watch dodogg MAXIMUM PC TAKES A BITE OUT OF BAD GEAR dog
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ONLINE DISTRIBUTION GONE BAD
I bought a copy of Prey from the online service Triton,
and it seems that Triton went belly up. My game won’t
run without Triton; am I seriously out of luck?
— Jordon BerkoveJordon, you’ve run into one of the stickier
aspects of online distribution. With no physical
boxed copy or disc, and a requirement that you
log into a server to play a game or update it, what
do you do if the company goes out of business?
Triton did just that in late September, for rather
mysterious reasons. Although gamers could buy
games—most notably Prey—through Triton, the
service wasn’t quite the same as Valve’s popu-
lar Steam distribution service. With Steam, you
downloaded the entire game before you could
play. Triton’s system allowed you to play within
a few minutes of buying the game by streaming
pieces of the game.
The Dog spoke with Royal O’Brien the for-
mer CEO and coder behind Triton about what
befell the company. O’Brien described Triton as
a “great success” but said complications with
some of the partners scuttled it. Are gamers out
of luck? Surprisingly, no. At least, not according
to O’Brien, who said he is personally commit-
ted to making as many Triton customers happy
as possible. O’Brien said people who purchased
Prey through Triton will receive a boxed copy
of the game directly from the publisher, Take 2.
Furthermore, O’Brien is personally writing a patch
for Triton customers that will remove the activa-
tion and server reliance from any of the 120 titles
Triton sold, so those games can still be played
online without the machine hitting the server.
For folks who might have lost the game files
from their PC after a reformat, O’Brien said he can
provide encrypted replacement files. Details about
the patch and contact information for consumers
should be available at http://www.obwando.com by
the time you read this. Why is O’Brien going to
such lengths to support Triton customers? “I’mbasically supporting all the people as best I can
personally,” he said, “[because] if you give your
word you’re going to do something, you damn
well better stick to it.”
O’Brien, as well as Take 2, should be com-
mended for their commitment to customer sup-
port, but it’s not all altruistic. O’Brien said he is
working on a sequel to the Triton technology that
he hopes to commercialize. Still, O’Brien’s actions
are righteous and something you don’t normally
see in these days of declining customer service.
The Dog doesn’t think other online services will
be quite so kind when they go poof, although
Valve is taking some encouraging steps with its
Steam online service. According to news reports,
Valve already has activation-removal patches
ready to go should, say, an asteroid or zombie
attack hit the company.WHERE ARE MY
EXTRA VOLTS?
I wanted to buy a 1,
watt Coolmax Green Power[CTG-1000] power supply to use with my new PC,
but looking at the specs on a web store, it doesn’t
seem to have enough power to run the Intel D975XBX
board I want to pair it with. Intel’s specs state that the
maximum amperage draw of this motherboard is 46
amps for 12 volts, so any PSU should have this as a
minimum. According to the web store’s specs, the
1,000W Coolmax tops out at 19 amps. I recommend
that people dig into the specs for both the mother-
board and PSU before marrying the two. Can you shed
any more light on this?
— Scott BruningAt first, the Dog thought it was crazy that a
1,000-watt PSU would offer only 19 amps of 12-
volt power, but it’s all in how you read the specs.
Most new power supplies use what is known as
a split, or multi-rail, design. Instead of carrying
power on a single high-amperage rail, power is
split between several different rails. According
to the web store you looked at, the PSU has two
rails. To determine the PSU’s total +12-volt out-
put, you have to add up the rails; for this PSU,MAXIMUMPC JANUARY 2007Our consumer advocate investigates...
PTriton Online Service PCoolmax
PMore Bad Sony Batteries
Martini Chorba, watchdog of the monthGot a bone to pick with a vendor? Been spiked by a fly-by-night
operation? Sic the Dog on them by writing watchdog@maxi-
mumpc.com. The Dog promises to answer as many letters as
possible, but only has four paws to work with.P
P
Triton’s online service allowed users to stream games such as Prey , but those gamers
were left in the lurch when Triton went under.