In the falling post i want it to be apparent that i am against Onlive, so dont expect a ton of positives about it, if you have any, tell me about them.....
I have done alot of thinking lately about Onlive, and what it will do to gaming as a whole. And im worried. Yes it introduces the ability to play games, anywhere, without the expensive hardware, but is this a good thing?
First they will charge a monthly fee, something gaming normally doesn't require. You could say that, basically, gaming will be come one big MMO. Then they will take away the consumers access to what they pay for, by streaming everything, rather then installing it, which would normally give a gamer access to the files they purchased. Mods will be done away with, game collections will cease to exist. But worst of all in my mind is what this will do to the gaming community.
Gaming becomes more and more mainstream every year, with the advent of the Wii, where people who never play games are able to jump in, those people may one day cross over to games that are more hardcore and complex. But with Onlive this all changes, how will a, lets say, 40 year old mother whos never touched a game, become interested in this strange streaming service, that requires a strange device, and a monthly fee to play games, that arent mini game collections and therefore, intimidating to most people. How will that same mother, be willing to buy this service for their kid to play games? Why would she want to pay a relatively large sum of money each month on something that does nothing but keep the child indoors and inactive. With consoles today, many kids will save up for their console of their choice, and eventually they will buy it. They borrow a friends games for awhile until they save up enough for their own. But how will they cope with onlive, where a sum of money is required every month, in addition to buying the games, and box itself? Where they cant get a cheap used game, or rent one, nor can they borrow it from a friend. (Although that might be an option in onlive, who knows.)This might start turning off alot of kids to gaming and the user base for games could shrink.
Finally, it will make PC and console gaming obsolete (Eventually anyways, if its as revolutionary as they propose.) , the wii might however make it out fine, because of its unique style of gameplay that On live cant copy.
Theres a good chance im wrong about this. Maybe im wrong in thinking OnLive is the Skynet of gaming. Sure the whole thing wont even get working for years. But im concerned.
So what do you think? Will Onlive make things better, or worse?
Should we fear it? Or Embrace it?
In the falling post i want it to be apparent that i am against Onlive, so dont expect a ton of positives about it, if you have any, tell me about them.....
I have done alot of thinking lately about Onlive, and what it will do to gaming as a whole. And im worried. Yes it introduces the ability to play games, anywhere, without the expensive hardware, but is this a good thing?
First they will charge a monthly fee, something gaming normally doesn't require. You could say that, basically, gaming will be come one big MMO. Then they will take away the consumers access to what they pay for, by streaming everything, rather then installing it, which would normally give a gamer access to the files they purchased. Mods will be done away with, game collections will cease to exist. But worst of all in my mind is what this will do to the gaming community.
Gaming becomes more and more mainstream every year, with the advent of the Wii, where people who never play games are able to jump in, those people may one day cross over to games that are more hardcore and complex. But with Onlive this all changes, how will a, lets say, 40 year old mother whos never touched a game, become interested in this strange streaming service, that requires a strange device, and a monthly fee to play games, that arent mini game collections and therefore, intimidating to most people. How will that same mother, be willing to buy this service for their kid to play games? Why would she want to pay a relatively large sum of money each month on something that does nothing but keep the child indoors and inactive. With consoles today, many kids will save up for their console of their choice, and eventually they will buy it. They borrow a friends games for awhile until they save up enough for their own. But how will they cope with onlive, where a sum of money is required every month, in addition to buying the games, and box itself? Where they cant get a cheap used game, or rent one, nor can they borrow it from a friend. (Although that might be an option in onlive, who knows.)This might start turning off alot of kids to gaming and the user base for games could shrink.
Finally, it will make PC and console gaming obsolete (Eventually anyways, if its as revolutionary as they propose.) , the wii might however make it out fine, because of its unique style of gameplay that On live cant copy.
Theres a good chance im wrong about this. Maybe im wrong in thinking OnLive is the Skynet of gaming. Sure the whole thing wont even get working for years. But im concerned.
So what do you think? Will Onlive make things better, or worse?
Now you have a company, whos only interest is money, in charge of your property.
First off, online subsciptions are nothing new. A lot of MMO's do this, and kids still find ways to pay for that. Xbox Live Gold is a service you pay monthly for, and still people can find a way to pay for that. Whether it be through redeem codes or through credit cards, it gets paid for by kids all the time. So I hardly see a subscription service being a limiting factor in the long run.
Not even going to read the whole post, they already stated people will be given the option to simply purchase games like normal if they want to, the supscription based rental has been talked about, and confirmed but it's optional and no pricing structure has been announced. Honestly it's no different from gamefly/lovefilm.
As for killing PC gaming, no, the only real PC gamers left are the hardcore devotees, to everyone else it's already dead, and do you really expect the devotees to abandon their rigs for onLive? No, especially considering their rigs are likely just as powerful as onLives machines, and the non devotee PC gamers left are mostly the casual bejeweled/peggle crowd, they will either embrace it in tandem (IE, most of them play peggle at work, not at home) or will ignore it altogether.
<sarcasm>We are gamers, we fear change. The bad men are coming to take away my hobby and share it with everyone else in the world! ZOMGS then I won't be special anymore!</sarcasm> Get over it.
I don't like the idea of onLive anymore than the other haters, but mainly because like WoW, sods law would have me wanting to play games whenever they have downtime (and they will, have downtime)
Besides, they already stated that even if it is a huge success, we will continue to see traditional boxed releases for games, and I really don't think it's going to instantly take over the console market (that's the one it's competing with, whether you want to see that or not is up to you, it's no competition for the PC market at all, it is essentially a new console) it's not even going to be available to the masses for several years, on release it's only going to be available to a small section of the US. And for the moment they have no plans to expand that until much later on. The rest of the world isn't even being considered yet.
Also, think what this will do for the rest of the technology world, if they share the technology (unlikely for now, but it will happen eventually, I mean look at all the youtube knock-offs nowadays) then provided a company has the money to host the content in such a way, we could be seeing an end to load times for any and all streaming media, forget just videogames. You could be watching youtube videos with no load times, dynamic websites could become infinitely more complex, even like videogames themselves. Fuck, big expensive companies can afford all sorts of crazy shit, imagine a website for Dead Space 2 running on this shit, you could actually take control of the character in your web browser and walk along a coridoor with vid screens explaining the key points of the game. Heck, you could play a fucking demo without a moments waiting instead of reading text and watching videos.
Edit: Dead Space 2 probably a bad example, but it gives context for the example.
" Depending on where you live it will be great. I don't see the reasoning behind needing a physical copy of the game anyway..I want a game to play it, not look at the box. "I know this is just about gaming, but it applies to virtually everything as far as I'm concerned: Physical property, freedom, and liberty are all interdependent. Take one away and the others don't function. I want to own what I pay for, I don't want to come back in ten years and find that I can't use what I payed for and invested time into years earlier. I will -always- prefer a physical copy over streaming/downloaded copies because it means that I can have complete control over it, I can install it years from now, I can back it up, and it will physically be my property. I'm not naive enough to believe the companies that provide these services (Steam for instance) will be around forever, providing their service, though my desire to play certain games may remain with me the rest of my life. I'm not suggesting you take the opposite position on all these things; your quote just provided a good basis to form my own response to.
I want to fold up my electronic newspaper and pop it into my digital locker to let it age so it can become syncronised within the cloud and only then can the vertical be leveraged and brought to the core gamer.
Anyways, that being said I am not all that jazzed about OnLive. I don't want to say wether it's a good or bad thing because it isn't out yet and could just totally flop. At the moment I'm not sold on their service but who knows it could be in everyone's home within a few years. Just wait and see.
And where is Onlive?
For me it is a cool idea without capable tecnology to support it.
I don't think most internet connections can support it in the current state. With fiber optics maybe... but it's far from generalized anywhere.
In the current turn of events, economically, it is hard to tell if it will even be launched.
Maybe it's just going to be one more vaporware product.
"@The_A_Drain said:" the only real PC gamers left are the hardcore devotees, to everyone else it's already dead"uh...no. PC gaming is FAR from dead."
Well just take a look around you man, it might not be on life support quite yet, but the only people still really actively supporting it are indie developers who have little other choice. Don't get me wrong, i'm not hating on the PC scene I was a big part of it several years ago, but I realised that games are coming out more often, less buggy, and sooner on consoles. And that the only PC exclusives I wanted to play were either casual games, or Crysis, and I wasn't going to upgrade for Crysis when my PC can handle everything up to L4D anyway.
Face it, the only people left are the ones who can be bothered to maintain a gaming rig, which is actually quite a bit of work (or have the money to shell out for one from a store) who, I consider to be the hobbyists/devotees, and people who are playing casual games or whatever the PC from the last time they upgraded will play. I reckon we'll see a huge boost with the releases of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, but as a whole, people are supporting the PC less and less everyday, and while it's a shame, it's still a fact.
That's an interesting angle about the parent not willing to pay for a thing like that.
I wonder if they'll have parental programs that allow them to block games, and the like. If so, it might be a useful tool for a parent because they'll be able to check the games themselves, or at least have a comprehensive listing, instead of just trusting the boxes. Or they could check online, I guess. Not a big change there, but since it's directly connected to the device and to purchasing it might make the process easier for people who aren't technically inclined.
For me, it's about expensive hardware, and OnLive seems to get around that. I can play games I'd never be able to play otherwise, for cheaper. When I'm sick of it, I just quit.
I'm a bit of an old-timer so I prefer to having things in-hand, though. Books as well as gaming property. I can see it as a way to sample stuff from the console world. As far as the games I usually enjoy, though, I like what people are doing that's accessible just through my humble PC. Whatever I would ultimately think of World of Goo, I wouldn't need to subscribe to play it, I just get it on this thing.
For a gamer like me, OnLive is easier than buying 2 or 3 consoles, but right now, it's even cheaper for me to just read about new games and play the older ones that others left behind. :)
" @CL60 said:"@The_A_Drain said:Well just take a look around you man, it might not be on life support quite yet, but the only people still really actively supporting it are indie developers who have little other choice. Don't get me wrong, i'm not hating on the PC scene I was a big part of it several years ago, but I realised that games are coming out more often, less buggy, and sooner on consoles. And that the only PC exclusives I wanted to play were either casual games, or Crysis, and I wasn't going to upgrade for Crysis when my PC can handle everything up to L4D anyway.Face it, the only people left are the ones who can be bothered to maintain a gaming rig, which is actually quite a bit of work (or have the money to shell out for one from a store) who, I consider to be the hobbyists/devotees, and people who are playing casual games or whatever the PC from the last time they upgraded will play. I reckon we'll see a huge boost with the releases of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, but as a whole, people are supporting the PC less and less everyday, and while it's a shame, it's still a fact. "" the only real PC gamers left are the hardcore devotees, to everyone else it's already dead"uh...no. PC gaming is FAR from dead."
I like how you call it a fact, because you read what other trolls post. It's not a 'fact', there's no scientific proof of it, and less buggy? I've had far more games crash on the 360 than I have on the PC, and guess what? If it DOES crash on my PC? 9/10 times I can fix it, 360 I have to wait on an official patch. And to you who says PC gaming is dead, and that it's only survival is Blizzard games, more people own 'nice' PCs nowadays because of the world becoming more and more tech-savvy. Most people I know who own a console, also own a nice PC and differentiate between the two. Read this:
http://kotaku.com/354035/holy-smoke-fifteen-million-steam-accounts
So no, it's not 'facts', stop calling it facts.
Hey, if you don't want to face the truth that's not my problem dude.
There is actually statistical and physical evidence to support it. I don't like it any more than you do, but it is indeed a fact that less people are supporting the PC. Numerous developers have stated they are done with high end PC development, numerous publishers have stated their waryness of releasing on PC due to piracy and other factors. You say more people own higher end PC's these days because they are more 'tech savvy' but that isn't the case, more people own higher end PCs these days because they have been getting cheaper and chaper, and high end PC development has all but ceased with Crysis, meaning almost anyone can play 99% of available PC games these days, not because they are tech savvy, but because modern PCs bought by almost anyone are quite powerful as standard.
And please, don't insult me. 15 million steam accounts doesnt back up either argument or prove any particular point. Who knows precisely how many games have been purchased by those accounts, it wouldnt surprise me if a large number of them simply own The Orange Box and other multiplayer shooters such as DoD and CSS. After all, 15 million people playing those kinda games is still nothing compared to the masses of people playing games on a console. And what percentage of those Steam accounts simply own a few Sam and Max games, or some PopCap games? For sure not every one of those 15 million people is a hardcore PC gamer, and even if they were that's still nothing compared to the numbers of PC gamings glory day. Besides, it's not like there are many people out there who PC game and don't have a Steam account nowadays, so are we to assume there are something like 15 - 25 million PC gamers not including the masses of people who only play casual browser based games?
I'd say that's pretty generous given how many people who still PC game have steam accounts, mostly all of them.
Besides, at least when a game crashes for 360/PS3 you have to wait for an official patch, and you might get one, you might not, a lot of PC games are equally as hit and miss when it comes to patches these days or community fixes, countless console ports that have been released never saw patches community or otherwise. The notion that console games crash more than PC games is a little off too, sure, they crash, and it varies from game to game precisely how much they crash, but i've been a hardcore PC gamer for a long time and I can tell you they are nowhere near as bad as PCs, especially how many different damned setting you need in order to play different games without errors, it's a nightmare it's no wonder people are slowing their support for the platform.
So yeah, i'd say facts are facts regardless of whether or not you posted some Steam statistics as I said in the quoted post all you have to do is look around, bar a few select games and services, the level of support for PCs is nowhere near what it used to be and dropping all the time.
"And where is Onlive? For me it is a cool idea without capable tecnology to support it. I don't think most internet connection can support it in the current state. With fiber optics maybe... but it's far from generalized anywhere.In the current turn of events, economically, it is hard to tell if it even ever be launched. Maybe it's just going one more vaporware product."
This.
Honestly this is kinda like a Xbox vs. Playstation fight, there will be people who will support it when it comes out and there will not be. If you like it, then who really cares? I can say that the Xbox and Playstation will not go down without a good fight to this OnLive. Odds are I won't buy OnLive simply cause I don't like using my computer to game, the only time I have ever enjoyed it was with Crisis, and since Crisis is going to be coming to the Xbox: odds are I'll buy into Xbox. But that is just me, there will definitly be people who say they prefer their computer and would like to just buy OnLive.
"@The_A_Drain said:" @thecleric: Hey, if you don't want to face the truth that's not my problem dude.There is actually statistical and physical evidence to support it..And yet you don't provide it."
Ok then, ignore the slew of recent developer interviews, news commentaries, podcasts and what you see everytime you walk into a fucking videogame store.
Ea for example, are not releasing NHL 10 on PC, after already pulling support from several other games for the platform and isntead hoping to make money from the free to play model with games like Battlefield Heroes. ActiVision are following suit and several of their games are being denied PC releases, other major publishers budgets for PC ports are falling as well which contributes to the decline in quality of PC ports.
How many new, high end PC games to you see announced and released every year nowadays compared to 5, 10, 15 years ago, it's been in steady decline for some time now. I don't neet to dig up a bunch of fossil links, the evidence is almost literally all around you.
Like I said, I don't like it anymore than you do, but arguing that it isn't a fact that PC gaming has been on the decline for a long time now is preposterous. Maybe it will pick back up again, who knows, I hope so, but right now it isn't looking likely. It's not likely to die anytime soon either, but it's certainly not the traditional, high end focused gaming market it used to be, it's all casual, free-to-play or subscription MMOs, or browser based ad-funded games and indie stuff. The traditional market is abandoning it slowly, game by game year by year and recession certainly isn't helping.
Besides, why is this topic even back from the dead?
I've said it before i'll say it again, OnLive isn't even competing with PC gaming, it's a competitor to consoles mainly seeing as you can use it on it's own, and primarily with a controller, you don't need a PC to use it. Besides, it's only going to be launching in small localized areas and you will need a server farm within something like a few hundred miles of you to be able to get a decent lag free experience and even if it's a massive financial success, to get all of NA, most of Europe and Japan covered in that kinda thing is going to take DECADES. Unfortunately, this sort of technology is the future regardless of how much us traditionalists dislike it, and even if it's not under the name of OnLive, this tech is coming, and it's coming to stay. Heck, Microsoft are considering this kind of tech for a live hosted operating system, not more cracked windows for certain people eh?
As for owning physical discs, as much as it sucks you have the same rights as you do with an online service, all you have is a license to use the software. Although that said I do personally much prefer discs as they enable you to keep hold of them if the service goes bust. But essentially, you have exactly the same rights legally, that is to say, almost none.
Onlive is a pipe dream. It's cool in concept, but I can't ever see it getting off the ground. Current Internet technology just isn't there, particularly in the United States, which is ages behind the rest of the world and whose major ISP's have been talking about capping all the bandwidth, and if that happens you can kiss online gaming goodbye in America. So in short, don't fret over Onlive and don't waste your time worrying about it. It will die in obscurity like the The Phantom.
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