May Day
May 1st, 2007 by dinahOh me, where to begin? May 31 will bring lots of great new titles and features, including a whole new website where you can actually do stuff.
First, you might as well get used to referring to the GameTap you know and love as the Deluxe Player. In the past, we’ve talked about design changes that you saw in the Deluxe Player. Now we get to talk about design changes you’ll see there AND on the web AND in something new, the Lite Player.
We’ve been awfully quiet the past few months, working on a complete website/Deluxe/Lite experience that integrates a ton of features you’ve asked for. Features like user ratings, related games, user profiles and avatars, forums, enhanced search, shared playlists, quick game launch, and more.
On May 31, the tap opens to full blast - all these features (and more), plus free games, retail games via digital distribution, brand new games free for subscribers the very same day they go retail [read: Tomb Raider Anniversary, to begin with], GameTap TV on the web.
So, today you’ll see plenty of coverage out there talking about free games for people who don’t subscribe. (All you subscribers - another new term - you’re GameTap Gold!) What does that mean for you? How about more challengers in popular free Challenge! games [Metal Slug and King of Fighters series, anyone?], more folks mixing it up in the new forums, and a generally expanded community of like-minded gamers. And only you get unlimited access to all the games in the catalog, whenever, wherever. It’s 24/7.
It’s way cool. (And it’s been a crazy few months!)
May 1st, 2007 at 10:31 am
I’m really excited for the new additions. Keep up the good work guys!
So, I take it subscribers will get access to Tomb Raider Anniversy Edition?
May 1st, 2007 at 10:35 am
Yep, same day it goes to retail - and for no extra $. Is that cool, or what?
May 1st, 2007 at 10:58 am
And the upcoming system to purchase games? How will that work? Will it allow non-gold users to buy just the games they want from GameTap, or will you be introducing exclusive games you must purchase separately?
May 1st, 2007 at 11:06 am
Some of both - there will be overlap between what you can play as Gold with your subscription and what you can buy retail. Not all games will be for sale, not all games you can buy will be part of the service. And you don’t have to be Gold to buy a game.
May 1st, 2007 at 11:10 am
Wow.
May 1st, 2007 at 11:15 am
When are the changes coming to the website and/or game client? I noticed a new version of the client for download, but I don’t notice any differences. And the website looks the same.
May 1st, 2007 at 11:16 am
My bad…MAY 31.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Very cool stuff. I’m really looking forward to seeing what you all have put together.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Please tell me that I will be able to buy Panzer Dragoon, I really want to be able to keep that game forever
May 1st, 2007 at 12:11 pm
what kind of details can you give about the ESD stuff? will the drm require that you be connected to the internet to play, or will these be games i can buy and download to my laptop so i can play them on the bus or airplane? do you know how they will handle patching, updates, and extra downloadable content (mods, free extra content offered by the developer, extra/user campaigns/maps, etc)?
May 1st, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Games you can buy will play untethered. Dunno exactly about mods/patching/updates, but purchased games play independent of either the Lite or Deluxe player…
May 1st, 2007 at 12:30 pm
now that IS good news. the main thing that has kept me away from other ESD providers (steam, et al) is the requirement to have a network connection to play… it made no sense to me to pay full price for a game that is actually LESS useful/playable than its retail counterpart. if i can buy games to play WHENEVER, then that goes a long way towards answering some of my objections…
its still irksome to pay the same price for a non-physical product as the retail cost, though… retail has manufacturing, distribution, retail inventory, and markup costs which are passed to the customer in the price… none of which affect an ESD copy. so why am i paying full price?
but the economics of electronic distribution is a whole blog topic on its own
for now, untethered play is a great step forward…
May 1st, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Does this mean that gametap will open up to the rest of the world or will it stay US-only?
May 1st, 2007 at 7:01 pm
If you guys get even just a handful of retail games same day you’ve increased the value of the sub I already have tremendously. This is a situation where everyone wins - I probably wasn’t going to buy TR:Anniversary because I played the original way back when, and they didn’t bother doing current gen console ports. So the PC version wouldn’t have been worth $30 to me. But I’ll definitely grab it and play it off of GameTap.
May 1st, 2007 at 7:15 pm
This is sweet news, especially the full new retail games. A also agree ddthesm about buying Panzer Dragoon. The Lite Player will be good for getting broadband owning friends into GameTap, much better than the current trial, which my friends didn’t like the extreme limitedness of. As for radio_babylon, STEAM HAS OFFLINE MODE. SAVE YOUR PASSWORD AND USERNAME AND IT’LL LET YOU PLAY SP GAMES WITHOUT BEING CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET. I’ve told probably 5 or 6 people THIS WEEK about it, and it’s an advertised feature. Even if Everyone in Valve dies and the servers blow up on the same night, you’ll be able to wake up the next morning and play all your Steam games. And it being the same price is partly bandwith and partly extra cash for the developers, since they generally get only a very small fraction of retail copies, most of it goes to the publisher/distributor.
May 2nd, 2007 at 5:01 am
Just to be clear, as a GameTap subscriber, I’m already using the Deluxe client and I’m already considered a “Gold” member? (Goldmember, hee hee)
And this will cost the same as what I’m paying now for what I’m getting now (actually, it sounds like I might be getting more for the same price), while I get the option to buy some newly-released retail games through GameTap separately if I want?
Sounds great. Just want to make sure I’m not losing anything here in the upgrade
Oh, on a side note, I hope you folks at GameTap had the good sense to make the new-and-improved website not require Flash for basic functionality. It’s one thing to require Flash for watching videos or playing games - Flash is useful for that. But I’d like to put everyone who thinks that an all-Flash website is somehow “good” in a sack and toss the sack in a river and hurl the river into space. I shouldn’t need to be using Flash to send you guys an e-mail or subscribe to your service. If you can do it with HTML, then do it with HTML, and if your site has a widget on the front page that locks out people not using Flash, you’ve done something wrong.
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:02 am
We’re all good here, Barry Goldmember. You’re only gaining stuff — and you won’t be gaining an all-Flash site in the process.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:07 am
I hope that this new digital buying feature will not prevent us the gold members from getting our regular stream of quality games!
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Nope. You’ll be getting some great games. Keep your eyes peeled.
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Will either of the versions (paid/free) be usable in the UK?
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Sl1pstream & Jez — I don’t know the answer to the question yet. My hope is that at least some of the free games will be available world-wide, with gold level upgrades available later this year in certain countries. But I just don’t know.
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Question: Will Tomb Raiser Anniversary be an unencrypted download that you can play separately like the buyable games or a normal GameTap game where it’s encrypted and tied to GameTap?
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
If you’re playing it as part of the Gold service, it’ll be encrypted just like the rest of the games in the vault. If you’re buying it as a standalone, it’ll use a different encryption method where you have to use a key to unlock it.
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Okay. Thanks for the answer.
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Awesome news! Keep it coming.
It’s just in time to follow my efforts on graduating from college in the coming weeks. Who knows? After school I might have a bit of free time to dig into some of the new features!
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Great!
I hope Gametap will be availible soon in Europe.
We are waiting for you guys!
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Fantastic
Thanks much for the response. You know, I normally distrust an outfit that’s under the umbrella of an ultra-huge megacorp like Time Warner, but you guys really are doing a great job. 
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:03 am
Oh so the brand new games will be available normally through Gametap but you’ll have the option to own it if you pay?
May 3rd, 2007 at 8:09 am
Some of them, yes. Not all games will be available in both places (to buy and as part of the Gold service), but for those that are, you can either play it in the service or buy it to keep, or both.
May 7th, 2007 at 11:40 am
Will there be some kind of grid that displays this overlap of retail games for sale and the games on Gametap? I’m thinking that the games that can be bought from, but not played _on_ Gametap will become “orphans” - they won’t sell as much as the Gametap+retail games, unless they are extremely well-known or the price point is irresistible.
Speaking of price point, the ESD prices could easily be 10-20% lower than the same game in-store and still result in more profit for Gametap and the publishers than the brick and mortar stores… an avenue that should be explored.
May 7th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
^^You’ll be able to use the new search features in the site to filter and find what you’re looking for. I don’t know how much overlap we’ll have in the beginning.