really understand how it works.

It's really amazing technology and in a few years it very well may completely change the way games are delivered.
Until ISPs start tiered-based pricing across the board due to bandwidth saturation throughout the country.

So you basically will have to subscribe to the OnLive service, buy virtual copies of the games (at normal price) and pay more for your internet access. On top of that, I am still not convinced they can remove lag and other issues to allow games such as FPS and other quick action/reaction games to work effectively or efficiently enough.

It is a great concept but the pricing system is a huge negative and I have a feeling all of these wonderful over-the-internet bandwidth hungry services are going to expose just how lazy and slow the telecommunications industry has been to prepare for the future of the internet and the exponential growth in bandwidth demand.

-Reality
 

Cowboy Brian

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Reality;3437695 said:
Until ISPs start tiered-based pricing across the board due to bandwidth saturation throughout the country.

So you basically will have to subscribe to the OnLive service, buy virtual copies of the games (at normal price) and pay more for your internet access. On top of that, I am still not convinced they can remove lag and other issues to allow games such as FPS and other quick action/reaction games to work effectively or efficiently enough.

It is a great concept but the pricing system is a huge negative and I have a feeling all of these wonderful over-the-internet bandwidth hungry services are going to expose just how lazy and slow the telecommunications industry has been to prepare for the future of the internet and the exponential growth in bandwidth demand.

-Reality

If they do that the internet is dead.
 

Reality

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Romo 2 Austin;3437729 said:
If they do that the internet is dead.

They won't be doing it out of greed .. they'll do it simply because if they do not, their networks will be heavily saturated which will lead cause extensive packet loss and performance issues and the masses will scream "the internet is dead" then too.

The reality is that technology's bandwidth demands has shifted into high gear in the last two years while the ISPs have focused more on upgrading their mobile network capabilities and improving existing network quality. While those were definitely important, they have moved very slowly when it comes to upgrading the bandwidth capabilities their major hubs and backbones.

Companies like Comcast who offers cable TV and AT&T's new Uverse service which is basically the same thing do not increase those ISPs upstream bandwidth demands or costs because the bandwidth usage occurs completely within their own network. Its the same reason why cellphone companies can give you free or cheap unlimited mobile-to-mobile because they incur no extra fees for passing through other companies' network hubs and access points since those calls remain within their own network system.

There are ways they will try to reduce their upstream bandwidth usage and costs. They will use the same concept they used back when videos and other media content created a surge in bandwidth usage by their customers and that was to setup caching server clusters inside their own network so when you went to a site like CNN.com, the images were served to you from their network rather than the actual CNN.com website. Unfortunately, they won't be able to setup that kind of system for all of these new services. I am sure companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, etc. will set up data centers for their servers in each of the main ISP networks in order to maintain network quality and service to their users.

Both Comcast and AT&T have already shown tier-pricing is where they are headed. Comcast offers unlimited internet access but if you read the fine print they have a maximum cap for high bandwidth users. I believe Comcat's bandwidth cap is 250gb per month. AT&T recently canceled their $30/month unlimited 3G service that they just launched less than 2 months earlier and replaced it with a $25/month for 2gb of bandwidth.

Tiered pricing is coming and it will likely be sooner rather than later because right now, only a small fraction of people will exceed the normal tier of usage. However, with all of these bandwidth hungry services coming in our near future, that will surely change and the business side of ISPs would be smart to implement the changes before people get caught exceeding their tier's limits rather than waiting until after a majority already are doing so.

-Reality
 

YosemiteSam

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Reality;3437695 said:
Until ISPs start tiered-based pricing across the board due to bandwidth saturation throughout the country.

Actually, the bandwidth is there. It's just a matter of hardware (that exist) and the willingness for BIG ISP to share profits.

The only true bandwidth issues in the US right now are people like Apple and AT&T. The issue is exist due to exclusiveness of the iPhone/iPad being stuck to AT&T. It's like craming all of a six lane highway down a 4 lane highway. You get lag. The bandwidth exist, the ISPs just have to stop the freaking greed and share the wealth.

Comcast and AT&T both are on the wrong side of Net Neutrality. To them it's all about profit. Not about what is good for the consumer.

Companies like Cogent, Level3, Savvis, etc have so much *dark fibre it's stupid. It's greed causing the network issues we see today. They want to sell what they don't have and aren't willing to pay other fibre providers for what they need. Force their customers down small networks pipes that they have instead of paying others for what they need.

* Dark fibre is fibre optic cable that isn't lit because it isn't needed by the company that owns it. (ie it has no light running through it, or network highways that are unused because they have no traffic for them!)
 

TheCount

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Reality;3438051 said:
They won't be doing it out of greed .. they'll do it simply because if they do not, their networks will be heavily saturated which will lead cause extensive packet loss and performance issues and the masses will scream "the internet is dead" then too.

The reality is that technology's bandwidth demands has shifted into high gear in the last two years while the ISPs have focused more on upgrading their mobile network capabilities and improving existing network quality. While those were definitely important, they have moved very slowly when it comes to upgrading the bandwidth capabilities their major hubs and backbones.

Companies like Comcast who offers cable TV and AT&T's new Uverse service which is basically the same thing do not increase those ISPs upstream bandwidth demands or costs because the bandwidth usage occurs completely within their own network. Its the same reason why cellphone companies can give you free or cheap unlimited mobile-to-mobile because they incur no extra fees for passing through other companies' network hubs and access points since those calls remain within their own network system.

There are ways they will try to reduce their upstream bandwidth usage and costs. They will use the same concept they used back when videos and other media content created a surge in bandwidth usage by their customers and that was to setup caching server clusters inside their own network so when you went to a site like CNN.com, the images were served to you from their network rather than the actual CNN.com website. Unfortunately, they won't be able to setup that kind of system for all of these new services. I am sure companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, etc. will set up data centers for their servers in each of the main ISP networks in order to maintain network quality and service to their users.

Both Comcast and AT&T have already shown tier-pricing is where they are headed. Comcast offers unlimited internet access but if you read the fine print they have a maximum cap for high bandwidth users. I believe Comcat's bandwidth cap is 250gb per month. AT&T recently canceled their $30/month unlimited 3G service that they just launched less than 2 months earlier and replaced it with a $25/month for 2gb of bandwidth.

Tiered pricing is coming and it will likely be sooner rather than later because right now, only a small fraction of people will exceed the normal tier of usage. However, with all of these bandwidth hungry services coming in our near future, that will surely change and the business side of ISPs would be smart to implement the changes before people get caught exceeding their tier's limits rather than waiting until after a majority already are doing so.

-Reality

Pretty sure greed has a little something to do with it but for the most part I agree.

The internet is already tiered to some degree, you pay different amount for different speeds. Fiber optic lines arent going to be the same prices as DSL or Dialup, and even when you get DSL there are different tiers of speed.

For them to start billing based not just on the speed of your connection, but simply how much you use it is a whole different deal.
 

casmith07

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The problem has been the different companies' lack of willingness to spend what it takes to upgrade their infrastructure to fiberoptic lines, etc. Some companies have in an effort to get away from DSL or Cable (Verizon FiOS) but others, namely companies like Comcast, have not.

By allowing consumers to continually sign up for service over old tech, they can push their need to charge for tiered data due to the supposed bandwidth crunch rather than spend the vast amounts of money they've been making on upgrading the infrastructure. This is why with a service like Verizon FiOS you'll see they offer speeds of 50Mbps down and 20+Mbps up. They also don't throttle your speeds, and they don't necessarily care about file sharing, advertising file sharing speeds faster than the competing cable internet companies right on their website.

If Comcast would spend to upgrade to fiberoptics for internet service, they'd be able to charge a fair price for the service they're offering. Until then, expect to get ripped off as well as get your bandwidth throttled if you're a big downloader due to their inability to set aside record profits to improve the user experience. Greed plays a large part in it - it's not like they wouldn't immediately make that money back if they spent a big part of their revenues on tech upgrades.

And no, I'm not just trying to plug Verizon - I'm an AT&T wireless customer and I get my internet through my local cable company, but I fully intend on getting Verizon's FiOS service when I return to the Washington DC area this fall for law school.
 
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