Awomo launches 'fastest' games download site

Awomo is a new games website that takes the pain out of lengthy downloads by allowing users to play only partially downloaded titles.

Awomo allows you to play a game before all the required software has been downloaded. According to the developers, this should slash waiting times between clicking a download link and starting to play.

For example, the full download of Tomb Raider: Legend, is more than 7GB. Download it from Awomo, say the developers, and you need download only 652MB before you play. The remaining files download in the background as you play. Not every game can be distributed in this way, of course, something Awomo acknowledges.

"What Awomo does is take the core files used to play the game, which is enough to get you up and running, and then download the rest of the content in the background," Awomo boss Roger Walkden told the BBC.

"This is a super-fast way of distributing games. For the first time we have created a system that really does for games what iTunes does for music."

Digital music sales are now well established, but video-game downloading from the likes of Steam - and, indeed, PC Advisor Games - still makes up only a tiny percentage of games sales.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=112882