Well done Amazon. At last an easy to-use selection of ‘no-CD’ games that you can download, test and buy from your mobile PC.
Amazon launched their Game Downloads section on Tuesday. It’s a new section of Amazon.com that allows you to choose and trial any of the games and then purchase it if you like it. Game downloads are nothing new but this simple service with this trusted brand could be just what the casual gamers on netbooks want.
There are currently just under 600 titles available from various software houses and download and trial is a simple process of logging in, downloading a download application and then downloading and installing the app.
I tried Airport Mania on the Medion Akoya Mini netbook and the download process worked very smoothly. The game worked smoothly too as I seemed to have killed 30 minutes of my day. (The maximum trial time of a game is 30 minutes)
The selection of games is definitely ‘casual’ but this download model, combined with the Amazon brand and the millions of netbooks out there without optical drives could tempt many software houses into adapting their older titles giving them a fresh new market to step into.
If anyone tests this out, be sure to drop some comments below for other readers. What netbook and what game did you try? How did it go for you? Have you used game download services for the your netbook before? If so, which service did you try?
February 5th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Posted a new article: Amazon Game Downloads and millions of ‘No-CD’ netbook owners. http://tinyurl.com/cz2zgz
February 5th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
I haven’t yet tried any of my games from Valve software’s Steam service, but all of the smaller games like Peggle and many of the old “big” ones like Half-Life 1 should work great. Steam is designed for having multiple installs on different machines unless I’m mistaken, so you can play the lighter ones on the go too, even if the latest greats won’t run on mobile hardware.
February 6th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
With all that DRM……………. no thanks.
Try good old games instead.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:30 am
Indulgent Nonsense!
June 21st, 2010 at 6:23 am
i always download games from bittorent and emule. ”,