The Future of Gaming and the Death of Consoles

Could the death of videogame consoles be an inevitability? Set to be released this winter, OnLive is a service that will change the gaming landscape as we know it and turn the industry completely upside down.

Imagine that instead of having to buy the latest high-end PC or videogame console, you subscribed to a service that took all of your inputs, processed all of the games computing on their servers, and instantly streamed a video of the game play back to you. This is the future that the cloud-based computing revolution spearheaded by OnLive promises.

This completely revolutionizes the gaming industry. Cloud-based computing would help to rid the industry of pirating, which has been the primary cause of the decline in PC gaming, since users would not have direct access to the games files.

Another inherent benefit of this system is reduced distribution costs, as publishers will no longer have to deal with the high costs of physical distribution. The benefits also extend to the developer as they will not have to worry about the technical specs of user-end PC’s, allowing them to have greater technical dexterity when building games.

And of course, hardware will become completely irrelevant to the consumer, as all the emphasis will be placed on software and the quality thereof.

There also seems to be widespread support of OnLive among both developers and publishers, with companies like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Atari, 2k Games, Epic Games, and many others poised to release games on the service upon its release. The service will most likely become the platform standard for publishers to release their games, because the positives of such a service outweigh the negatives.

But with any revolutionary idea, there are going to be initial hurdles and drawbacks.

It seems the majority of consumers are still attached to the idea of owning hard copies of their games. Consumers might not be fond of the idea of having their games housed on machines not even owned by them.

There are also concerns that high-speed connections won’t be fast enough to handle streaming the high definition video. But with the high adoption rate of broadband, and speeds constantly increasing, this is most likely a concern that will wane over time.

Personally, the thought of never having to buy a new console or upgrade my PC is one that fascinates me to no end. Could it be that ten years down the line, consoles will be entirely irrelevant? Only time will tell. But OnLive is definitely something to keep your eye on.