Well, it seems that the talk so far at GDC this year is Playcast Media System's service called OnLive. To many analysts, this service is said to be the future of gaming and the end to consoles that we know today. Even Michael Pachter is getting into the argument saying that current gen systems will be the last consoles that we ever see. Now this has me worried, because if OnLive does what its supposed to do then we very well could be on the verge of consoles being a thing of the past.
If you don't know already, OnLive is supposed to be a service dedicated to bringing you live streams of games that you can play on any computer meeting basic requirements, provided you have a decent internet connection. You can also drop the PC altogether and buy a hub that connects directly into your TV and play straight from that if you wanted. Now, there are services out there that already do this type of thing but Playcast just seems to be taking it to the next level.
Sure this all sounds great but there is a pretty big downfall that Playcast is going to have to hurdle through to become king of gaming. OnLive requires an internet connection to be at all functional and according to Sony and Microsoft, a majority of gamers that own systems, are not even online. I can't remember the exact numbers but I know its a pretty big margin. I know more and more users are getting online everyday but could something like OnLive survive today? Another thing is, could consoles and OnLive both coincide together or is this actually the last gen we see consoles? Or could OnLive just be a gimmick and actually never take foot in the gaming forefront? To tell you the truth, I love my consoles and the idea of having to be online all the time just doesn't sit well with me. Well GDC is still going on this week and we can only find out more from Playcast. I'm curious to see what else they bring to the table.
For more information about OnLive, here's the link to the official site. http://www.onlive.com/
Travis (MWG)
