Posts Tagged ‘Epic’

Forget the expensive hardware prices and trips to Gamestop to buy a disk.  Just order your new device through the mail or pick it up at any retail store.  Wait a minute, this thing has a low price and comes with no games.  Where’s the disc drive?  Hard drive?  No worries!  Plug it into the internet and let it rip.  Choose your games old or new and pay your monthly fee as well as a few “micro-payments” here and there and your set for life.  Right?  Well, this seems to be the way gaming is headed with Microsoft pushing their highly successful Xbox Live online service and as the price of gaming console iterations like the PS3 climbing every cycle.

A new online gaming service called “OnLive” was announced this past Tuesday at this years GDC.  Hmm, “OnLive”…sounds familiar.  The new gaming service eliminates the need for an expensive PC, console,  or discs.  This new device will let subscribers play on-demand games old and new from mostly the Mac and PC titles right on their television.  How does the OnLive service work without the need for a powerful home console or PC?  A giant network of servers send compressed data back and forth from the player at high speed in cyberspace eliminating the need for a fast processor and lots of RAM at home.  The first true “virtual game console”, as quoted from the USA Today Game Hunters article about the all digital device.  Mike Pachter of Wedbush Morgan Securities is quoted in the USA Today as saying, “OnLive shows the potential for a gaming world without consoles.”  “I think that they will appeal to a lot of gamers, and depending upon breadth of product offering, they will succeed.”

Right now you can checkout OnLive’s service and test it out online at onlive.com.  They have a few hit games right now such as Mirror’s Edge and Lego Batman.  The USA Today report on March 25 says that publishers are supporting the system such as Atari, Eidos, Epic, and Take-Two.  Why the support for the system?  Don’t people love bragging about their hard drives?  Middlemen, I say!  That’s right, cut out the middlemen!  What?  A game publisher can make a lot more money on their games if they only have to retail the product to one place and eliminate shippers, packagers, brick and mortar stores, etc.  Stores like Gamestop won’t be able to resell the games either while the developer and publisher doesn’t see a lick of that extra money they say they’ve been losing from used games.  So you see, everything is a digital product except for the micro-console you plug your controller into as well as the internet.

The potential as a game console and PC competitor is definitely there if the system will be reliable.  Ask yourself.  Would you be willing the buy a system that enables you to play a high end PC game like Crysis without the cost or need for a high end PC?  Yes, I would do it!  I’m sure many of you would be excited to also.  Hmmm, Crysis blazing over your HDTV in full 1080P resolution being processed with all those great graphical effects in cyberspace and beamed into your living room.  Yummy! 

 If the tech works and OnLive can pull it off correctly I for one will be in line at my local WalMart to pick one up.  Yes, really.

-dude