Will games move from being a software to a service?

[mjmjr25]

Re: Will games move from being a software to a service?

No.

[Inazuma]

I like Onlive and I am happy with the service so far. Sure, you can never own the games...it is more like a lease. However, if you shop the sales and take advantage of special offers you almost never have to pay more than $10 for a title and many times it can be much less than that. For a minimum 3 year (this is their guaranteed availability) rental this is a great deal. I like the convenience of not having to worry about hardware upgrades on my end and also the ability to pick up my same saved game from anywhere in my house or even at a friends house. It doesn't bother me at all to not have a hard copy when I am paying a fifth of the price I would at the store.

If prices ended up being similar to what you pay at a B&M store for a physical copy then I would probably have a sour taste in my mouth. The $9.99 playpack all you can eat type service is a novel idea as well but I think they need to expand on it with more quality games. There isn't enough good stuff in there to hold my interest at the moment.

You don't fully realize what's going on. You are falling for their trap. Let me explain how it works.

Step 1: Come out with OnLive, and make the service as good as possible. Charge very little. Make OnLive better than every other way to play video games out there.

Step 2: Grow in popularity. People begin to see that OnLive is great and the service expands and improves.

Step 3: Get to the point where OnLive surpasses physical games and download games. Physical games cannot possibly compete because of all the costs that are involved, so they have no choice but to stop making them.

Step 4: Become a powerhouse! OnLive is huge and very successful. They have become the new normal way to play video games.

Step 5: Jack up prices like a mother fucker! People complain but there are no alternatives anymore, so they continue to pay.

Step 6: ???

Step 7: Profit


You may think this sounds like a bunch of shit but trust me, this is what cloud based services are trying to do. You want a good example of this? Netflix. Download games, DLC, micro-transactions, etc does the same thing. Start off with a good value in order to beat physical media, and once you become popular enough, you can raise prices as much as possible. When physical media for games really does stop completely, you can bet your ass that download and cloud based games will be more expensive than they are now.

[isiolia]

You may think this sounds like a bunch of shit but trust me, this is what cloud based services are trying to do. You want a good example of this? Netflix.

Netflix is running into problems due to licensing - companies didn't count on the service being so popular. As a result, they're needing to pay a ton more for licensing and/or being faced with new demands from content holders. It's less Netflix deciding they can make more money, and more people trying to make money off of Netflix.
Unlike, say, Google, they can't just take a loss on one division due to profits from another.

It's unlikely that you'll see cloud services turn around and jack prices for no reason - because if there's really no reason, a competitor will jump in to undercut them. If they're all too expensive, then they lose customers to something else because one specific form of entertainment is not a necessity.

Seeing non-cloud copies of games entirely disappear is complete doom and gloom nonsense, for the foreseeable future anyway. Are physical CDs off the shelf? Newspapers? Less common, sure, but not gone.