Sega Channel: The Birth Of Digital Distribution
In 1994 the Sega Channel was released in North America and it was absolutely mind blowing. The year it was released I was 8 years old and I don’t remember exactly how I came to acquire the Sega Channel, but I do remember playing it. I was the owner of a Sega (obviously) rather than the Super Nintendo, and the Sega Channel was the one thing I had over my friends that were Super Nintendo owners, oh you’re playing Super Mario World? I’ll just go pick one of the 50 games that I received at the beginning of the month. I even remember waking up 2 hours early for school on the days that the new games were downloaded to the Sega Channel at the beginning of the month; it was like getting 50 games for Christmas, except it happened every month, wonderful.
When Sega Channel started there was a 25 dollar installation fee and it was 15 dollars a month, for 50 games a month. Let’s put that in to perspective, anyone that plays an MMO or pays for Xbox Live monthly understands what monthly fees are all about. World of Warcraft is 15 dollars a month, the same as the Sega Channel, except it is just one game. The Xbox Live monthly fee is $7.99 month to month if that is how you pay, and that is literally just to get the premium content, you still have to pay for the downloadable games, we sure have come a long way.
With services such as Steam, PSN, and Xbox Live everyone now has access to digital content as long as you are near an internet source and a lot of people in the gaming industry see digital download becoming the main way us gamers get our games. When the so called “digital future” gets here just remember one thing, the Sega Channel started it all.
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21 Jan 2010, 2:13 pm
I don’t think the Sega Channel was the first, but it was a good service. Definitely a glimpse into the future of gaming. I think OnLive is the service’s spiritual successor.
21 Jan 2010, 2:25 pm
Intellivision had a service called Playcable which was like Sega Channel but it didnt last very long because the Playcable adapter only had 4k of ram and larger games starting coming out for the Intellivision, it only had a lifespan of 2 years before it was ultimately discontinued.