On Live – My Thoughts As many people have read since GDC09 On-Live is a new Video game on demand service that launches in the 4th quarter of 2009 and if you are to believe the hype, revolutionise the way we play games. I have visited their website and looked at all the promotional material and to be honest I just dont get it.
If you take what is advertised and look at what the companys intention is then you would have to ask yourself one question “Why ?”. The advertised service is that all games are held on the server and the transmitted data for both picture and controller are sent over broadband connection from a small set top box, PC or MAC. This apparently gives gamers the flexability to play any game at any time but is of course subject to the publisher allowing On-Live to host the game. So the first question I have is what publisher in their right mind is going to give an online service like this the top game that they spent 2 years with developers producing and loose millions in revenue, erm none. Secondly why on earth would you pay to use a service which is hosting Xbox or PS3 titles when you can purchase the console and play in the comfort of your own home at your on leisure, hmm surely that is true on demand.
Maybe I am missing the point here but if this service was released on Xbox or Playstation then I could actually believe it to be a viable service, imagine paying an extra few pounds or dollars to be able to play all Xbox live or PSN titles on demand, that would work and would make good business sense. Recently Playstation did trademark PS Cloud which to all intense and purposes is a move towards server side gaming and is something which must interest Sony.
The advert on the On-live website makes some quite impressive statements that are also quite strange, “The most powerfull games system ever” the video states. How I ask, when its only playing pre written software that is freely available to anyone who owns equally powerful consoles in their own home. Another statement is that “A New Generation of Gaming has arrived”, where, what did I miss, did I miss the release of a new console, erm no. Im sorry to be so scepticle but I just dont see it. Cloud computing or Server side gaming is something which needs to be investigated but this to me seems to be nothing but a fancy online games rental system.
Posted By: Devon Marshall
Wednesday, September 2nd 2009 at 6:41PM
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