Blast from the Past: The Sega Channel
Some of you might be to young to remember this but back in 1994 Time Warner and Sega teamed up to create what was something very very forward thinking and ahead of it’s time: The Sega Channel. “What is the Sega Channel?” someone of you say. We’ll let’s take a little trip down memory lane and dissect what was one of the best ideas that was lost in the wind.
The service was geared to gamers and parents tired of buying games month after month. For an initial $25 activation fee and a $14.95 subscription fee, you had unlimited access to 50 games with new games appearing every month. That initial activation fee got you an adapter that hooked into your cable outlet that plugged into the cartridge slot of your Sega and that’s how you “streamed” the games to your system. The Wiki says it took about a minute to download your selected game but I remember it taking more like 10 minutes. Once the games where “downloaded” you could play the games just like you would any other game. I only had it for a month but it was amazing. In 1998, the service was canceled and never heard of again.
The main reason I bring this up is because now we have Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo rolling out their version of the Sega Channel except they are doing it wrong. I mean granted the way the Virtual Console works now is okay for the most part but how awesome would it be to pay some fee, either monthly or yearly, that gave you unlimited access to the games they offer at your own leisure. This will probably never happen but if one of these major companies took more of a Netflix approach to their business model when it comes to their downloadable classic games, they would be far ahead of their competition in my eyes.
The company most in position for such a subscription based service would be Sony. I pick Sony because I don’t think that many people have downloaded Spyro the Dragon and they really haven’t been keeping up with updating their library the way Nintendo has. Microsoft also has the ability to use such a service but I can still go buy their games in the store and let’s be real, there’s not that many Xbox 1 games I want to play.
Jermaine :: Nov.14.2007 :: LotM News, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, Misc, Games :: No Comments »