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Are the console wars over?

Article written by KatanOmega on 3/31/09
Last edited on 3/31/09

On March 24th the gaming world changed forever. While the effects of this monumental event will not be felt for a few years, we have seen the future and the future is a single console eden.

Steve Perlman of WebTv and Mova fame, unveiled his newest project, OnLive. OnLive in a nutshell is video games OnDemand. The idea is that servers far far away from you do all the number crunching, rendering, and all the fun things your home council does now. These fun time servers then stream all the video to you through your broadband connection.

Sounds cool huh, well it is. The tech is not as important as what this means for retail, publishers, and most importantly gamers. Imagine a world where you never have to buy another console again. Imagine a world where to get the latest AAA new release all you have to do is click a button. Now imagine a world where retail stores like Gamestop do not have the power to bend you over and rape you, or spend 10 minutes asking you if you want to reserve the latest Madden. The implications of this new technology are so profound that it boggles the mind.

Publishers: Currently publishers are slaves to retail. They know there is a shit ton of money to be made with digital distribution, but every time they try threats from Gamestop start to fly and it hinders progress. With OnLive it's a non issue, because there is no more need for retail. OnLive would effectivly cut out the middle man. Publishers would make more money for their work, save on distribution, and in the end increase their development budgets.

Gamers: Their is no downside for us, unless of course you do not have a broadband connection in which case fuck you ya yokel. Developers budgets increase = better games, low distribution and the end of the used game market = lower game prices. Not to mention that we will not have to spend a ton of money on multiple consoles anymore, which is good for both sides because R&D is expensive, and lets face it most people do not have that kind of money to throw around anymore.

Retail: Fuck em, they have been screwing publishers and gamers for years and now their going to get their come upns! The used game market is 100% profit for retail, the publisher does not see a dime of that money. This makes it extremly difficult for a game to recoup it's development dollars especially since a game usually only has a 2 week window to do it in before were on to the next new release. Do not get me wrong, there are games that pull the slow burn and are eventually succesfull, but they are few and far between. Were moving closer and closer to seeing a world where the mid-teir publishers can not survive and retail is a big part of that.

It is not a question of if this will be the future it is when. The technology exists, OnLive is scheduled to go into beta this winter. I do not think these changes are going to happen the day OnLive launches, more likely it will happen over the course of a few years as the bugs are worked out and the buissness model takes shape. It does beg the question though, are the console wars over? Chances are we will still see another console released from Microsoft and Nintendo, but what about Sony. Sony is in year 2 of a 10 year life cycle, which leave OnLive 8 years to get it's footing and start to become the industry standard. That just leaves Nintendo and Microsoft to contemplate a world where they are just publishers, which I think would be a relief to Microsoft.

Either way it means a tearing down of the wall that keeps console gamers apart, letting all gamers play together in harmony..............................fuck that, it just provides me with more chances to virtualy murder noobs!

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