Portable PC games on USB flash drives

[undersan]

There are companies that can produce custom-labeled, pre-loaded USB flash drives for as little as $10/unit. Have any of you ever thought about distributing your game on this media?

Your customer takes the keychain-sized device to work or school, plugs it in, and the game launches immediately, with no install required. How cool is that? :cool:

[Sirrus]

Kind of like taking your CD to work/school and it having an auto-launch feature? ;)

In any case, yea pocket sized would be nice...but not very cost effective...

[JedZL]

Yea that would be really cool, they allready have the usb sticks that can hold over 100 megs so take Scorched3D or something put it on the usb stick give it the auto Launch procedure and bam lol... it would cost alot more to buy it like that yea but you could always just buy your own stick and then just write a simple script telling the USB stick to autoplay this file. thats not to bad of an idea.. Since I use my mp3 player as a mass storage device I could do something of the sort. hehehe

[Greg Squire]

It has a "geek coolness" factor, but beyond that I don't think its very cost effective. A traditional CD can hold more than most cheap USB drives, and it would cost less to produce. Plus more people know what to do with a CD; there are lots of people that still have no idea what a USB flash drive is.

[mkovacic]

Ah, if you could manage a custom casing for the sticks, that would be an ultra-cool collectors item. Imagine a space-shooter game on a stick that looks like your in-game ship! :D

[Hamumu]

I think as a nifty extra and alternative to CD delivery, it would be good... after all, it's kinda useful. But for $10, I bet you get about 32MB space. Question is, where are these supposed companies? I'm at least intrigued enough to see what the deal is!

[Martoon]

The two benefits I can see to distributing your game on a flash drive like this are the gimmick factor and the ability for the player to save their game progress on the drive and take it with them. Of course, it would be easy enough to make a traditional downloadable or CD game save conveniently to a flash drive, but there is something appealing about having the game itself and the save game neatly together on the flash drive (especially if the game could run directly off the flash without installing). Just keep the game on your keychain, and play it anywhere there's a Windows machine with a USB port.

But $10 per unit for distribution? Ouch! That's a little much for an indie title's profit margin to absorb. I wonder if anyone could (or does) make an EPROM or ROM USB drive? Seems like it could be cheaper than a flash RAM drive, in sufficient quantities. Of course you'd lose the save game ability. Maybe a ROM drive with a small amount of RAM? There might be applications for that outside of games, as well.

[Chris Evans]

I definitely see possibilities with this.

Sure it's a bit gimmicky, but as the previous poster mentioned it does have a couple of advantages over CD-Roms, especially if the games can be played directly off the USB device.

I looked into it and the prices aren't really that bad if you buy in bulk. Compared to CD-Rom discs yes it's expensive, however if you're trying to offer your customers a special edition of your game, then it's not so bad. I have similar costs with the collector's edition I sell that contains CD-Rom, DVD case, manual, and gamepad. You need upfront money, but it's certainly doable. Shop around and negotiate.

[KNau]

I was looking at those USB drives for exactly the reason you say, as a cool gimmick. I've decided against them for now partly because of costs but also because there's still a large number of computers being produced that don't have frontside USB ports.

For hardcore users it wouldn't be an issue but I think it's asking a lot for a casual user to dig behind their computer to find a free USB port every time they want to play the game. Also, when dealing with non-tech savvy users you would have to worry about people accidentally deleting the files from their drive or spreading viruses to it.

It's probably the way things are going to go in the future so it might be worth getting in early, but do it as an experiment (not a full product rollout) to limit your risk.

[mahlzeit]

This seems like going back to the nasty-old days when games came on floppies (or tapes). The only thing different is the actual technology, but you'll still be inserting some storage device into your computer each time you wish to play a game, and removing it when you're done. If this USB thing gets popular, soon someone will invent a tool that allows the player to install the games on the harddrive and we're back to square one. :)