Drengin.net is going to be expanding hugely soon. We've been signing deals (announcements coming soon) with various major publishers to put their games on Drengin.net. The idea isn't to necessarily put their latest/greatest titles on there but instead focus instead on games that are on their way out from retail.

The example I love to use is Total Annihilation. It's discontinued now (I'm sure you can find it somewhere) but it's a game that was just awesome in its time and graphically it still looks  pretty good. And that's an unusually old game. But that's the idea, not to just pick any old games but find the best games of all time and save them. Make sure that great games don't just disappear after 6 months at retail but instead find a home for them where people can keep playing them and build communities.

And so that's what I want to do with Drengin.net.  Put our games and top games from other publishers on there that aren't necessarily "brand new".  But there's a gotcha, one that has been a bitter pill to swallow. Royalties on Drengin.net tend to fall between 0.5% and 1% per title. So if Drengin.net goes up to say $100, that means they'd only get 50 cents to $1 per sale.

The thing is, if we can get dozens of titles on there, it will reach critical mass. That's the challenge: Getting enough games on there where the gamer will see it as a "no brainer".  If you get that critical mass, you could end up selling 50k units annually (with 100k being a possibility).  Now, a royalty of $50k to $100k per year may not sound like much. But odds are, it's vastly greater than the revenue these games get today and that's not counting the revenue from selling the games stand-alone as well for electronic download.

There are places already out there that sell games electronically, but they tend to look at things very differently than I do.  Guys like me are the target audience. Electronic distribution isn't about money. It's about convenience. If it's about money I'll bargain bin shop at EB. For me, I want to press a button have it, and know when I lose the file I downloaded 8 months from now I can press a button and get it again. Using my Total Annihilation example, I have four copies of that game..somewhere. Not sure where. I stopped playing it because I got tired of having to install the game, download the patches, apply the patches, put on the various expansion packs, etc.  I just want to press a button and have it all at once. When I blow away my machine, I want to be able to go back and download the game manager again and press a button and get all my games again.

That's what Stardock Central does. Even today, if you buy Galactic Civilizations in Germany and register with Stardock.net, you can lose your CD, lose your serial #, and in 2 years still come on and press a button to retrieve your serial # and press a button to download the latest version of GalCiv.  That's what I want.  And I suspect I'm not alone.

But for that to work, we have to be able to convince a lot of publishers that it's in their best interest to let us sell their titles as part of a mega subscription where they might only get 50 cents per copy sold and focus on that critical mass. I'd rather make 50 cents on something that sells 100,000 units annually than $5 on something that sells 500 units annually. Those who have sold their games or programs through an on-line distributor can probably attest that the sales figures on those things aren't terribly impressive. It's about critical mass.