The old Windows Catalog has been revised, redone and renamed to Windows Marketplace and has been designed and built by Vertigo.
On this service you can purchase and download software (and most importantly: games), you get World of Warcraft at a 20% discount at the moment (customers have rated it full 5 stars).
Digital Locker is one of the technologies that powers the Marketplace and allows you to connect all your software purchases with your Windows Live ID (formerly Microsoft Passport).
This is great technology, as it saves the world from production of DVDs and it helps you avoid scratches that can destroy your game mediums. Now you can buy online, and download online, from anywhere. You’ll never again loose your license key!
Hopefully we will see similar technology deployed for the Xbox 360 for full featured games. Today you can download demos that are gigabytes in size from Xbox Live Marketplace, why not allow me to just fully download and purchase the whole title online, and maybe with a discount?
I don’t know if there is used any form of DRM on these downloads, but I’m sure gonna buy something and give it a try. I have so many PCs and most of my software, I want to install, run and use on different machines for different scenarios.
Thanks to Scott Stanfield for announcing this to us RDs, and congratulations to Vertigo for successfully completed project.