Ryan:

You know how we told you about the game rental service gamehopper? Well Here’s another company that’s offering all you can play downloadable PC games for the low cost of 270 pesos a month. Jumboplay.com has 68 games up for grabs for users who want to download their games legally. Typical downloadable games like Diner Dash and Monopoly are available, but so are more high end games like Prince of Persia:The Warrior Within and Tomb Raider Legend.

Now call me a cynic (or an asshole, if you like), but I don’t know that a lot of people would have access to internet connections that would allow them to download a gig of data, and even if they did, how long would it take to download a game? Also, the site design leaves a lot to be desired, and call me shallow but that always, always means a lot to me. A well designed site speaks preofessionalism, and frankly, the jumboplay site like like it was cobbled together by a first year IT student.

Elmer and I will try to look into the service some more in the near future, but till then, feel free to try it out, dear readers (yes, all 3 of you).

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Elmer:

Here’s my initial take on Jumboplay. I’ll start with the one that got my attention. I don’t mean to be too negative about it, but the site design really looks like it has been ripped off from Gamespot. I know we’re supposed to talk about the service itself, but come on! I don’t know if the people from Jumboplay have purposely done this to put a familiar gamer theme to it, or their just plain uncreative and unoriginal. C’mon people, that little Philippine flag is really not the glaring indicator that this is a Pinoy site - it’s your inability to come up with an original design of your own.

About the service. I agree with Ryan; the success of this venture is doubtful.

Number one and most blatant fact: We’re in Asia. We’re one of the cornerhouses of software piracy. If people have the bandwidth and the time to download a gig-worth of a game, they’d get it from a torrent site. That’s plain truth.

Number two: I see only TWO premium titles here: Neverwinter Nights 2 and Tomb Raider Legend. NWN2 is not even downloadable yet. What do I mean by premium titles? Those that still sell for 1,500 to 2,000 pesos. The rest of the titles in Jumboplay are ones that can be found in Datablitz bargain bin where each title sells for 500 to 700 pesos. Shelling out 270 pesos for downloading unlimited games a month would be a good deal for the kind of gamer that just installs, plays and forgets. I still don’t know much about download gaming but I think the customer will not have the option to save the game onto a disc. It will be installed directly to the hard drive; and if you uninstall, goodbye hard earned pesos. (I could be wrong here, which is why we’re really planning to test this service first.) Anyway, like I said, it may work for the ripper gamer. But for those gamers who’d want the CD, manual, who loves the art of the cover, the whole shebang - the collector-type - I believe they’d still go the Datablitz way.

I’m also curious as to how they would implement support. Downloadable games don’t have manuals so players don’t have a hard copy of the technical support number if anything goes wrong. Will Jumboplay accept support calls from players?

Simple questions from a player who just got introduced into a new service. Guess what - no FAQs either. A half-baked service? Smells like PLDT…