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HTC Invests $40 Million In OnLive
Smartphone-maker HTC has invested a significant chunk of change into cloud gaming service OnLive, raising speculation that the service could be headed for mobile devices. "At the D8 conference in June 2010, one of the most impressive demonstrations was a PC game running on an Apple iPad tablet via the OnLive service. HTC has yet to announce a tablet, although a recent report by DigiTmes said that HTC will ship a tablet at about the time that the Motorola Xoom launches." The deal comes alongside HTC's acquisition of a company involved with mobile video-on-demand, pointing to a renewed interest in bringing more types of content to mobile customers
I've no Idea if $40 Million is a lot of money for this project. I see so many huge numbers on the news about money that anything less than One... Hundred... BILLION DOLLARS! doesn't bother me.
From the perspective of "competition", deals of this sort make me a touch nervous.
It could be largely benign: "Company that makes devices incapable of playing PC level games sees potential in service that would change that, doesn't want it to die, does want to profit if it succeeds".
However, the cellphone market is a bundling-riddled hellhole. Hardware exclusives are used to drive service subscriptions, certain carriers obtain "content exclusives", etc, etc. Seeing an "OnLive Go: Only from HTC" sticker in the near future would, let's say, entirely fail to surprise me.
That may well light a fire under some of the on-device game producers, and the device makers whose hardware capabilities they depend on(though those already seem to be moving about as fast as the, quite competitive, ARM SoC market can carry them); but a deal between a handset maker and a potential handset content publisher is unlikely to aid competition much(particularly if OnLive has any juicy patents over important parts of their comparatively low-latency streaming stuff...)
The situation it looks most similar to, to me, is when Microsoft or Sony eat an independent game developer in order to obtain an exclusive for their respective console. The amounts they are willing to pay to do so are certainly indicative of competition; but competition of a sort that is basically just a pain in the ass for buyers: many games are simply unavailable on one platform or the other, and those prices being paid then have to be ground out of the install base that they help generate...
It's more like the starting of the race to define the "next-gen" of console gaming. All the content is going to be available as DLC only with some sort of subscription required to access/play. Question is will you even own the content or will it be rental only or some combination there of. But the idea of cloud gaming probably has a few bigwigs raising an eyebrow. One, all the games are hosted on the OnLive hardware. If it's only available via OnLive, that makes piracy MUCH harder. Secondly, you have subscriptions which provide an on going source of revenue that comes in month after month and in any business, cash flow is king.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Is it really practical to play a PC or console game on a mobile or tablet? Talk about niche within a niche. Games designed specifically for a tablet will offer a far better experience, and it's as if the next-generation of tablets have a shortage of processing power. Maybe HTC fancies making its own OnLive box with some extra home-cooked features - Apple TV with games anyone?
Now we're gonna have to worry about drivers playing games...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I have no idea why OnLive is billed as a competitor to "buying an expensive gaming PC". It is clearly a competitor to buying a cheap console. And looked at objectively, it fails at every point in that match up (ongoing cost, selection of titles, performance, image quality, ease of use, reliability, versatility of experience, etc) except perhaps a barely lower initial cost and novelty.
The gaming PC thing is a head scratcher. Let's forget that buying a Dell and plugging a $100 video card in it will get the job done better (and cheaper long term) I acknowledge some people don't want or can't deal with the hassle of PC Gaming. But the majority of the "big name" games that run poorly on that cheap laptop you have console ports that will run fine on a Xbox360 arcade. Most PC and Console titles aren't even available on the service. If you want to play those games with no hassle, no mods and aren't super concerned about top of the line graphics then the console will get you more for less. And you can even still play them when you run out of money for a monthly fee, they won't vanish into the ether.
Using OnLive on mobile devices is the most bizarre business case yet though. Ramming latency sensitive and high bandwidth use applications over an unreliable connection that is increasingly limited by ISPs to avoid having to buy local hardware that has never been cheaper historically was crazy enough on land based connections that could conceivably be upgraded (but probably won't) was crazy enough. Pushing it over cellphone wireless networks that have real finite physical limits in their ability to provide bandwidth to users sounds like the product of some one that thinks cell phones work through enchantment by wizards.
OnLive is the answer to the question nobody asked. At least, no reasonable consumer asked. I know who asked it!
Last time I checked mobile Internet sucks donkey balls when it come to latency. And reading the current news I don't see this changing anytime soon.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
It disheartens me to see people so excited over what OnLive promises, since in the end it's only "benefit" over properly designed games is to the publishers, via perfect and unbreakable DRM. You get "higher detail, higher resolution" games crammed down through heavy compression over a high latency network on to a tiny screen, so no real gain there. You get nasty control schemes forced upon you by lack of any real tactile controls.
Never mind that OnLive's payment schemes keep shifting. I expect it will likely end up in the state of "pay retail (or near retail) for a game that requires a subscription to keep going." Which is where they initially chartered it.
Oh and fuck this FIVE MINUTE DELAY BETWEEN POSTS!
I would speculate that they are going to release a Google TV box with onlive. That would make far more sense...