Will Real Games Unifi your Games?

  
 
(2)
By Joel Brodie
Dec 9, 2010, 6:02pm

What is Real Games working on in casual games? We have no specific new insights, but we can speculate about a future product based on a Forbes article that went up this morning.

According to Forbes, Real plans to launch a new service called Unifi, that will collect all your digital content --- video, music, files, e-books – and allow you to access it on all your devices – computers, phones, and tablets.

That’s a very cool service, except it’s missing one piece of content – games. According to the article, 30% of its revenue comes from casual games. So, if they do not extend this service to games, it would make no sense whatsoever.

There are challenges to this of course. A game you buy on the PC is not going to work on smart phone. But imagine this. You own a PC and an iPad and you buy a game for $10 for the PC but $15 to access it on all devices. That’s a cool value added service and an good experience for casual gamers who increasingly are playing games on multiple platforms and devices.

This is the way it works for books on the Kindle (I can buy a book for $10 on my Kindle and access it on my Android phone or iPad) and I am loving this feature. I am reading an excellent book now about HeLa cells and I can read it anytime or anywhere based on the device I am carrying.

To do this with games would require a lot of platform magic on the part of a company like Real and game developers. There is no way they can do it today, but one to two years from now, they should.

This is a future killer product for casual games. For Real’s sake, here’s hoping its on their radar screen. If not, it surely will be in Google’s or Amazon’s plans (both companies could pull it off relatively easily).

Read more: RealGames

 

Comments (2)

Untoldent's picture
Untoldent
Dec 9, 2010, 6:14pm
At long last - this is a great idea. i hate having to buy my games twice. As a consumer, i'm all for it. As a developer, i'm not as excited. i've already planned on giving my customers access to my games across multiple platforms, but in cases where porting the game represents a significant investment, or where it's a completely different game but the IP is the same (e.x. Avatar on the Nintendo DS vs. Avatar on the Xbox 360), it's going to destroy an increasingly cash-strapped business. (i'm talking about indies and mid-level developers here, not UbiSoft :) Despite this, i'm still for it. i think that Real Networks notwithstanding, devs should be offering this kind of deal to their customers independently.
Reply  -  
 
derekthedj's picture
derekthedj
Dec 27, 2010, 2:40am
Just the name "Real" makes me shudder. I still have large chunks of that bloatware stuck in the nether regions of my registry. Perhaps I'm overreacting but that's 50% of why I won't consider signing with them. The other 50% is because they're sure to overcharge for what we get.
Reply  -  
 
 
 
 
Buy AdsAdvertisement