Ed
04-07-2009, 01:56 AM
Article From: http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/1198
Rolling with the Punches at GDC (http://onlivefans.com/rant/978)
[excerpt]
My last stop was the center of a huge storm of discussion and argument: OnLive (http://www.onlive.com/index.html). While many people are already heaping the title "Phantom 2.0" on them, I tend to go into these places with my eyes open and my skepticism intact. What I saw was pretty convincing that the service canwork - what remains to be seen is if the servicewill work. Choppy graphics and slightly sluggish controls aside, I see three big barriers in the way of OnLive ever launching successfully:
- First, they have to worry about the size of their market. Out of all the people with the broadband connection capable of supporting this service - 1.5 megabits per second, 5 mpbs for HD support - how many of them don't already have computers capable of playing these games at an acceptable level? Then, out of those people who do have that kind of high-speed connection, which isn't that widespread across the United States yet, how many of them are willing to chunk up enormous portions of their pipe to play a single game? You start running into the old single-line dial-up problem, where playing this game interferes with all other normal operations, which can become onerous in multiple occupant situations. Seemingly, they're already looking at affluent single gamers who don't have roommates sharing a connection. How many of them would they need to meet costs?
- Second up is scalability. I think that they've already done this math over at OnLive, but assuming they get enough people to buy in and become profitable, how much can the servers stand? There were only a few televisions hooked up on the GDC floor, but let's go out on a limb and say that this service gets, say, ten thousand users. How will the servers handle all that load, and will that affect the game experience adversely due to server load? If it does, they'll lose a big chunk of those theoretical ten thousand open-minded gamers who will be getting much laggier and choppier game experiences than they paid for.
- The third issue at hand is simpler, compared to the above two: will the prices manage to be competitive? In theory, when OnLive users buy a game, they will put zero strain on the publisher. There will be no production line, no shipping cost, not even a bill for a download server and bandwidth. Game|Life linked to an excellent blog post by Bill Harris (http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2009/03/onlive-what-no-one-is-talking-about.html) about the choice ahead of game publishers if this service actually makes it off the ground: OnLive is exactly what publishers have wanted. There's no piracy in the OnLive world, and no extra delivery costs. There is just pure, sweet profit. Will more game publishers embrace this model, or will they offer a thousand excuses as to why the license to play a game via OnLive is the same as buying a hard copy of the game yourself?
Anyway, there's still a lot to be played out in the OnLive saga, and I'm keeping my skepticism shades on - I've been wrong about gaming trends before, so I'm willing to let this story develop before I take sides.
Rolling with the Punches at GDC (http://onlivefans.com/rant/978)
[excerpt]
My last stop was the center of a huge storm of discussion and argument: OnLive (http://www.onlive.com/index.html). While many people are already heaping the title "Phantom 2.0" on them, I tend to go into these places with my eyes open and my skepticism intact. What I saw was pretty convincing that the service canwork - what remains to be seen is if the servicewill work. Choppy graphics and slightly sluggish controls aside, I see three big barriers in the way of OnLive ever launching successfully:
- First, they have to worry about the size of their market. Out of all the people with the broadband connection capable of supporting this service - 1.5 megabits per second, 5 mpbs for HD support - how many of them don't already have computers capable of playing these games at an acceptable level? Then, out of those people who do have that kind of high-speed connection, which isn't that widespread across the United States yet, how many of them are willing to chunk up enormous portions of their pipe to play a single game? You start running into the old single-line dial-up problem, where playing this game interferes with all other normal operations, which can become onerous in multiple occupant situations. Seemingly, they're already looking at affluent single gamers who don't have roommates sharing a connection. How many of them would they need to meet costs?
- Second up is scalability. I think that they've already done this math over at OnLive, but assuming they get enough people to buy in and become profitable, how much can the servers stand? There were only a few televisions hooked up on the GDC floor, but let's go out on a limb and say that this service gets, say, ten thousand users. How will the servers handle all that load, and will that affect the game experience adversely due to server load? If it does, they'll lose a big chunk of those theoretical ten thousand open-minded gamers who will be getting much laggier and choppier game experiences than they paid for.
- The third issue at hand is simpler, compared to the above two: will the prices manage to be competitive? In theory, when OnLive users buy a game, they will put zero strain on the publisher. There will be no production line, no shipping cost, not even a bill for a download server and bandwidth. Game|Life linked to an excellent blog post by Bill Harris (http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2009/03/onlive-what-no-one-is-talking-about.html) about the choice ahead of game publishers if this service actually makes it off the ground: OnLive is exactly what publishers have wanted. There's no piracy in the OnLive world, and no extra delivery costs. There is just pure, sweet profit. Will more game publishers embrace this model, or will they offer a thousand excuses as to why the license to play a game via OnLive is the same as buying a hard copy of the game yourself?
Anyway, there's still a lot to be played out in the OnLive saga, and I'm keeping my skepticism shades on - I've been wrong about gaming trends before, so I'm willing to let this story develop before I take sides.