Re: When Is A Game Old?

Kyonshi  <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

I never thought about that, but that actually is totally true. I thought
it was mostly the convenience, but yes, just shipping one disc instead
of 8 was certainly cheaper, even with the higher prices for CDs back then.

CD technology was over a decade old by the time CD-ROM games became a
thing, and assuming a certain minimum number of copies, was actually quite
a bit cheaper per disk than floppy disks.  CD-ROMs are made by stamping
an aluminum disk and then sandwiching it between two clear plastic disks.
Pre-recorded floppy disks were made in duplication machines that had to
write out the floppy disk sector by sector, track by track.  The more
advanced ones had 4X speed drives and an automatic feeder, simpler ones
just used a bank of standard floppy drives that copied at regular drive
speeds and had to be loaded and unloaded manually.

So game companies actually saved a fair bit of money switching to CD-ROM.
Instead of hiring their own employees to feed disks into expensive
duplicators they could outsource whole media manufacturing task to one
the same companies making music CDs.

I still remember that some publishers went overboard and started to ship
some games on multiple CDs (FMV games mostly, which everybody forgets
for good reason)

My copy of EverQuest II came on 10 CD-ROMs.  It was also available on
two DVD-ROMs and while I had a DVD-ROM drive back then I went with the
CD version because I knew it was probably the most we'd ever see a game
release on.

--
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