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Report: Comcast and EA To Stream Games To TVs
An anonymous reader writes "Reuters is reporting that Electronic Arts and Comcast are working on a partnership that would stream video games to consumer televisions through Comcast's cable boxes. It will start with the FIFA and Madden sports game franchises. 'Comcast and EA's aim is to make buying games as easy as ordering a pay-per-view movie, sources said. This could create a new distribution model that circumvents console and video-streaming device makers.' The report says consumers will also be able to use tablets as controllers for the games."
Sega Channel was doing this back in the 90's.
I'm genuinely curious if anyone is excited about this. This service seems like it would be of interest to no one outside of big companies wanting to cut big company deals.
Tablets as controllers? What are we, barbarians?
this has been done by multiple companies, in various iterations, and all have failed. This will too of course.
the group of folks who are into FIFA and/or Madden already have consoles. with real controllers. without streaming induced latency.
Though Comcast and EA teaming up .. has historical precedent, Poland should be very very concerned. :(
Cable is over. That is pretty obvious by their constant blundering around trying to find a problem that their solution solves.
Something tells me this is some kind of an attempt to impose DRM through the cable box, going after people who are accustomed to shelling out for Sports packages through Comcast to get all the games for their sport.
I like soccer, for example, but I don't pay for the Soccer sports packages, just the expanded basic.
But they figure I'll shell out to play the EA FIFA2013 game.
How wrong they are.
I'd rather play inFamous: Second Son on my PS4 without online and shell out the money for seasons tickets for me and my son and my friends to see Sounders FC in the actual stadium instead. Cheaper too.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Other than being able to test-drive a game before you buy it, why in the world would you want to do this? The overall quality can't be as good as an actual game console, can it? Otherwise it just sounds to me like yet another way to swindle people out of their money and give them essentially nothing.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I will give it to Comcast & EA, this is definitely an interesting way to attack traditional consoles. It's very fitting that MS is one of the targets, as this was one of their favorite weapons (i.e. Bundling IE with Windows to attack Netscape, WMV to attack Real, etc.).
I'll be curious how they execute this platform envelopment attack as I think its success will largely rely on their operational efficiency (something neither Comcast nor EA are known for). Comcast certainly has a major advantage over other remote gaming providers in terms of latency, but even being the closest hop to their customers, I don't know if it's quick enough for certain games. I don't think they'd cache the game locally on the customer's X1 client as it those devices won't have anywhere near the processing power of a modern console. I also have serious doubts about using tablets as controllers as described however I presume their target is casual gamers (i.e. those who never owned a console before they bought the original Wii). It will be interesting to see how those users respond.
I am also curious to see how MS & Sony will respond. MS currently offers a Comcast app on the Xbox 360 (and I presume the Xbox One); will both sides continue with that service? Does anyone know how the financials work with that (i.e. does one side pay the other)?
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
When EA and Comcast team up, not even God wins.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.