I have been reading Masters of Doom and I wonder if shareware business model would work novadays? I mean why wouldn't it be possible to have demo of a game available on developer's website and once player will play it, he/she will see a screen with information on how to order full version. And if player want to order full version, he/she will send a money order to developer and developer will send CD to the client. I know it sounds pretty simple, but why wouldn't it work today?

That is how it works for many games. Look at Steam, or pretty much any casual game. CD distribution is on the way out, it will all be internet soon.

Heh, maybe, but you will be surprised how many people are still with dial-up. I am moving to a small border town in TX and they got broadband Inet only one year ago.
Also it's pretty expensive to host ~600Mb and pay for bandwidth.
And also teenagers would less likely to be able to pay with credit card rather than with money order.

>> Heh, maybe, but you will be surprised how many people are still with dial-up.

Companies that offer software for download also generally have physical distribution as well for a small fee.

>> Also it's pretty expensive to host ~600Mb and pay for bandwidth.

It can be. Using bittorrent or a similar distributed distribution system can reduce that cost significantly. Even if there are only two or three computers (you and some friends) with a BT seed open, your own bandwidth needs will drop by 1/2 or 2/3.

>>And also teenagers would less likely to be able to pay with credit card rather than with money order.

For that demographic, you are most likely to get their parent's credit card. The second most often will be a paypal or similar account. Money orders are not used very often, because of the real-world work needed to secure, transmit, and redeem them. It is so much easier for a kid to get their parent to pay for it with a card than it is to transmit a money order, which might involve parental involvement anyway.

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Original post by motorsep Also it's pretty expensive to host ~600Mb and pay for bandwidth.

Not really, you can get 2,000GB/Month bandwidth for $12 (GoDaddy), so each 600Mb download would cost $0.0036. And I'm sure you can get it cheaper (like the slightly scrunchier gotounlimited.com that offers unlimited space and bandwidth for $5 per month).

Quote:

Original post by motorsep And also teenagers would less likely to be able to pay with credit card rather than with money order.

Nah, internet buying is going to be so much a part of life that kids will all have something like:

http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/prepaid/visa_buxx.html

The popularity of XBox Live Arcade shows it works.

If you have a aproximate conversion ratio you can work out how much your games should cost and how much your bandwidth needs to cost.

I've noticed bandwidth costs for the US are much cheaper than ones in the UK.
If you are in the UK probably most of your customers will be US anyway - so speed shouldn't be a problem.