Less news, more games from GameTap

Why did GameTap relinquish a great staff of news editors barely six months after launching GameTap Read? To focus on its primary function, Rick Sanchez explains: providing access to lots of classic games for little money.
As exhilarating as it can be to brave the high seas of software pirating, one does feel like a better person handing over a paltry sum in exchange for Psychonauts, Deus Ex, Myst, Sonic the Hedgehog, Castlevania, Baldur’s Gate, Planescape Torment, and over a thousand others. But is my five or ten bucks a month enough to keep GameTap alive?

Rumors have been leery of the claim that the recent changes were merely a result of “customer feedback.” However, Sanchez says that “whether or not we’re profitable we’re hitting the numbers we’re supposed to hit.”

Maybe a news blog is simply a good way for a young business to get some attention. After all, the editorial came into existence “primarily as a way to get people into our service indirectly – e.g. read about Halo and then go play some game like Deus Ex.” A well-written, relevant article garners more traffic than mere product advertisement. “Watch and Read had some decent features, but they’ve always been so distinct from GameTap proper that they never seemed to add much to the package as a whole” comments one forum peruser.

In the meantime, GameTap plans on reaching forward into “the fledgling episodic model of game distribution” with games like Sam & Max and the upcoming American McGee’s Grimm, to be released one “episode” at a time, some as short as a predicted hour of gameplay.