Dear Activision,

By now you have undoubtedly considered building a digital distribution platform to compete with Valve's Steam and EA's Origin, heck you might be developing one already. I, on the behalf of all gamers, just wanted to offer you a quick word of advice if you are indeed planning on building this;

1) Make it optional to install, more on this later
2) Try and avoid making your games exclusives
3) Respect your customers

Now to gamers (i.e. your customers) these points seem obvious, it's a given that you would follow these rules, however to our dismay since digital distribution has gained traction in the market place we have seen more and more companies fall victim to the illusion of security that a closed, controlled 1st party distribution platform provides.

On the first point above, interestingly enough even though the world is moving to "cloud" based solutions, game distributors appear to have been led astray. True most games themselves run on the client (and for very good reason) however that doesn't mean your distribution platform needs to as well. Bear in mind the problems you are trying to solve;

1) You don't want to waste money on costly, complex, and essentially redundant processes such as physical media printing and distribution.
2) You want to deal with your customers directly, if you could skip the middle man you could make more money on each sale and still offer a cheaper price to the end user.
3) You want to be able to offer your customers the convenience of being able to purchase and play games without having to leave the comfort of their own homes.

Now, having mandatory software installs is not a requisite to solving any of those problems. In fact it is intrusive, backward and in most cases a highly frustrating process.
In some cases however the customer may desire some features that only a program running locally can provide, such as shell extensions and auto game updates. Everything else such as social features (like chat notifications and group invites), game store (and installer downloads), news and statistics fit perfectly into the web application model and will suffice for the vast majority of customers.

So, to sum up the first point; make it optional to install by putting the core functionality of your platform in the browser, any features that absolutely must run on the client go into a configurable, non-intrusive program that is completely optional.

The second point is obvious, if you release a game don't force your customers to use your platform. Remember, your end product is the game, not the platform used to distribute the game. If you want us to use your platform, offer competitive prices and we will come, yes it all comes down to money, that is what your business revolves around, we exchange our money for a licence to play your games. It's that simple.

If you agree with the first two points the third one should come naturally, in essence this is a combination of the first two points and a few other general guidelines that all companies operating in the digital service industry should follow. The first is privacy; it's fair enough that you ask our age, in most countries it is against the law to provide objectionable material to minors, and since presumably you will be distributing age restricted games it is a given that you should verify our age. You may also ask our nationality, this provides you with the ability to localize prices and potentially hide games that have been banned in that country.
Any other personal details such as name, address, email address should be completely optional.
The other aspects of respect come down to common sense but an important part of that is; don't get distracted from your goal.
Sure it may seem appealing to pop up a survey every so often to learn more about your user base but rather than actually popping it up in front of everyone add a discrete link somewhere on the page so people can contribute should they feel the need.
Keep the news in the news section, if you are planning on releasing an exciting new game, by all means put your press release in the news section and once released add it to the store, just don't put large intrusive ads in the store, that's not where they belong.

Well, we hope you will take the points in this letter into consideration and expect you to make decisions that will make gamers happy, Activision prosperous and the industry proud.

Regards, We the Gamers

The all time greatest hero thing that is going on... wow really amazing stuff right there.

Now this is all under the "Opinion" category so I am automatically immune to flaming here so I'll go ahead and say I'm pretty anti Nintendo, and mario is a plain asshat.

I have played plenty of mario.. back in the day but its time to let him go.

Its kind of scary how many people vote for mario really, why. why would people like mario. is it because they are wii owners and want to show the rest of the world that nintendo is superior.. maybe, the wii is going downhill and the lack of recent quality games would leave them with a lot of time on their hands to vote in various polls.. halflife fans on the other-hand are having far too much fun playing tf2 to care about some poll.

which is why I breath a sigh of relief that valve has chosen to alert avid players to the injustices that are being committed to mr freeman. now at least the final round will be fair.

So anyway this will probably turn into a rant but I got an xbox for no particular reason other than ebgames was doing a bundle deal and I just thought what the hell.

Now I knew the hardware is shyte and even the elite version (which I got) was pretty much crippled, no wifi, disk try (what is this? 1998?), massive power brick, noisy as hell, cheap construction, looks cheap, heaps of shortcuts taken with av connectivity, I could go on.

Yeah I knew that, my expectations were high from the beginning because... well having a ps3 has raised my expectations of 7th gen consoles.

However in the interest of catching up on a couple of xbox exclusives I decided to get one anyway. So I plug it in, switch it on, throw halo3odst in and crank it up... ok need to apply an update before I can play, no connection, why? why would you not include wifi with the elite? so anyway I wire the thing into a pc I by the tv, share its wifi connection and start the update again, downloads the update the fails, retry, fail again.

Awesome ok, jump on the computer and do some googling, some people were saying they had the same problem and microsoft told them it needed sending in for a service, screw that, this thing is fresh out of them box, no way im sending it off again. After a bit more searching some guy says you can get around it buy putting the update on a usb stick and booting. nice all his links to updates were dead, more searching and finally found a microsoft link to the update, format a stick to fat32 and copy up the update. Plugged this into the box and boot, awesome update installed and stuff seems to be working.

After some trouble creating a live account, installing another update, pissing about making an avatar that doesn't suck twice it seems ready for use.

Sorry about that, just needed to vent.

Funny, now i think about it microsoft is still playing the role of **** yet popular hard/software, sony is filling apples position of quality 'it just works' stuff. Dont get me wrong, I have an intense dislike for apple because of its stifling business model, but this is a gaming/entertainment system not a computer. consumers shouldn't have to deal with this crap.

Let me complain about one more thing. The console is not the only cheap component, the controller isn't rechargeable, it uses aa batteries (again what is this? 1998? come on microsoft, it isn't that hard), and the headset that comes with the elite is complete rubbish, i would be surprised if they cost more than $2 to manufacture. not wireless, generally nasty quality. the controller is wireless which is kind of surprising since ms is in 1998, but it uses rf not bluetooth. ouch definitely 1998.

Dvd rom, 1998.

This is a console from 1998 with core hardware from 2005. It works but it isn't pretty.

I have had a PSP3000 since it came out and it has seen a fair amount of use, although not nearly enough at it should have received.

So over the time that I have had it I have often thought about what would make it a better system and almost every time I arrive at the brick wall that is Sony's over-protectiveness of its proprietary software.

The thing is pretty amazing, a nice big screen, ultra portable, and specs that would easily run many other applications.

At the moment I have used it to play music, watch videos, play games, browse the web, make and receive calls on skype, view pictures and perhaps the most interesting feature I have used is 'Remote Play' which connects to a PS3 from virtually any internet hotspot in the world and streams the PS3's video output right to the PSP.
May not sound that impressive especially since most games wont work on it but if you were sharing videos, pictures and music on other computers at home you would instantly have access to everyones media anywhere in the world, streamed right to your PSP.

Ok now we have that out of the way its time to start with the complaining.

Why Sony hasn't released some sort of API so developers can write apps for the PSP is beyond me, everyone is doing it, seriously, everyone. Google has Android Market, Apple has its App Store, Intel is planning an app store for Atom compatible programs, Steam has had a store of sorts for digitally distributing games, so has EA, Nokia is planning one... everyone.

Sony already has the PSN, a well established distribution platform for themes, videos, even full games; the PSP must be capable of running apps, it can run skype which is about as third party as it gets.

Ok there, wasn't too much complaining after all, now, to the point

The easiest store to compare with is one intended for a mobile phone, and since the PSP doesn't have cellular connectivity and GPS many apps wouldn't be applicable. An E-Book reader or at least an app to open pdf or even plain text files would see some use however one thing that I think would really take off is the introduction of widgets that might just have a dedicated category on the XMB.

Imagine just tapping over to the widgets menu and having weather, new mail, replace the existing search with a widget, maybe stocks, news, twitter, music player etc. Obviously they would only be able to update in range of wifi but it would open the PSP up to a lot more possibilities.

Ok so that is what should happen, now lets see if the PSP is heading in this direction.

With the release of the PSP go imminent Sony really is moving to full digital distribution and I have seen the PSN undergo rapid changes to accommodate the increase in attention that it is getting, both from users and distributors.

Apparently from October 1st all new PSP releases will be available on UMD for older models and as a download on the PSN for the PSP go. It will be interesting to see if these downloads will be compatible with older models too.
I'll be waiting to see what Sony fix us up with in the way of firmware after the Oct1 release date.

Over the past year I have been fairly disappointed in new games, recently that has changed, probably because of the leadup to the holidays that devs seem to so enjoy targeting.

So anyway I'll now commence dumping various pc games that have been released this year and a comment on each.

Jan;

nothing of note really, mirrors edge made it onto the pc and while the game had refreshing design and gameplay its dodgy combat and controls let it down a bit.

Feb;

f.e.a.r 2 came out and to be honest while I thought it looked good, the reviews weren't so good so I ended up not trying it.
I got x-blades instead which is basically some mindless hack and slash with a bad story and an incredible amount of repetition. It does have unlock-able spells etc which was enough to keep me hooked.. for a few hours anyway.

Mar;

Rome: total war was my first total war game and I really liked it, played it twice in fact. Empire: total war was released and reviews were good, but why I didn't like it even I may never know, I'll probably give it another go next year.
The last remnant was entertaining, I always look out for the rpgs because they are usually the most addictive, and tlr didn't disappoint. Apart from some weird animation and a rather unoriginal story.. and a battle system that really shouldn't exist it was a good game.

Apr;

Not much action in april, Demigod was released and even though it came with some pretty poor reviews I really enjoyed it, in saying that it took a few hours of playing to realise it was fun, multiplayer is good, single player doesn't exist. overall fun game but not worth it really.
didn't bother with velvet assassin.

May;

nothing. Feel sorry for those blue omega jokers but whatever

Jun;

sims3, its like an expansion for the sims2 except it upgrades the graphics engine and removes a bunch of expansion packs.
prototype, fun game, great for showing friends and relatively fun to play.
anno 1404, meh
call of juarez I actually enjoyed, really immersive and uh just well rounded. be neat if it was more open, sandbox ****

Jul;

sf4, meh

Aug;

not wolfenstein

sep;

here we go, whats up with this, such a mediocre year and as soon as someone mentions holidays everyone goes ballistic and releases millions of games.
mini ninjas, kiddy game at heart but its a good kiddy game, fun, different, and the first game this year that kept me hooked long enough to actually finish.
need for speed shift, I don't know, everyone is saying they are glad they are making normal circuit racing again but I preferred their street racing themed games, still, outstanding realism.
resident evil 5, these graphics are amazing. its fast, fun and fairly challenging.
batman, to be honest its still on my to play list.
red faction guerrilla, another outstanding game, sandbox-like game with some pretty amazing physics. it looks like the physics in all of those crysis trailers except you can actually blow buildings apart. I'll save my rant about crysis not properly using its engine for another day. also red faction was the second game this year I have finished.

oct; nov and dec;

well everything is on now with borderlands, rogue warrior looking fairly interesting, new painkiller, dragon age possibly except the love interest looks like a man, mw2, assassins creed2, oh eye pet looks amusing but that not pc so no.

So anyway the last 3 months of the year has more games than all other 9 months put together.
hmm I put this under opinion but its turned into a bit of a rant. meh