Cloud Gaming, DLC and how gaming is in danger.

[Cynthia]

Bad example, in both of those cases you are still paying a monthly fee to play a single game. If anything the success of WoW should show that people don't mind paying monthly.

OnLive has a full scale release in one month.

OnLive doesn't make up all of cloud gaming, dear. It's only the first real test.

[Clobclark]

OnLive doesn't make up all of cloud gaming, dear. It's only the first real test.

If OnLive gets any kind of success every other company will produce their version sooner. To me OnLive is like when a Tsunami is about to hit the tide will recede, no one looks at the warnings, then a title wave will form...and by that time it's too late to get away.

[NTK]

I don't think cloud gaming will take over any time soon. The truth is that most people don't like their singleplayer games being tied up to the internet (see Ubisofts new DRM and all the backlash around it) and they will rather give up than bother with all the activations. Also they will expect something in return for the monthly fees like patches and updates, new content, and server maintenance is not free... Some people (like me) like having a hard copy if their internet is out.

If they tie gaming completely to the internet, they will lose a significant portion of the gaming population, and I bet there will be someone who will reach out to them, because more money is better than less money.

[Cynthia]

Let's not forget that games like Sims 2, Starcraft, and such were built upon mods. Blizzard has even stated they love their modding community and feel it's valuable to the continued success of Starcraft, and will be a valuable asset to Starcraft 2. There are several companies that see the modding community as their primary source of interest for their games. I doubt they would push for anything that would kill that. Not ALL companies hate modders.

[Meglad]

out of curiosity, what is cloud gaming?

[Clobclark]

Let's not forget that games like Sims 2, Starcraft, and such were built upon mods. Blizzard has even stated they love their modding community and feel it's valuable to the continued success of Starcraft, and will be a valuable asset to Starcraft 2. There are several companies that see the modding community as their primary source of interest for their games. I doubt they would push for anything that would kill that. Not ALL companies hate modders.

This is another reason I don't want cloud gaming to come full circle.

[ragnawind]

I haven't read every post but the first one and here is what I think:

If they do this, gaming will definitely die out entirely. Most gamers prefer to have a hard-copy of their games. They will 99% of the time refuse to pay monthly to play games. If they can't have a game that they buy in a store, they will most likely never get it in the first place. There is also a major downside to cloud computing and buying games from places like the PSN Store. One is the size of the content. For Example Final Fantasy XIII is about 48 or so GB, since it is on a single-sided dual layer BluRay Disc, which can hold around 52GB. Another downside is that many users only have dial-up still or do not have access to a fast internet connection. With a standard 1.5MBPS connection, it would take at least 10 hours to download most games to their computer or TV. An issue with Cloud Computing would be that with so many users connecting to the servers, they would never be able to host all of the players causing a server/network-wide crash. This would cause fewer people to use it and if it is the only way to play games, they would have to increase the membership price and they would lose even more people and then gaming would go extinct, except for those who still have hard copies of games. The internet portion would be knocked out though, since the companies had all moved to the now extinct network.

EDIT: I agree with NTK here: http://forums.kametsu.com/member.php?u=1789.

@Meglad: Cloud Computing is basically a network of servers connected to one another that other users can connect to in order to download and play games by themself or with others. OnLive is an example of it and information about that can be found here: http://www.onlive.com/. Personally, I think it is the worst idea ever come up with in the gaming community. If everything becomes cloud computing when it comes to games, the industry will most definitely die, since few people would actually put up with it, such as people who play subscription-based MMORPGs online. Everyone else will just stop gaming entirely except with games they own on a console that they currently own that still works. By the next generation, gaming would be dead across the planet.

[Cynthia]

I haven't read every post but the first one and here is what I think:

If they do this, gaming will definitely die out entirely. Most gamers prefer to have a hard-copy of their games. They will 99% of the time refuse to pay monthly to play games. If they can't have a game that they buy in a store, they will most likely never get it in the first place. There is also a major downside to cloud computing and buying games from places like the PSN Store. One is the size of the content. For Example Final Fantasy XIII is about 48 or so GB, since it is on a single-sided dual layer BluRay Disc, which can hold around 52GB. Another downside is that many users only have dial-up still or do not have access to a fast internet connection. With a standard 1.5MBPS connection, it would take at least 10 hours to download most games to their computer or TV. An issue with Cloud Computing would be that with so many users connecting to the servers, they would never be able to host all of the players causing a server/network-wide crash. This would cause fewer people to use it and if it is the only way to play games, they would have to increase the membership price and they would lose even more people and then gaming would go extinct, except for those who still have hard copies of games. The internet portion would be knocked out though, since the companies had all moved to the now extinct network.

Darling, not to criticize you, but that isn't how cloud computing works exactly... Cloud computing takes up no hard drive space, it in fact creates an endless hard drive space. The games are stored on a server, and installed there, you have nothing installed locally (accept maybe the client to access them) and all you're doing is sending a request to the server to play the games. So basically you won't need wait hours to download anything, it's all on the server.

Also not as many people use dial up as you'd think, gamers especially.

[Koby]

Also not as many people use dial up as you'd think, gamers especially.

Just so you know, up until 5 months ago all I could get was dial-up. So I was stuck with it, simply because I lived 3 miles outside of town. I moved to town 5 months ago and got highspeed internet. But trust me at least 30% of the visitors to this forum still use dial-up as well, mostly because where they live, it's the only thing available.

[Bannock]

Reading through this thread, I was thinking along similar lines.

The primary goal is to make money, and to do that, you want to get your product out to as many different people as possible. Cloud gaming would eliminate a huge percentage of the market, since most people don't have high speed internet, and this is even more true now that everyone is trying to capture the casual market.

While OnLive is being released, they aren't just dropping support for disc based media, or even downloadable games, because that would be a stupid move that would lose them a lot of profit.

The future of gaming, as I see it, is that it will all shift (slowly, so as to allow the average internet speed to increase) to a downloadable market, eventually replacing discs (removing the cost of making them). At some point, during or after this transition, I think that there will be a need for phsical based media again, for games that will take up a lot more space than is practical to download (upward of a terrabyte). When there is a solution, and it's cheap enough to use, then the next iteration of gaming consoles will use them.

I have other ideas, but that's roughly how I see things happening.

[Cynthia]

Just so you know, up until 5 months ago all I could get was dial-up. So I was stuck with it, simply because I lived 3 miles outside of town. I moved to town 5 months ago and got highspeed internet. But trust me at least 30% of the visitors to this forum still use dial-up as well, mostly because where they live, it's the only thing available.

I understand, as I used to only be able to get dial-up where I lived, and upgraded to DSL about 3 years ago. However; I wouldn't even go so far as to say even one third of internet users still use dial-up, and probably less than one third of the dial-up users actually want to play games online.

[Bindy]

One thing for me about cloud gaming is exactly that with internet, I live in Australia and we got really bad internet connections here. I think it is something like only 7/10 houses have an internet connection at all and probably 2/7 of those houses have dial up. We are really far behind with internet here in Australia.

[Clobclark]

One thing for me about cloud gaming is exactly that with internet, I live in Australia and we got really bad internet connections here. I think it is something like only 7/10 houses have an internet connection at all and probably 2/7 of those houses have dial up. We are really far behind with internet here in Australia.

It's a strong possibility that when Cloud gaming is the new thing in places that have good internet access that there will be a strong surge of demand for broadband in Australia and other developed nations with poor internet access.

Tell you the truth, I can't believe dial-up still exists.